A report of the integration project  „Mit Musik Brücken bauen“  

and the festival of meeting in Muri (AG) 15. June 2013 in Switzerland

The idea of the project developed in 2012 after the festival of meeting in Muri, where wings of a dove percussion power performed music, dance and storytelling from Westafrica.

The organisation Zäme Läbe Freiamt of the Kanton Aargau was happy about the performance and asked us to create a project for them, which will continue the  integration work with immigrants and refugees who live in the region. Through the idea of building bridges between  people of different nations we found the name „mit Musik Bücken bauen“. In the same time this was our Motto.

In August 2012 Power Sound Production began to develope the content of the project „mit Musik bücken bauen“.

The leading ideas were to work together with immigrants, refugees and swiss with respect, togetherness and improve our selfconfidence.  We planned to have a workshop every two weeks from September 2012 til June 2013. The aim was to present the results on the festival of meeting on 15. June 2013.

From then on we started to compose songs and write a theatre about the daily conflicts of living abroad, which is of course partly taken from our own experiences in Switzerland and other countries. In the mean while the organisation Zäme Läbe Freiamt was looking for participants.

This project was a very big challenge for Power Sound Production, because for many years we are using these ideas as a Motto in our workshops. It became a leading idea of our company.

Nadja Donkor, studied theaterscience and John Kofi Donkor as an artist, musician and actor, working together with different experiences. We merged the ideas to a theatre with the aim to send a message to the public about those difficult situations in daily life abroad.

One of the main subject is the communication. How do you communicate  when you just arrive in a foreign country with a foreign language? Making a lot of mistakes and misunderstandings have to be accepted and it will help you to continue your life. People will help you and speak to you correcting your mistakes. Through this many of them find you funny and you will find new friends.

As we read later on in the report of the Newspaper of the region (Aarau, Wohlen and Muri) about our perfromance on the festival 2013 „ Mit Musik Bücken bauen“, those ideas were successfully taken and understood by the public.

When we started the workshops, we had about 20-25 participants from all over the world .  Soon we realised that the founding of a choir with the immigrants and swiss was the best way to communicate and get to know eachother. We let the participants vote for the main workshop language.  It was chosen to be English and German.

We brought the idea that everybody can bring its texts or songs towards the motto of Unity and Togetherness. The songs appeared in many languages: Amharic, Tigrinnia, Lingala and French. Power Sound Production brought its songs in German, Akan and Haussa.

With the text of the songs we all felt happy to try another language and had a lot of fun with the pronounciation.

Our motto was always: music brings energy, energy brings happyness and happyness brings togetherness. And this is how we all feel, looking back on those many months of meetings in Muri for the workshops of the project „ Mit Music Bücken bauen“.

The main challenge was to present the results of the workshops on stage. All the participants were not professional artists. Some of them joined even the first time a music group in their life and stand the first time on stage to perform.

They really put a lot of efforts and enjoyed the performance. Additionally wings of a dove - percussion power was backing them and the dancers of the group were on fire.

To make the festival of meeting on the 15th June full and rich we engaged several professional music bands and dance groups:

Willi Hauenstein and the steelband Fassination, took us to the carribean islands. They opened the festival, drew the crowed in front of the stage and brought immediatly a good mood in to the tent.

Roger Konrad and Alpenfunkeln brought the swiss traditional music mixed with world music.  They surprised the audience with joddeling and alphorn playing. They used the whole tent as their stage and communicated with music. Sometimes you can only see the alphorn appearing in the tent to respond the joddeling and they all arrived in the end together on the stage. This was beautyful.

Afterwards the Hip Hop kids of Sivia  was taking the audience to a different music and show catagory. In the end they showed an African dance from Awa Dietemann. They impressed the audience so much and the audience responded and gave the heat to the performance.

The Extrem Bosnian Blues Band immediatly capture the audience and travelled with them a nice music journey. They really entertained the audience.

Valeria Eva came with ist special surprise dancers from Brasil. Valeria sang a lot of songs which are known to the public and they responded. The special dancers and their coulorful costumes heated the audience addtionally.

Christian Fotsch with ist Sassa group and a magnificant belly dancer took all of us to the Orient. They started with calm music which cooled the audience down and made them listen. In the end of their show a wonderful belly dance was performed.

It continued with the oriental touch with the belly dancers Dunyia’s dream. Each song was performed with its special costumes and dance. The audience was fascinated, watching and enjoying the performance.

After the festival we got a lot of compliments from the audience, newspaper, friends and people we didn’t know before.

We also got a nice feedback from the parents of the children who took part on our schoolworkshops we gave during the project „mit Musik Bücken bauen“.

 

Power Sound Production is looking successfully back on the project and the performances. We gathered a lot of new experiences and looking forward to work with people and organisations who are interested in music and art.

PowerSoundProduction, July 2013