GemArts East by North East Blog

Here is a blog highlighting a brilliant collaboration between The Syrian Kings, rappers on GemArts East by North East youth music project and Aaron Hughes, BALTIC Artists Award winner 2019.

Ahmad (19) and Hussein (18) had been in Gateshead less than one year when they began making music on ‘Dispersed Belongings’ a project delivered by Gem Arts in collaboration with Durham University and Gateshead Council Resettlement Team. Our initial sessions were based around the concept of belonging, identity and feelings of home. The young men had no previous experience of music making and we were working with an interpreter during those first few months together, exploring band work, lyric writing and percussion with GemArts music leaders Izzy and Pav.

Ahmad and Hussein were progressed on to GemArts East by North East project (funded by Youth Music) and found that they shared an interest in hip hop, and both felt passionately that music could be a powerful tool of communicating their lived experiences of the war in Syria, forced migration, love, and lost love. They continued working with music leaders Pav and Izzy, and soon began writing lyrics together and bringing new material to each session along with musical references and songs that would later inspire beats that they would create during the sessions using Logic Pro and a MIDI keyboard. Their lyrics are often in Arabic and sometimes fused with English but always reference their real, lived experiences.

During autumn 2018, internationally acclaimed artist/anti-war activist/Iraq war army veteran Aaron Hughes was selected to receive The Baltic Artist Award at The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. Aaron’s art focuses on the traumas of war, displacement and human connection despite pain. Aaron was interested in collaborating with local people who’ve similar experiences and was put in touch with GemArts to learn more about the creative work involving resettled Syrian youth living in Gateshead. The plan was to reimagine Wilfred Owen’s War Requiem alongside several award winning poets and music maestro, Karim Wasfi. This was an ambitious project for all of us and the beginning of The Syrian Kings journey.

The project Poetry Despite, Music Despite (Eternal War Requiem), as described by artist Aaron Hughes, aimed to reimagine and rework Wilfred Owen’s poems featuring in the War Requiem, using them starting points “to [consider] the relationship between the horrors of World War 1 and the ongoing ‘global War on Terror’.”

Although there are 13 young people who attend our music session regularly, Ahmad and Hussein are consistently keen to create new material and up until recently they were the only two in the group who considered themselves lyricists. In winter 2018 they worked hard demonstrating determination and discipline to create two pieces ‘Doomed Youth’ and ‘Permanent Stars’ for the performance with Aaron at the Baltic and decided to call their musical duo The Syrian Kings.

During the process of creating lyrics, tracks and raps for Permanent Stars in response to Wilfred Owens’s poem ‘But I was Looking at The Permanent Stars’ the group talked about what bugles represented in the war, how they were mournful and often associated with the death of soldiers. They discussed what could be used as an equivalent sound in Syria and asked the group if there was a similar instrument. They told us the sounds of ambulance sirens, radio signal, shattered glass and bombs were all the sounds the associated with the sadness and trauma of war in Syria. These sounds can all be heard throughout our track (the explosion sound became a useful tool for us to mark every 8 bars for rap verses).

Credit and Copyright ©: Colin Davison

The group resonated with the lines in the poem “Voices of boys were by the river-side. Sleep mothered them; and left the twilight sad” and have echoed this with lyrics in Arabic about ships that were supposed to keep people safe but did not, and left bodies of children on the shore.

Credit and Copyright ©: Colin Davison

Collaborating with international artists for their first performance was challenging and the thought of performing with people who you’ve never met is a daunting prospect for any musician but they worked hard and the performance was a huge success.

Aaron Hughes said on working with The Syrian Kings “Ahmad and Hussein had brilliantly related their experiences to Owen’s poems. Connecting the political situation in Syria and the lack of responsibility for the war to the needless violence of World War One. One section addressed their feelings of displacement, “ I already feel like I’ve lost my place, my hometown is gone without a trace, looking for something I can’t replace…” However, unlike Owen’s poems, Ahmed and Hussein expressed a bit of hope and determination “I’m never going back, I’m here to stay got to keep trying to find another way.”

The Syrian Kings performed their work alongside readings by Aaron Hughes, Iraqi-American poet Dunya Mikhail and Iraq War veteran poets, accompanied by Karim Wasfi who improvised cello, replacing the string sample on their tracks. They performed to the public on 15th/16^th February 2019 in the gallery where Aaron Hughes’ print exhibition was mounted.

An album (recorded live at the first performance) and accompanying booklet of music, poetry, and stories by Iraqis, refugees, and veterans was commissioned for the project. 120,000 people visited the exhibition and heard the soundtrack at BALTIC.

