There is a power found in music that is universally recognised. Beyond the figures across generations that have touched lives with their music, there is evidence of this recently in both the moments of cross-culture harmony seen at Notting Hill Carnival and, on the other side, the Taliban’s increasing restrictions on creative expression.

What form can this power take when music is harnessed beyond being a soundtrack to world events? For the organisations here, music isn’t merely a catalyst but the driving force when it comes to changing the realities of the communities that surround them. In individual yet intersecting ways, these groups are using music to rewrite history, heal social ills and, potentially most importantly, create more equitable futures.

The Songlines tagline is ‘Discover the World through Music.’ These collectives and organisations are asking participants and audiences to use music to help them build an entirely new one.

Creating New Pathways to the Stage

Dialled In are uniting South Asians across the UK and its diaspora with boundary-defying, future-facing events and showcases

A slip of the tongue rarely brings you right into the meat of a conversation. But that’s what happens on my call with Dhruva Balram, one of the founders of Dialled In.

“We’re not a collective,” he corrects me when I begin the call by asking him about Dialled In’s origins. “We want to make money because we want to create pathways for people in this field. And you can’t do that when you’re a non-profit.”

Dialled In is an organisation that exists to platform South Asian creative talent. Starting back in 2021, Dhruva, alongside Ahad Elley, Ahsan-Elahi Shujaat, Provhat Rahman and others, got together and put on a festival in Waltham Forest, London. 1,000 people gathered around three stages and watched the likes of Manuka Honey, Shivum Sharma and Kapil Seshasayee showcase some of the best South Asian talent that the UK has to offer.

_{Grewal Twins performing for Dialled In at V&A South Kensington in 2022}

“The next morning, Ahad and I woke up, saw social media and started crying,” says Dhruva, “the response was amazing. People were, for the first time, realising what it meant to be surrounded by brown bodies.”

And this is the momentum that Dhruva wants to crystallise. “I want us to find a way to make this a movement, not a moment,” he tells me, explaining, in part, his reluctance for Dialled In to be a collective and apprehension about the lack of financial stability that that organisational structure brings. “I want to ensure that we exist in 30 years. I want to make sure that we’re creating pathways for the new generation.”

And Dialled In’s projects have shown that these pathways aren’t limited to the UK. In June 2022, Dialled In got funding from the British Council to help organise Pakistan’s first Boiler Room. Working with artists on the ground, they showcased the country’s new emergent dance music community, while artists like Ustad Noor Bakhsh, whose music had never been recorded before, went on to get booked around the globe.

They followed this up with a creative residency in Nepal. “Because of partition and colonialism, neighbouring countries in South Asia have a really difficult relationship with [each other],” says Dhruva, explaining why this residency was so important. “At one point, this was one whole region, and there are still so many similarities across borders, from the languages we speak, to the food we eat, to the things we do.”

And the point of the residency was to remind people of that. Eighteen people from all over South Asia came together to explore a range of creative pursuits, from music to dance to illustration. Dhruva tells me how, on day four, a 24-year-old from Mumbai turned to him and said, “Why didn’t you tell me before I came here that Pakistanis are just like us?”

“And this was the point,” says Dhruva. “When we were conceiving the project, we said to ourselves: ‘We’re not going to get two billion people overnight to overcome ethnic tensions and think differently of their neighbours – but what if we get five?’”

Dialled In isn’t alone in this aim. In recent years, we’ve seen organisations like RepresentAsian and Daytimers emerge, who also exist to platform diverse South Asian voices. I ask Dhruva why there seems to be more appetite for these kinds of groups. “It’s a rise that stems from pure frustration,” he tells me. “I’ve been in the industry for 15 years, and I was bored at being asked to write only about Bollywood or musicians through the lens of trauma or poverty porn. So, I created a space in which I could do [something different]. South Asians are the second-largest ethnic [group in the UK]. It’s quite astounding for the number to not be represented fairly in the cultural sphere.”

This year at Glastonbury, we got to see what seemed like the physical embodiment of these different organisations coming together through the Arrivals stage – the festival’s first-ever dedicated South Asian space, which was a collaboration between Dialled In, Daytimers and Going South. I ask Dhruva whether he feels this sense of camaraderie exists outside of this project. “Someone asked me recently if we look at Daytimers or Going South as competition, and it kind of annoyed me. We were non-existent for so long in the cultural sphere; I want to see more of us. I want us to build our own house – I don’t want us to fight for the same seat which is being held out for us.”

