About

»Beauty under pressure« – illuminating the triumph of human spirit, taking the Blues home – wherever one thinks home is – flowing from the Nile, Mississippi, Rhine to the banks of the Elbe river.

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About

About

BLUES AM DEICH is a music festival featuring diverse aspects of the Blues and its derivatives. This showcasing, conceptualized by Southway multimedia– coproduced by STADEUM, will take place on October 10th, 2008 at STADEUM – a performing institution in Stade – Altes Land. This concept is inspired by the experience of a Senegalese citizen, who migrated from New York City to Altes Land, currently living with his family on the top of one of the many Levies built to temper the mood of the Elbe. This experience is characterized by environmental, linguistic and socio-cultural challenges.

The event will be a multimedia narrative, mixing sound, still images, and video, paying tribute to the artists on stage and those who have embodied the triumph of human spirit – by sustaining Grace and Beauty while under pressure. It will not only be the Blues of the past but also of today. We hope to contribute to what has been already done and said about migrant-integration in Germany and particularly the story of Africans and Afro-Germans in Germany, using the Blues as a narrative tool.

It is our honor to announce that the show will be anchored by Uli Kniep. Uli is the producer and host of “Sunday Blues” on NPR info. Other than ndr Info and ndr 2, Uli – also known as the “mediaman,” has in the past 20 years worked with radio ffn, VH-1 and radio 21 etc. In Northern Germany ’ musical airwave, Uli’s background – as a professional radio producer/educator and music journalist – makes him an on-air fixture.

Because rivers play a crucial role in migrations, development, and the evolution of the Blues music, choosing the Elbe as a venue, was not too hard; besides that is where we live and experience the true challenges of integration. In Mississippi – where the musical genre got its name – the levies played an important role between the Blues sang in the plantations and its derivatives out of Memphis and Chicago. Right after the abolition of slavery, building levies along the Mississippi river was one of the first independent jobs, for Africans, away from the plantation fields. The “Mule skinners,” as they were called, sang the blues into its ears to woo the stubborn animal up the levy, loaded with sand. The levy workers improvised codified songs, just like they did in the plantations, while the crack of the whip served as metronome. If only Levies could sing, they would sing the Blues.

We are not talking about static Blues that duplicates itself stylishly, but its emotive form that takes root in one’s soul – as if humans were the house and the Blues was the visitor that invites itself when the mood is ripe. The blues does not discriminate between rich and poor. The Blues is a narrative tool that conveys the truest of our feeling. Historically, given the amount of tragedy it has witnessed or created, the ELBE also has earned the right to be a suited platform for this concept. From Cuxhaven to Dresden, one can find moments in history when its undercurrents revealed more than today’s idyllic peaceful living can bare.

The northern part of the Elbe, the location of our venue, although populated by fairly endowed farmers has witnessed, many times in history, that indiscriminating Blues. According to Elbe Obst, a major fruit distributor in the region, the 1825 flood destroyed 35,900 fruit trees. Today, given the surge in production, a flood of a considerable magnitude would make the 19 century flood less disastrous. We simply believe that the best way to push fraternity, respect and inter-cultural exchange forward is to capitalize on what we have in common and in this case we are using the Blues. Today, as if the Blues has made a full circle; thanks to some African American musicians – like Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Randy Weston, Nina Simone and Cassandra Wilson – filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and scholars like John & Alan Lomax, the world has finally embraced its origin – Africa.

Although conceived to be an outdoor experience, we decided to showcase the concept in the state of the art warm indoor atmosphere of STADEUM in Stade, as a prelude to the outdoor venue of Grunendeich. Stadeum is practically located at the halfway point between Hamburg and Bremen. From either one of these cities, the venue can easily be reached by car and public transportation. On October 10th, 2008, at 8 pm, for the showcasing of the concept, BLADE will feature artists from Africa, America, and Germany. All of them are of African ancestry, but each one has a unique way of infusing its worldly experience into some kind of original intellectual property. We are taking it back to the roots, honoring the long journey this music has made and still going.

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