The opportunity to connect two emerging musicians from East by North East with internationally recognised artists was invaluable and raised the aspirations and self-esteem of The Syrian Kings. They were treated as professional artists throughout the process and experienced the empowerment of collective creative endeavour.

Credit and Copyright ©: Colin Davison

This year, The Syrian Kings have been invited to perform at multiple hiphop and spoken word events and continued to write, record and perform original material, spreading their message and raising awareness of the political situation in Syria. Hussein and Ahmad are powerful role models and nurture and encourage other young people in our music session to write and create songs that are important to them.

“I am here because I have a message. It is my responsibility to tell people what is happening in my country. I have freedom to say whatever I want and I need to use this. Syria is a beautiful place and the words come from the heart, I know that I will always want to write lyrics and make music, it is something I will carry with me my whole life now.” Hussein

Here is the music video of Permanent Stars by Syrian Kings – GemArts East by North East Youth Music project.

by Izzy Finch, EBNE Music Leader (Nov 2019)

GemArts East by North East – Blog by music leader Izzy Finch (Nov 2018)

Here is a blog by Izzy Finch, who is one of our music leaders on GemArts’ Youth Music funded East by North East music project.  Izzy gives fantastic insight into working with young people from Syrian communities living in Gateshead to develop their musical and life skills, whilst providing a safe space for young people’s voices to be heard, develop leadership skills and for them to be empowered.   

As project musicians, Pav and I first developed a relationship with members of this group when they had been in Gateshead less than one year whilst working on GemArts’ Dispersed Belongings project in collaboration with Durham University. Our initial sessions were based around the concept of belonging, identity and feelings of home. The participants had no previous experience of music making and we were working with an interpreter. During those early sessions we talked a lot about identity and I realised that there is a complexity of emotions surrounding belonging for most of the participants as there have been interim homes between Syria and Gateshead. Working on this project has changed my perception of not only belonging, home, identity but the value of music as a tool for discussion.

I am comfortable knowing that over time we created an environment where the participants developed trust and were invested enough to talk in depth about their aspirations for the project and were given a platform to write songs about things that were important to them. I think sometimes there is a fear when working as a music practitioner with marginalised communities that our own agenda/ expectations will interfere with the creative hopes and dreams of young people. We were careful to navigate a balance between guiding and leading, making sure participants were not exploited with the content of what they write about.

One of the first songs the group wrote is titled Syria. The lyrics to the song describe the country as their mother and Aleppo as their blood. It is a love letter to Syria. In the very beginning when we first started working together I facilitated an exercise where participants would describe colours, sounds, sights and smells of home or a significant memory. The group seemed unsure at first but soon everyone was writing in Arabic and absorbed in the task. I hadn’t prepared myself for how emotionally raw the content would be having elicited those feelings. I realised afterwards that I had expected the content to be about dislocated items or events but instead we uncovered that there is still a strong and prevalent sense of belonging to Syria and that this is something that the young people want to share and write about. One member said “I want to deliver a message to the people here about the situation in Syria” and continues to bring new lyrics in each week exploring this.

Sometimes a song idea will begin with a young person showing the group a song they like and we will begin talking about what aspects of that we like and what we will use as inspiration to create an original piece. For one song, we used Eminem- Stan as inspiration, and sampled the sound of rain to evoke emotion and used the structure of Eminem’s hit as a template with Arabic verses poetically describing a lost love and a chorus in English featuring female vocals working as a call and response.

Our session structure changes depending on the ideas of the young people. Sometimes we all have an instrument and work as a band collectively, and other times we will use a MIDI controller and laptop to make electronic beats that vocalists want to put lyrics and a melody to. Within the current group, there are multiple song writers and the participants are self-motivated when it comes to organising their time within the session. For example, if we worked on one member’s song the previous week, they will talk amongst themselves and decide fairly that it is someone else’s turn to have their song rehearsed. New members are always welcomed and encouraged by the group to suggest ideas or lead a rehearsal. Lyrics are often in Arabic and sometimes have an English chorus with themes around the war in Syria, politics, nostalgia, love, lost love and friendship.

This year the core group are brimming with confidence and creativity. The sessions are very much participant led and we are preparing for a performance in a few months and introducing Arts Award. The group enjoy sharing and communicating their ideas in English, we rarely use the interpreter although sometimes we need one to translate lyrics and help with meaning but I l love that Arabic lyrics are a constant thread in everything we create. If new members come along and are struggling to speak English or understand what we are doing, the group enjoy interpreting and helping each other articulate their ideas.

It is a pleasure to be able to work with these young people and help them achieve self-belief and provide a creative outlet. I feel that this project has demonstrated the capacity Gem Arts have to meet the growing needs of marginalised groups within the North East.

