THE CLANDESTINO FESTIVAL INFO
2002-06-12 GÖTEBORG
BWANA CLUB PROUDLY PRESENTS
THE CLANDESTINO FESTIVAL GÖTEBORG JUNE 2003
"One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain." Bob Marley
"There are no such thing as illegal immigrants, only illegal governments." Asian Dub Foundation
"Tradition should not be seen as a dead thing. It is the responsibility of musicians to make music for the people of their time." Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
In collaboration with cultural institutions and artistic and intellectual networks Bwana Club proudly presents the first CLANDESTINO FESTIVAL in Göteborg, Sweden, 12-15 June 2003.
The CLANDESTINO FESTIVAL is focused on music that has ocurred in urban cultural environments in the tides of global migration during the late 20th century. Some of the most progressive, conscious and interesting musicians within these fields have shown interest to participate. Besides the purely musical, social and entertainment aspects, the CLANDESTINO FESTIVAL is intervening also in artistic, philosophical and political contexts. During the festival there will be seminars, workshops and other happenings. It constitutes an attempt at rethinking multiculturalism in opposition to neo-exotism and ethnofication of minorities in the contemporary post-colonial world. The CLANDESTINO FESTIVAL is not only reflecting the migration flows and cultural diversity that characterizes Göteborg - one of the most segregated urban areas in Europe - but strives also to challenge mainstream ways of representing cultural differences.
Bwana Club is a project initiated by a group of dj?s, visual artists and philosophers in 1998. Through a series of dj-sessions and concert arrangements, literary and visual productions it have been developing a critique of the contemporary tendency to reproduce colonial classifications in Western culture production. Avoiding commercial marketable concepts such as "ethno" and "world music" the dj’s of Bwana Club has been mixing different styles of music - raď, bhangra, gnawa, hip life, afrobeat, asian underground, breakbeat, hip hop, kwaito, qawwali, ragga, roots, dub, etc - without representing them with concepts reflecting traditional colonial dichotomies.
A further crucial aim of the first CLANDESTINO FESTIVAL is to give attention to the refugee dumping that Swedish and other European immigration authorities have made themselves guilty of. The invited musicians will be asked to compose music to a digitally recorded interview with the Ugandan citizen Peter Ekwiri who sought asylum in Sweden but who was repatriated to Ghana, i.e. a country he never before put his foot in. In the interview - made by members of Bwana Club and Equator the 7th February 2003 in Accra - Ekwiri sends the following message to the people of Sweden:
"I send my greetings to all my lovers and enemies, but I assure the enemies that I am coming back forcefully, and I am coming back to ask them why they did this to me. Because I am still strong and I am getting stronger and stronger. I know I will win and I am coming direct to them to give me the answer to my question why they had to sacrifice all these years for me."
The concept of refugee dumping became known to the Swedish public after a documentary made by Erik Sandberg and Andreas Rocksén was shown on Swedish Telvision on 4th October 2001. Peter Ekwiri is only one of many known victims of refugee dumping and Sweden is not the only country in Europe that has committed this crime. All the cases in Sweden that have been taken up in court have been dismissed; the Swedish authorities has, according to the judicial decisions, not committed any illegal act when returning back the asylum seekers to the wrong country. One aim of the CLANDESTINO FESTIVAL is to raise the voices of the dumped refugees in Sweden through music that reaches out also to people that do not normally follow ordinary media in democratic societies. The invited musicians that are asked to use the interview in their musical work will also be asked to perform the compositions at the festival. Full program coming up soon.
Peter Ekwiri