WOW! What a beautiful multicultural Evening

WOW! What a beautiful multicultural Evening all partners spent together in London!

16 July 2011: that was the final CLEAr partnership activity and maybe the first of many other activities for new projects....

More than 120 people attended the event held in the top floor venue at the Yunus Emre Centre in central London.

The Evening started with a welcome and introduction by Teresa Dello Monaco from The Mosaic Art And Sound, the CLEAr partner based in London that organized the event in collaboration with the Yunus Emre Turkish Cultural Centre and the CLEAr Turkish partner, Samsun Adult Education Centre.

Teresa introduced the partner organisations and explained the context of the CLEAr project.

She also shared some insights on The Mosaic’s experience in European projects and the idea that boundaries between migrants and native population are increasingly reducing.

She briefly mentioned the role of the arts in sharing the best of each culture. There were journalists and the most popular channel of the Turkish TV that has spread the news in the first national channel!

The attendees have participated with attentive listening and enthusiasm.

The International coordinator of the Yunus Emre Turkish Cultural Centres, Mr Bayran Rahimgület, greeted the audience and the event continued with the first performance in the programme.

The Turkish musicians from Samsun, in session with the local ney teacher at the Emre, started the Evening with traditional Turkish music.


 

The ney is an end-blown flute that figures prominently in Middle Eastern music. The saz, the guitar, the ney and some vocal arrangements conveyed an atmosphere of subtle and delicate nuances of Turkish folklore. Even when the ney player changed his instrument and played the trombone, the music they played was still very Turkish.

Then, the British group came on stage and it was an explosion of colours and music notes with unusual instruments from across Europe and from... another planet!
There was a percussion instrument made of gas cylinders with little pieces of strange metals on them which sounded a bit like steel band but very melodic, unbelievably beautifully tuned.

The CLEAr group was led by Sam Lee, the winner of the 2011 Arts foundation Award for Folk Music, a singer, researcher and self-confessed die-hard enthusiast of the folk arts.
The performance was fantastic with Sam’s voice, violin, koto, tablas, gas cylinder and a number of little percussion instruments, Indian accordion…

 

There was a standing ovation and everybody would have liked to listen to more and more songs from the group…
In the audience there were many persons who had attended the CLEAr music and singing sessions in the past months.

Afterwards, the Dragasani (Romania) group of actors presented a very special pantomime with a story of love, mystery and angels…

It was an act of about 15 minutes which filled the venue with some magic although a little enigmatic moments which the audience liked really much.

To end the multicultural evening, the colourful Italian dance group La Vadesella, from Marche Region, burst into the venue with irrepressible vitality, showing a range of traditional dances and costumes.





Towards the end of their performance, attendees were invited to join the dances and it was a fun and very pleasant way to end the event.











Everybody was clapping or dancing on the tune of Italian traditional and rarely heard songs.

On the ground floor, a refreshment was prepared for all attendees and artists, for about two hours of very sociable time.

Some comments of the attendees:

“Excellent!”

“Very interesting!”

“More meetings like this....”

“It’s so nice to learn about other cultures, to feel so many similarities and enjoy the differences...”

“The British group was so creative and their songs so touching... so evocative.”

“I would like to know when La Vadesella group will come back to London. They made me have a lot of memories, even if I’m not an Italian...”

We are also preparing a movie.... coming soon!

Written by The Mosaic Art And Sound learners