When Song Breaks in Leicester

 

This week is Refugee Week. It's not an appeal for charity but a countrywide celebration of how our communities are enriched by migrants - exactly as Jo Cox outlined in her maiden speech. "While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again ... is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.”

 

At this moment in 2016, we more than ever need to celebrate not only the contributions of refugees but the possibilities that solidarity bring for all of us. We have done some hard mourning this week. Now we will do some singing of our shared story.

 

Credit: Ambrose Musiyiwa

 

Local organisers from the Leicester British Red Cross promise a day of 'A free and fun day out for all the family, a fusion of talented musicians, dancers and performers all drumming up noise for Refugee Week.' I've been lucky enough to be involved in Refugee Week Celebrations in this city for a few years now. And I especially pleased this year to be taking part in readings from an anthology published in 2015 to raise funds and support for refugee charities: the 'Over Land, Over Seas' anthology by Five Leaves Press. 'An anthology of 102 poems expressing solidarity with the refugees who are currently receiving so little welcome as they take to boats and rafts to cross the Mediterranean and make their way with difficulty through Europe. Readers are invited to take a view of the situation which is not governed by the fear and hatred whipped up by the language of media and many politicians.' You can hear some of these remarkable poems on the acoustic stage in Leicester's Town Hall Square from about 11.45 onwards.

 

 

 

 

Later in the same week I'll be joining co-editors Emma Lee and Kathy Bell with other readers at an event called VOICED on Thursday 23rd June at the Exchange Bar from 6pm onwards. This will again feature artists and musicians, including those from the refugee community. Poetry and story will be interwoven through a fabric of sound: 'HAIKI - blending soul and jazz sounds deriving from Ethiopia, MARCUS JOSEPH, who combines resonating rhymes and smooth saxophone'.

 

Finally if you want to get a flavour of what a vibrant joyful celebration of refugees in Leicester looks like, check out these wonderful photos from Ambrose Musiyiwa from the 2014 event in Town Hall Square. We were rained off last year but are hoping for a break from the Leicester monsoon this weekend! Either way we'll be making the music of our shared humanity. Join us why don't you if you're out and about.

Refugee Week: Singing in Colour

For this delicate Irish 'blow-in',  summer brings sneezing and slapping on the factor 50 and going incognito in sun-hat and dark glasses. But it also brings festivals and the special joy of people gathering to celebrate each other as well as the season. I was especially pleased to be invited to do a set on the 'Acoustic Stage' of Leicester's Red Cross Refugee Week bash in the Town Hall Square on Saturday. The images captured by Ambrose Musiyiwa, our resident community photographer, offer their own feast. Here were lawyers, trumpeters, passers-by, singers, refugee case-workers, volunteers, asylum seekers, doctors, drummers, children, pensioners and at least one poet 'shaking out their colours'. Weddings spilled out on the Town Hall Steps. Sun-worshippers laid themselves out on the crocheted blankets the Red Cross provided. Teenagers moved through a complex choreography of Tai-Chi and/or pop dance on the lawn. The Red Leicester Choir emblazoned the square with harmonised anthems from the heart. A series of musicians with guitars and homespun lyrics seduced us under the sari-dressed tent. As the pictures show, people danced, picnicked, laughed - shared jokes, shared their culture and their stories, and Leicester, at its best, strutted its stuff.

My own set was woven from the collection called 'Songs of a Blow-In' which threads together two stories. The first is perhaps the oldest story, narrated by the archaeologist Dr Alice Roberts in her wonderful TV series The Incredible Human Journey some years ago. That inspired for me a sequence of poems tracing the footsteps of Homo Sapiens as they trekked out of Africa and found their way around the continents of our planet. The other story is taken from my personal memories, fragmented like the shards archaeologists dig up, of my family's move from Fermanagh in the North of Ireland to Bolton in the North of England, swapping one childhood world for another. They are both stories then of Memory and Migration. It turns out that our people, the humans, have always been migrants. We are, in the words of my first poem, 'always on the move/ always at home' ; two states of being that define us as a species. We leave and migrate; we settle and create. We bring our skills and our songs, our prayers and our stories; we share food and jokes and we build communities out of all these shared gifts. This is our story - we are the human race.

It goes without saying that this year's Refugee Week celebration was especially joyful and much needed after a tide of racist vitriol against migrants in the recent election. Our corporate media - which also managed a complete 'news-block' on the peaceful 50,000 strong March Against Austerity this weekend - would have us believe there is an anti-immigration consensus in this country. But Leicester's Refugee Week told another story and the city will undoubtedly host a summer of such festivals, a polyphony of songs from its many communities and bands and performers. Between the hills of Bradgate and Highfields, the air will thrum with colour.