Derventa

Derventa, Bósnia
Outubro 2009

Sarajevo

Sarajevo, Bósnia
Outubro 2009

"Street Art" Exchange - Bósnia

Não posso dizer que este intercâmbio tenha sido exactamente o que esperava. Nem foi tão sério, nem acho que o trabalho tenha sido alguma coisa de especial. Dois dias a brincar aos jogos de ?ice-breaking".. e o resto dos dias sem fazer muito. Divisão em dois grupos, dança e graffitis, preparação da coreografia, preparação dos cenários...

Objectivo final: publicitar a organização Amladinsh Centras Derbenta na cidade. Não era propriamente o que estava à espera.. mas enfim, conseguimos fazê-lo.

Confesso que ao princípio estava um bocado frustrada, a desorganização era imensa (e vamos a ver que para eu me queixar disso.. ahah), não percebi muito bem a ligação do nosso grupo de Portugal ali no meio.. escolhi a Bósnia para saber um bocadinho mais do conflito e etc etc, e só via que nem sequer ia a Sarajevo, nem ninguém queria falar do assunto, dentro do Intercâmbio.

As coisas lá mudaram um bocadinho, por conseguimos fazer uma vida meia paralela ao Intercâmbio. No dia da excursão, em que todos foram a Doboj, eu e mais duas pessoas decidimos meter-nos no autocarro e ir até Sarajevo. No dia da apresentação do trabalho, conhecemos a tropa portuguesa, em Derventa. Foi uma experiência espectacular e ainda nos levaram a outra cidade, Doboj.

No final, valeu imensa pena, algumas pessoas que conheci, a experiência, o conhecimento :)

French street artist tags murals of west Belfast

By Diana Rusk
08/10/09

sacrilege or privilege? the Bobby Sands Mural, on the Sevastopol Street gable of Sinn Fein’s Falls Road offices, alongside which French graffiti artist Jef Aerosol has tagged a musician and the words “singin’ songs of freedom”. Main PICTURE: Declan Roughan Above: Mal McCann

NORTHERN Ireland is already world famous for the political murals that cover the gable walls of buildings and it appears a celebrated graffiti artist wants a piece of the action.
Over the past few days the people of west Belfast may have noticed some unusual black and white images stencilled...

in http://www.irishnews.com/appnews/540/5860/2009/10/8/629501_396271508002Frenchstr.html

Dub Poetry. Linton Kwesi Johnson

Intervista a cura di "Echoes"

"Concerko", Roots Catalogue, 1985, Belluno

(...) il fatto che sia musica di protesta è una delle caratteristiche che definiscono il reggae, Ma si tende a dire cose attraverso un codice. Bob Marley in Rat Race disse: "Quando il gatto se ne va, il topo agisce, violenza politica governa la città." Voleva dire che quando un leader era fuori dal paese, un altro avrebbe organizzato violenza, ma se l'avesse detto in modo diretto...

in Arte di Opposizione, Stili di vita, situazioni e documenti degli anni ottanta, Tommaso Tozzi

Estratto da "Linton Kwesi Johnson"

Intervista pubblicata su "Black Music", marzo 1984

"Rebel Soul", n. 0, 1984, Bari

"...Io non ho l'ambizione di andare in parlamento, io voglio essere parte della soluzione...
Io credo nella politica rivoluzionaria: l'attività indipendente di massa deu lavoratori..."

in Arte di Opposizione, Stili di vita, situazioni e documenti degli anni ottanta, Tommaso Tozzi

Recordar Perugia

Pour un ridicule assumé..

já vai tarde mas..

in http://www.myspace.com/mimitheclown

Mimi the clown sélectionné dans Autres

Award-Winning Singer Mercedes Sosa Dies at 74

By Adam Bernstein

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 4, 2009; 7:54 AM

Mercedes Sosa, an Argentine singer who emerged as a electrifying voice of conscience throughout Latin America for songs that championed social justice in the face of government repression, died today at a medical clinic in Buenos Aires. She was 74 and had liver, kidney and heart ailments.

With a rich contralto voice, Ms. Sosa was foremost a compelling singer whose career spanned five decades. She performed with entertainers as varied as rock star Sting, the Cuban singer-songwriter Pablo Milanés and folk singer Joan Baez, who said she was so moved by Ms. Sosa's "tremendous charisma" and emotive firepower that she once dropped to her knees and kissed Ms. Sosa's feet.

Ms. Sosa's towering artistry, which led to several Latin Grammy Awards, belied her physical dimensions. Short, round, dark-skinned and often dressed in peasant clothing, Ms. Sosa was affectionately nicknamed "La Negra" (the Black One) as an homage to her indigenous ancestry.

It was a term of endearment that followed her throughout the Spanish-speaking world, said ethnomusicologist Jonathan Ritter, who has written about Ms. Sosa. "It's hard to overestimate her popularity and importance as a standard-bearer of folk music and political engagement through folk music," he said.

Ms. Sosa once declared that "artists are not political leaders. The only power they have is to draw people into the theater." While not defining herself as a political activist, Ms. Sosa asserted herself in the "nueva canción" musical movement of the 1960s and 1970s that blended traditional folk rhythms with politically charged lyrics about the poor and disenfranchised.

