Music at the World Junction presents:

A wonderfully international evening at The Cube, Sunday 26th May for a Spring bank holiday special.


Traditional & original music from the Middle East, North Africa & Southern Asia.


Mohammad Syfkhan


Mohammad Syfkhan is a Kurdish/Syrian singer and bouzouki player. He began playing music in the 1980s, forming the Al-Rabie Band in the city of Raqqa, Syria, and playing a lively set of Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish and some Western songs at wedding parties, festivals & concerts. When the war broke out in 2011 Mohammad’s family suffered great tragedy and sought safety in Europe.


Mohammad celebrates music as ‘the language of the world’, he carries with him songs from across the Middle East, Mediterranean, Europe & North Africa and since arriving in Ireland has used this to forge connections with the local community. The trance back beats of his programmed drum machine pop & clap as if spilling out from any number of transistor radios in late night restaurants, crackling out into the close night time air of Damascus whilst his electrified melodic, driving bouzouki lines will delight any audience familiar with the pulsing deep heat club beat of Algerian Rai music and Anatolian folk rock protest singer Selda Bağcan.


Mohammad’s album ‘I Am Kurdish’ came out on Nyahh Records and has attracted excited coverage from The Guardian, The Quietus & Songlines. They’ll be copies available on the night and we have that fortuitous first meeting between Nyahh label head Willie Stewart & Mohammad at a local community gathering in County Leitrim to be grateful for, as Willie describes, Mohammad “plugged directly into the mixer and just went for it, and of course everyone started dancing. There were kids originally from the Middle East going crazy. So I was like, 'Who is this guy? Where did he come from? Where does he live? What’s his story?'"


Mohammad’s story is in his songs. Songs of exile, his homeland, the past & in his own words ‘sadness with hope’.


In his thrilling repertoire of Kurdish, Arabic & Turkish traditional songs & originals that carry the mournful weight of personal experience with a defiant, resourceful uplift, Mohammad has found renewed charge in the meeting of the Irish underground and diasporic music scenes of Mohammad’s new home including a notable opening for Bristol favourites Lankum at the Cork Opera House.


It is a real honour to host him for his Bristol debut.


Listen to ‘I am Kurdish’ here > https://nyahhrecords.bandcamp.com/album/mohammad-syfkhan-i-am-kurdish

Watch live in Limerick here > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sQ6VZrc1BE


Said Anazoure


Said Anazoure is a singer and multi-instrumentalist from the Amazigh people of Ait Ourir in Morocco. He was performing from the age of 8 in the UNESCO world heritage site Jmaa El Fnaa, a large public square fed by the winding souks of Marrakech’s old city. Said is a player of deep feeling and an explorative and open collaborator who has played international festivals such as Timitar in Agadir and Oasis festival in Ouarzazate.


Said will be performing on a ribab, an Amazigh one-stringed violin style instrument, presenting a traditional repertoire of scorched instrumental roots music & Amazigh songs sung in Said’s first language, Tashlhiyt.

Watch Said playing his three stringed lute-like Lotar here > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHyue-ReliM



Omar Akbar


For the opening of the evening it’s a wonderful thing to be graced with this rare solo performance. Omar comes from Afghanistan & sings a traditional & devotional repertoire accompanied on his harmonioum. Omar lives in Bristol and plays a cherished lead role in Bristol’s Dovetail Orchestra, a musical group for refugees & asylum seeking people. He wowed a packed Jam Jar audience back in November with charming dignity and his beautiful voice.


Adunia Gebru is from Ethiopia with a love of reggae & Ethiopian jazz. He’ll be playing a warm selection of upbeat rhythms in the bar before, between & as you go.


All money to the artists & The Cube.

---
As a gig promoter, I make a commitment for a number of free allocations of tickets for refugees & asylum seeking people. I have also begun to negotiate with venues for tokens for refreshments so once there, people won’t feel excluded from the wider social functions of live music.

For this gig, there will be a ‘pay it forward’ option so tickets are £12 and you can donate extra money if you wish, to support free tickets and tokens.