East by North East is a Youth Music funded project led by GemArts. Building on the success of previous projects, during this third phase, we have expanded the prorgramme to provide more opportunities for professional musicians and young people living in challenging circumstances from BAMER and wider communities across Newcastle and Gateshead to work with one another, sustaining high quality music making regionally, and addressing community needs and issues.  A key element of the programme is to further diversify the music skills and workforce of music practitioners in the North East through offering CPD, training, peer to peer development and mentoring.

https://gemarts.org/projects/116/east-by-north-east

GEMARTS EAST BY NORTH EAST PT 1

East by North East is a Youth Music funded project led by GemArts, providing opportunities for young people from diverse communities to come together and make music.  The project has already enabled over 190 young people to develop and share their compositions and performance skills in a wide range of genres, while addressing issues relevant to their lives, developing life skills and achieving Arts Award.

In addition, GemArts has further diversified the workforce of music practitioners, and East by North East offers training and development to ensure that creativity and diversity is thriving in the North East!

To celebrate the project we’ve asked some of our music leaders to share their thoughts on East by North East, their own development, and the groups they worked with. Read on for our first blog post.

GemArts East by North East Blog by Adam Cogdon, Music Leader

East By North East is a Youth Music funded project that brings together young people, and a staff team, from diverse backgrounds, celebrating different cultures and musical genres.  The music sessions allow us to explore different tastes and develop skills in music and to build confidence together.

Led by GemArts, in partnership with Sage Gateshead and community partners across Newcastle, the project works with a hugely varied and strong team. From the beginning East By North Easy aimed to pair up more experienced music leaders with talented emerging practitioners, to develop and build a diverse resource of delivery staff, spanning creative and cultural diversity as well as musical genres.  From what we learned in the first phase of East by North East, we were able to also expand the project in 2016 to include female groups at many of the centres, this in turn meant we could offer more opportunities to female music leaders to run sessions.

The project partners include:

CHAT Trust (Girls & Boys sessions) – Fenham

North Benwell Youth Project (Girls & Boys sessions) – Benwell

Life Transformational Church (Mixed session) – Fenham

Pottery Bank Pupil Referral Centre (Mixed Session) – Walker

West Walker Family Centre (Mixed Session) – West Walker

Excelsior Academy (Mixed Session) – Scotswood

Success4All (Mixed Group) – Fenham

Recent highlights of the project:

The Mega Boyz group from North Benwell Youth Project were asked to perform at a Holocaust memorial day focusing on the forgotten Czech and Roma people who died.  The young people’s behaviour was excellent and they did a great performance of the Song ‘Mega Boyz Swag’ I was very proud of them.

There was also a great performance from ‘Gipsy Lipstick’ who attend the Girls session at CHAT Trust.  They were quite nervous as it was only their 2^nd or 3^rd time performing, but I thought they did extremely well! The Lads Band also performed playing their instruments and singing some traditional Czech music.  They were very well rehearsed and sounded very professional.  Both groups were also asked to perform at the same venue a few weeks later at a health awareness day.

  CHAT Boys Band performing

We recently launched a new session as part of the project working with West Walker Family centre, they are referred young people who need a bit of extra support and they take them to various activities.  Young people are already taking part in Djing, Music production and Guitar.  GemArts was chosen to pilot a new Arts Award scheme, called ‘Discover Arts Award in a day’, which we are delivering with the new East by North East group to see if it is something we can use across the whole project.

We have been making great progress at Pottery Bank PRU where traditionally we struggled to get young people to engage and perform. One young lad who had never tried Grime style MCing before but was keen to try it, has been supported by East by North East music leaders to write his own lyrics about his area and the things that go on.  Some of the other group members helped to make the backing music and the Song sounds awesome!  It has really inspired a lot of the group to see what is possible when you try, so I am really pleased with this piece of work.

We also started a new session at Life Transformational Church in the West End, which began in Jan 2017. The participants are mixed gender and range from 2 year olds to teenagers.  The participants are spilt into younger and older groups, each focus on developing Band skills and learning how to play different instruments.

  Life Transformational Church

The Project works with many young people from different backgrounds including, Slovak, Roma, Czech and African.  As well as developing and encouraging musical development the project has also had a positive effect on the participants’ English skills both spoken and written

During the last few months the sessions in the project are now gearing up for the Final Celebration event at Sage Gateshead (12^th and 13^th April 2017). This is a two day event that celebrates everything achieved throughout the project and brings all the young people from different areas of the city together to make new friends and share their achievements.  Day one will be a day of fun arts based workshops in a different vain from their regular sessions, including Graffiti Arts, Boom Dang group drumming, rehearsal time and other music sessions.  Day two will be an evening performance in the fantastic Sage 2 Hall.  We hosted a similar event in 2015 at the end of the first phase of the project, and it was amazing! The event was well attended by families, friends, partner organisations and local councillors, who all witnessed an exceptional evening of musical talent, fun and very positive young people performing their material.

