Suna Alan & Friends
Wednesday, 22nd November 2023 at 7pm, St John’s College Auditorium
We are delighted to welcome Suna Alan & Friends to The World’s Music at Oxford for our first concert of this academic year!
Suna Alan is a Kurdish singer based in London. She grew up in traditional Kurdish dengbêj (bard) music and a rich cosmopolitan cultural environment in Izmir, Turkey. Although her main focus remains Kurdish folk songs, her repertoire also includes Armenian, Greek, Arabic, Sephardic, and Turkish songs.
The UK-based creative journalism platform Brush & Bow featured Suna’s portrait as part of the Women Role Models Project in 2018. Suna took the stage at Southbank Centre as part of the Women in Music concert series; and performed at Royal Albert Hall as part of Solidarity Ensemble to raise funds for Turkey & Syria earthquake survivors. Taking part in the SOAS Kurdish Band and SOAS Rebetiko Band projects formed by SOAS University, one of the important music schools in the UK, Suna has been performing in many concerts and festivals in the UK and abroad.
Wayang Kulit: Ki Bagus Baghaskoro with the Oxford Gamelan Society
Monday, 27th November 2023 at 7pm, St John’s College Auditorium
The renowed master of wayang kulit – the Javanese shadow-puppet play – performs in Oxford for the very first time!
Ki Bagus Baghaskoro Wisnu Murti is an internationally-acclaimed puppeteer, dancer and musician, and a master of wayang kulit – a traditional form of Indonesian shadow-puppet theatre that tells thrilling epics accompanied by enchanting gamelan music. Over the course of the evening, Ki Bagus will tell the tale of Eka Cakra and the Spiced Warrior: Eka Cakra is a land terrorised by a flesh-eating giant, until one of the heroes of the Mahabharata, Bima, ingeniously serves himself as a tempting dinner. Singlehandedly, Ki Bagus gives voice and movement to a cast of hundreds of intricately painted and carved leather puppets and directs up to 25 gamelan musicians who underpin an exciting mix of epic battles, tales of love and loss, interspersed with lashings of humour.
Ki Bagus is a lecturer at the Institute of the Performing Arts in Surakarta in Indonesia. He was born into a family of traditional performing artists in Malang, East Java and his unique and approachable style combines the mellifluous and sophisticated central Javanese traditions with the high-octane sound-world of East Java with its echoes of Balinese influence.
The Oxford Gamelan Society is one of Britain’s longest-established community gamelan group. The society perform and rehearse on an heirloom gamelan, named Kyai Madu Laras (the Venerable Sweet Harmony) belonging to the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments. The Oxford Gamelan Society is delighted to be joined by Ki Bagus Baghaskoro Wisnu Murti in this exciting introduction to one of Indonesia’s best loved traditional art forms.
Dele Sosimi Afrobeat Quintet
Monday, 26th February 2024 at 7pm, St John’s College Auditorium
Dele Sosimi is the Afrobeat Ambassador to the UK: an expert purveyor of dance music, a keys player of high renown, and a bona fide member of the style’s past, present and future. This is the very soul of Afrobeat – the sound of radical rebellion against political power, putting words to injustice and denouncing its creators through a complex web of funk grooves, Nigerian traditions and jazz sensibility.
Hackney-born and Lagos-raised, Dele gained his formative musical education as part of Fela Kuti’s legendary Egypt 80 band. He quickly gained a reputation as the premier keys player in Afrobeat, and went on to collaborate closely with Femi Kuti and the heartbeat himself, Tony Allen. Over a 40 year career, Dele has worked with musicians from across the worlds of Latin, electronica, jazz and hip-hop, flying the unmistakable flag of Nigerian music far and wide and encouraging a new generation of British musicians into the Afrobeat fold.
For The World’s Music at Oxford, Dele Sosimi presents his Afrobeat Quintet, stripping the style down to its core and laying bare its intricate rhythmic interplay, jazz-informed harmonies and pure groove. Keys, trombone, bass, percussion, drums, words, movement, colour, spirit, fury, wisdom, joy. This is fire for the heart, the head and the legs – don’t miss out!
Brìghde Chaimbeul
Sunday, 12th May 2024 at 7pm, St John’s College Auditorium
Brìghde Chaimbeul is one of the most exciting musical minds in the world of Celtic folk today. She’s a master of the Scottish smallpipes – the bellows-blown, mellower and more emotive cousin to the famous Great Highland bagpipes – and she’s taken them to the global stage.
A native Gaelic speaker from the Isle of Skye, Brìghde roots her music in her language and culture. She rose to prominence as a prodigy of traditional music, but has since begun a journey to take the smallpipes into uncharted territory. She draws inspiration from the world of interconnected piping traditions, including those from Eastern Europe, Cape Breton and Ireland, and her most recent album brings in influence from ambient, avant garde and electronic music. One can talk about Brìghde’s awards (BBC Young Folk Award; BBC Horizons Award; Songlines Top of the World…) and her wide array of collaborators (Caroline Polachek; Colin Stetson; Gruff Rhys; Aidan O’Rourke…) but after it all, her music speaks for itself.
Haunting, entrancing, breathtaking, beautiful – this open-eared, understatedly virtuosic performer is transforming and creating new definitions for Scottish folk in the 21st century. We’re delighted to bring Brìghde Chaimbeul’s amazing solo show to The World’s Music at Oxford!
THE WORLD'S MUSIC AT OXFORD 