Christian Hankel

Christian has been making art and music since the late 1980s when he co-founded The Mongol Beach Party. As the singer and percussionist for this world-beat influenced pop-funk-dance band, he toured the Midwest extensively and excited audiences with his high-energy performances. During this time, he also co-founded Damawa, an experimental world music ensemble that mashed Afro-Cuban rhythms with Indian ragas, Native American melodies, and Middle-Eastern scales and harmonies. Christian went on to explore other styles of music, particularly Brazilian samba. He performed as a percussionist with the Kansas City-based batucada ensemble, Soundz of Samba, and as a percussionist and singer with the Luciano Antonio Trio. He also began developing his personal style of guitar composition, and started performing intimate solo shows in the Kansas City region. In 2002, inspired by the political and social events of the time and by his family's links to Weimar Germany, Christian co-founded Alacartoona, a modern cabaret troupe. Playing what he called "theatrical music," Alacartoona created an immersive, interactive environment - where the performance happened on stage and throughout the audience - and brought to life vivid tales of love and loss, of bedrooms and back alleys, of the solitude and the camaraderie of sex, drugs and cabaret. In 2008, Alacartoona was the recipient of an Inspiration Grant from the ArtsKC Fund, which they used to produce a full-length film, "Night Is the Mirror." As a group, they also produced several theatrical stage shows, and released three full-length CDs. In 2010, Christian teamed up with a group of Kansas City visual and performing artists to create The Oil Boiler. Based in a nightclub run by assassins, it's the story of a hit man who, in the moments after killing his lover, has a conversation with his inner selves about guilt, blame, and remorse. He co-wrote the script, co-produced the show, composed four original tunes that were performed on stage during the show, and played one of the main characters. Christian co-founded The Hillary Watts Riot in 2011. Playing a musical style they call freak pop - humorous, absurd, and often sexually-charged lyrics, funk-inspired dance rhythms, dirty synth lines, and lots of experimentation and noise - they take the stage as four jump-suited drones, hidden behind white sunglasses. Lead singer Hillary Watts, dressed somewhere between an 80's Pat Benetar and a prom queen, runs the show, while the band subserviently lays down the groove. Also in 2011, he co-founded the musical and theatrical performance ensemble, The Monocle. Featuring some of Kansas City's most talented performers, this group performed original pieces and re-visioned works of the past as artifacts of the future. In October of 2011, The Monocle performed a 5-minute opera based on two pieces by classical composer Virgil Thomson on the Helzberg stage in the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City. The piece was part of an evening dedicated to Thomson, and was recorded as part of an upcoming PBS special on him. In the early spring of 2012, Christian composed a song for a pivotal scene in the world premiere of the stage adaptation of A Bucket of Blood. He was also invited to take part in Artist, INC, an 8-week artists training workshop sponsored by the Charlotte Street Foundation, the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City, and the UMKC Innovation Center. He composed music and acted in several roles for Tara Varney's July production of "Sexing Hitler." His bands were busy both on the stage and in the studio with Alacartoona releasing "Fantoche" and The Hillary Watts Riot releasing "A/S/L". He penned the script and several compositions for "The Orphans Feast", which The Monocle produced at the Arts Asylum in November. 2013 proved to be a busy year. In January, he joined Money Wolf Music, a KC-based music recording collective. In February, he was recognized by KC Magazine in their list of "100 People Who Make Kansas City Great." In March, The Monocle and Money Wolf Music presented a three-day music festival featuring local and national acts. In April, Money Wolf Music hosted a stage at the Middle of the Map Fest. In October, The Monocle produced the opening night gala for the "Impressionist France" exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. In 2014, Money Wolf Music was awarded two grants to assist in their effort to coordinate the Kansas City presence at the 2014 Folk Alliance International Conference. They used the funds to help over 40 local musicians attend the music industry conference. Later in the year, The Hillary Watts Riot released an EP of remixes and a video for one of the tracks, entitled Knuckle (Nudillo Remix) In the fall of that year, Christian started composing the music for "Silver: A Noir Ballet".