I know the whole team are looking forward to creating an even better event than last time and giving these young people the platform that they deserve.

Adam Cogdon, EBNE Music Leader

Watch our East by North East 2017 film here

GemArts East by North East 2017 from GemArts on Vimeo.

If you are interested in the project please contact GemArts on 0191 440 4124 or email info@gemarts.org

Merry Christmas and a look back at a great 2016

Merry Christmas

One of the things I enjoy most in December is looking back over the previous 12 months, being reminded of the wonderful artists, communities, volunteers and organisations GemArts has worked with, and the generous donors and funders who supported our work in so many ways this year.

In 2016 we continued to showcase the best and brightest talent across the arts, while championing creativity and diversity, and always ensuring our artists received the support and profile they deserved. GemArts’ audiences were given access to unique cultural experiences, with people of all ages and backgrounds given opportunities to enjoy and make exceptional music, dance and art, while developing new skills and building confidence along the way. In a year that made many people feel disconnected and alone, we brought people together, and showed what a fantastic and diverse community of people live in the North East.

This year we strengthened relationships and developed new partnerships, allowing GemArts’ performance programme and participatory projects to have further impact across the region and beyond, and our hate crime awareness raising work won us a national award. We’ve picked just a few of our highlights from 2016, and I’m sure you will have your own favourites.
 
On behalf of the GemArts team and GVEMSG, I would like to  thank you for your continued support, and wish you a very merry Christmas, and all the best for a happy, healthy and peaceful New Year.

Best wishes and see you in 2017.
 
Vikas Kumar

Director, GemArts

 

Masala Festival – Our brand new week-long festival launched in July, with a mix and blend of the very finest South Asian arts and culture. We couldn’t have done it without the fantastic artists, audiences, participants, volunteers, donors, funders and partners who helped ensure Masala Festival was a huge success. The festival returns on the 17th July 2017, more information coming soon!

Catalyst Evolve – A successful application to Arts Council England’s Catalyst Evolve fund saw us continue to lead a consortium with two Gateshead Arts charities (Equal Arts and The Lawnmowers). This also means we can match your generous donations £1 for £1! Help GemArts deliver life enhancing projects for disadvantaged communities by donating what you can here.

Health and Wellbeing: Feel Good Group – Our Women’s Group brings together women from diverse communities, and this year they have worked with glass artist Effie Burns. They have been busy developing new creative skills to create unique, high quality glass artworks, whilst sharing experiences and developing support networks to tackle isolation and improve health and wellbeing. The women raised a whopping £130 for their project at their first craft fair in December!  

East by North East – Throughout the year our Youth Music funded project offered music making opportunities to more than 130 young people each week. Young participants have really wowed us with their talent and dedication to the project. With new artists also joining the cohort, the last 12 months have truly strengthened the rich offer for music leaders and those they work with in Newcastle. 

Arun Ghosh workshops and performance – In April pupils from Roman Road Primary school were given the chance of a lifetime when they spent three days with international Jazz clarinettist Arun Ghosh, creating three new pieces which they performed at the opening of Sage Gateshead’s International Jazz Festival 2016. Mini Melas – Between February and October we packed in not one, not two but THREE Mini Melas, bringing free family arts activity to Gateshead, Newcastle and Durham. In total over 900 children and their families visited us at a Mini Mela in 2016, taking part in arts activity from all around the world.

WILD WOOL at The Late Shows – We were delighted to present a fantastic new co-commission with Apple Yang’s Appetite Dance Productions at the 10th Anniversary of The Late Shows in May. You can catch Apple Yang: WILD WOOL in all its glory at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in 2017.

Trimfest – Not content introducing one new festival last year, GemArts also helped bring a brand new festival offering to East Durham in October. Working with Trimdon Parish Council we brought exciting, culturally diverse performances and workshops to audiences in Trimdon. 

Khyal: Music and Imagination – We took our work with Durham University to a new level with this fantastic project, building on academic research into the ways in how we experience and imagine classical Indian performance, using insights to generate new kinds of engagement and creativity. A beautiful exhibition, on display in November, showcased the stunning new work created by artists and local school pupils, as well as an innovative new iPad app.

 

Sign up to GemArts’ monthly e-newsletter here to be the first to find out about our fantastic new Spring Summer 2017 season.