Musicians! You’re invited to East Music: Song and Tune Exchange Session at Poplar Union on Saturday 23rd March, 4PM-6.30PM
Bring your instruments and voices along with songs or tunes from across the world to play, sing and share.
This is a free, friendly and inclusive session for players of all levels of experience – Global Majority* and LGBTQ+ music makers are particularly welcome. The session will be led by East musicians Andy Bannister, Michele Chowrimootoo and Paul Burgess.
This is a new strand of our East Storytelling project, and we hope to extend it to further sessions. All being well, there’ll also be an opportunity to share the results with a live audience later in the year.
The session builds the tradition of one of our regular partner organisations, The Black Smock Band, which has been running queer folk music sessions for many years. Andy and Paul from the band bring all that experience to this new cross-cultural project. East Music is also a development of work we’ve been doing with the East Storytelling Project, which has long included songs and instrumental music. You can hear some of this on our East Archive. We road-tested the idea of a cross-cultural music session with some of the regular collaborators at Toynbee Hall, and this led directly to the musical elements of the last East performance, Ten Years East, which you can catch on YouTube.
It’s going to be a fun session, so if making music with other people is your thing, or even if you just want to give it a go, book your place!
*Global Majority refers to people who are Black, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or have been racialised as ‘ethnic minorities’.
East Music: Song and Tune Exchange Session
Date: Saturday 23rd March 2024
Time: 4-6.30PM (Light refreshments will be provided for Iftar.)
Duration: 2.5 hours, including a 30-minute break for tea and coffee
Location: Poplar Union, 2 Cotall St, London E14 6TL
Ages: 18+
Produced by Daedalus Theatre Company in partnership with Rua Arts and Poplar Union. Funded by Arts Council England.
Instructions for how to get to Poplar Union are here.
Images from folk sessions at the Apple Tree, Clerkenwell, led by The Black Smock Band