This "new song" movement, formed by singers, poets and songwriters with Marxist leanings, cast light on the struggle against government brutality and the plight of the downtrodden throughout the hemisphere. Ritter said, much of the nueva canción songs favored by Ms. Sosa "drew upon the rich heritage of Latin American poetry and literature to score their political messages." This, he said, gave it a far-more enduring fascination than protest songs in the United States during that period, whose "blunt, direct lyrics were part of their political efficacy, but also limited their long term poetic appeal."

Here are the lyrics of "We're Still Singing," which she sang accompanied by the large Andean drum called the bombo: "I was killed a thousand times. I disappeared a thousand times, and here I am, risen from the dead. . . . Here I am, out of the ruins the dictatorship left behind. We're still singing." Ms. Sosa came under official harassment and intimidation by the right-wing, nationalist junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. The government was responsible for the deaths and disappearances of an estimated 30,000 real and perceived leftists, and Ms. Sosa transformed her sold-out concerts into rallies against the abuses of power.

Her songs were banned from Argentine radio and television, and she courted arrest by singing anthems of agrarian reform such as "When They Have the Land" at one performance in the university city of La Plata. Many in attendance were arrested by security forces, and Ms. Sosa was publicly humiliated by an officer who walked onstage and conducted a body search.

Ms. Sosa scheduled more concerts in the face of threats against her. They were subsequently canceled when anonymous bomb threats were called in. The military governor of Buenos Aires prohibited her from further performances. Unable to earn a living or speak out as an opponent of the regime, she moved in exile to Europe in 1979 and lived for three years in France and Spain.

She recalled this as a dark period for her artistically, and at times her voice failed. "It was a mental problem, a problem of morale," she told the New York Times. "It wasn't my throat, or anything physical. When you are in exile, you take your suitcase, but there are things that don't fit. There are things in your mind, like colors and smells and childhood attitudes, and there is also the pain and the death you saw. You shouldn't deny those things, because to do so can make you ill."

Ms. Sosa returned to Argentina shortly before the dictatorship crumbled, and she found that her popularity had risen to a dramatic new peak. At home, her concerts attracted tens of thousands of ticket buyers, and her albums sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

Abroad, she was a star attraction as well, and a political celebrity. She received a 10-minute standing ovation for a 1987 concert at Carnegie Hall and received ecstatic reviews when appearing in other major American cities, including Boston and Washington. She broadened her repertoire to include rock, pop and cabaret songs, always sung in her native language.

Esquire magazine noted, "Your Spanish may or may not be good, but Mercedes Sosa requires no translation. Hers is the song of all those who have overcome their fear of singing out."

Haydée Mercedes Sosa was born July 9, 1935, in San Miguel de Tucumán in rural northwestern Argentina. She was of mixed Indian and French ancestry, and her parents were day laborers.

She said the geography and culture of the area was also crucial to her development. It was desolate, with far greater influence from the indigenous culture of nearby Bolivia than distant, cosmopolitan Buenos Aires. She called it "an advantage for someone who wanted to be a folk singer," and at 15, she won a local radio station's amateur-hour contest.

In the late 1950s, she and her first husband, guitarist Manuel Oscar Matus, with whom she had a son, moved to Mendoza, a city at the foot of the Andes. There, they helped form the new-music movement that fused folk rhythms with the language and politics of the moment, and wrote an artistic manifesto as well. Her international touring career followed her appearance at an important folklore festival in Cosquín in 1965.

Not a songwriter, she was a keen interpreter of others' works. The Chilean writer Violeta Parra was responsible for Ms. Sosa's signature song, "Gracias a la Vida" (Thanks to Life), a number more nostalgic that political. Ms. Sosa collaborated on two acclaimed albums in the early 1970s with composer Ariel Ramírez on lyricist Félix Luna on the albums "Cantata Sudamericana" ( South American Cantata) and "Mujeres Argentinas" (Argentine Women).

She received a Latin Grammy Award for Best Folk Album in 2000 for Ramírez's "Misa Criolla," and again for "Acústico" in 2003 and "Corazón Libre" in 2006. She continued to win over younger audiences by incorporating the music of rock singer-songwriters such as Argentina's Charly García and Sting, whose song "They Dance Alone" paid tribute to the disappeared in Argentina.

Adoro ver as pessoas a cantar na rua. Ontem vi um rapaz a vibrar imenso com uma música pimba, completamente desconhecida, num arraial. Hoje vi um rapaz a mexer os lábios no metro, ao som do seu Ipod. E na rua, vi duas meninas com um rádio, a fazerem uma coreografia.

Eu cá acho que devia ser sempre assim. Acho mesmo que a rua devia ter colunas.
Às vezes dá-me cá uma vontade de cantar aos altos berros também.

E como já não vivo com as minhas amigas, como já não posso ir a casa dos meus amigos à hora que quero e fazer as parvoíces que quero, acho que devia haver um modo que as pessoas pudessem cantar juntas, a qualquer hora, via msn e facebook.