Music Preview: Exodus Live Winter 2009
Article published: Thursday, December 10th 2009
This summer the Exodus Summer Festival brought together the city’s diverse refugee and asylum seeker communities in a celebration of arts and culture. This week the festival returns with an impressive and eclectic line up of musical acts, demonstrating the myriad talents of these socially marginalised and misrepresented communities.
Exodus Live Winter promises to be a truly electrifying night. It marks the accumulation of an impressive year for Exodus, the refugee arts partnership led by Community Arts Northwest. After the summer event, Manchester International Festival hosted Manchester’s global ensemble The Beating Wing Orchestra in their sell-out collaboration with Armadou et Miriam. The concert was greeted with phenomenal acclaim and the Orchestra will be a highlight of the evening.
They will be joined by an international line-up accommodating a wide variety of styles and grooves. Heritage Survival promise to play funky jazz with a real Zimbabwean flavour, using traditional instruments mixed with more familiar guitar melodies. Alafia will offer djembe beats while Testimony will get set the crowd off with their blend classical African and modern American gospel music.
Educated Thugz bring a contemporary feel to the night with their hip-hop and rap stylings. Finally the Women Asylum Seekers Together Choir will recreate the moving songs Manchester audicences were treated to last week at the preview of their play “How I Became An Asylum Seeker”.
The night is an opportunity to bring together musicians from diverse backgrounds to collaborate and experiment, not least through the Exodus Jam Band. It is an unique event that promises to bring communities together – offering a much needed public space and deserved stage to skilled musicians often excluded from performing.
Serge Tebu, Cameroonian keyboardist for the Beating Wing Orchestra, says “the project has given me the opportunity to showcase my music. It has also helped me meet people from different backgrounds, make friends and share life experiences. This gig is another great opportunity to perform the band is really looking forward to the night.” They are not the only ones.
Siobhan McGuirk
Thursday 10 December, 7-11pm, at Band on the Wall
For tickets call 08452 500 500 or visit www.bandonthewall.org.
Tickets cost £5, £3 concessions. Free for Asylum Seekers
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