BEJE SIBLINGS NOT FOOLS TOUR 3rd leg: Enrico Merlin x BEJE
Why at a time of genocide should music still matter? When Israel is burning refugees in tents why I should I be flyering Street high street about a gig?
We are all exiled from the land of inalienable human rights assembled after WW2. It looks more and more like it was only ever a podium built by hypocrites in a sea of shit. O look, the ICJ has broken off and is listing badly.
How can we sing in this strange land? As a declining morally bankrupt USA throws its last hurrah of violent proxy horror, what good our harps? (I realise the vantage point of sister Yunmi and brother Sangyeon in South Korea up against China is different).
‘Siblings Not Fools’ is short hand for the Martin Luther King quote “We must learn to live as brothers or we perish as fools”, which has resonated with me since I painted a 1980 banner with this for an anti-apartheid march in Sheffield.
Every time I play with musicians, particularly since the BEJE project started in 2013, it’s like I re-affirm a new family. We are brothers and sisters in music making. And in BEJE the stretch of inter-cultural and international connection is particularly broad. The experience of working with Senegalese griot Moussa Kouyate was particularly challenging during lockdown, as we came from such different places, but apart from a very fine album it has left Moussa and I feeling closely connected.
Connection is the thing. That’s what keeps me motivated. I hope that what we generate together, so much more than the bond between the performers, really delivers the message that we are indeed already brothers and sisters, we feel it through the music, through the shared experience of the gig, and that this empowers up to reaffirm in every place our shared humanity. It helps me that at each gig I read a poem by my little brother Ibrahim Yaghi, journalist and poet holed up in Deir Al Balah, Gaza.
So to gig with Enrico and Fabio Freddy and Mattia (full descriptions in the link above) at this time (Oct 25 to Nov 1st) is a big cry of “No!” to the immolation of refugees and of hope, and a big “Yes!” to what makes us human, with joy love fellow-feeling and purpose. A big “Yes!” that begins in sound and spirit and travels to the political and social realm too.
So later today I will resume my PayPal giving to families I know in Gaza knowing that there isn’t a tension between politics, charity and music. Music turns the tap to the source. Spirit, the Divine, call it what you will. All else follows.
#musicpurpose, #musicandpolitics, #EnricoMerlin+BEJEtour, #BEJEjazz,
Enjoy the music. Our lives depend on it.
David Mowat
The Bristol European Jazz Ensemble 