This aim is more important than ever. With the recent attacks against people of colour in the UK, spaces like Dialled In – which allow true and varied expressions of race and ethnicity, are paramount. Dhruva agrees. “We have seen what’s happened over the last ten days,” he begins, referencing the far-right, anti-immigrant violence that tore across the UK following the murder of three girls in Southport. “There’s a section of society that doesn’t want us represented. We’ve seen a young girl in Belfast skip down the street while shouting P****. We’ve seen guys spit at a TFL Muslim bus driver. In light of this, having spaces where brown people can express themselves however they please is really important. And that’s what we’ve done.”

+ dialled-in.com

Making Communities Safer

Slum Party have responded to the unsafe environments created by criminal gangs in Lagos by bringing everyone together on the same dancefloor

Despite being a millionaire hotspot, over 66% of Lagos’ population live in slums (according to the World Population Review). Often overlooked and under-served, these communities are often left to fend for themselves with little government aid. One such community is Oworonshoki. Between 2016 and 2020, many young people lost their lives in clashes between rival confraternity cults. The community, living in fear and under curfew, and dealing with an ineffective police force, was often scared to speak out.

Frustrated by the lack of action, in March 2019, the dance and performing arts collective Slum Party began to host ‘dance protests’ against the killings. “We knew if we called it a party, we could get young people to show up,” explains dancer and Slum Party founder Ozegbe Sunday Obiajulu (Valu), “despite planning to discuss very serious topics.” Through the centring of dance and performance arts in formalised spaces, the community was empowered to come together without fear and eventually have a conversation about how to collectively solve this issue of insecurity. After holding multiple ‘parties’, it was decided that a private security outfit would be hired to protect the community. This has so far been effective, with both Valu and Chief Mayaki commenting on the drastic reduction in crime.

And they haven’t stopped there. By inviting decision-makers and members of the government to parties, they’ve continued to effect internal change. A video on their Instagram shows the rehearsal of a female dance troupe from Oworonshoki. Valu’s caption underneath details how the women were looking for a way to bring the Kosofe Local Government chairman on stage to dance, so they could discuss what the community needed after interacting in this way. “And they [the dancers] understood the damn assignment,” details Valu. “The chairman has since promised pipe-borne water. And that is how dance is a weapon.”

Through changes like this and through reintroducing arts into the community, Valu and Slum Party are transforming realities for people living there. “There are over 20 events now happening in the community that we aren’t necessarily connected to,” Valu tells me. “In 2019, nobody could dream of that. We’ve breathed life into arts again and created spaces of collaboration which people have used to connect across the continent.”

_{Children at a Slum Party event in Lagos © Bankole Damilola}

And their efforts aren’t just internal. For many, slums carry a lot of negative connotations. Often thought of as unsafe or unsanitary, they are frequently avoided by those who aren’t part of the community or treated only as centres for aid. Slum Party are working to challenge this.

Through showcasing the talent of people living in slums and making the most of the safe space they’ve helped create, Slum Party bring in international artists to work with those in the community on a grassroots level.

“Through dance and music, I want to showcase the elements that make life worth living: community, generosity, family,” says Valu. “If we highlight that everyone experiences these, people will see that life in the slums and in the upper classes has similarities.”

In 2023, Slum Party created a ‘Village of Dreamers’ theme for their party event. Artists from all over the world, including Tanzania, Mumbai and Cameroon, came to Oworonshoki to work with 54 members of the community to put on dance performances for over 3,000 attendees.

Their work in Oworonshoki has been so successful that this year will be the festival’s last time within this community. Valu plans to take the project on the road and touch different slum communities across Lagos, using the tried-and-tested model of dance and music to enact change. For him, it’s all about the approach: “We are unique. The way we work humanises the stories of people living in the slum through art and music in a way which allows people to connect to them – wherever you are in the world.”

Preserving Indigenous Knowledge

Circuito Amazônico de Festivais’ network brings together communities and shows the need to protect the Amazon and its custodians

If you want to hear how the Internet can still be used as a force for good, then look no further than Mídia Ninja and its Circuito Amazônico de Festivais project. The internet is a key part of their genesis. “It’s a tough question and a long story,” says Felipe Altenfelder, founder of Mídia Ninja, when I ask him how the media platform started. “If it was like a TV show, you’re coming in at Season 20,” he laughs.

“For us, at the beginning of the 2000s, the internet was something new,” he explains. “For the first time, people could exchange grassroots culture work, and this presented a different way for the music market to organise. We started to promote festivals via a new industry that we were building from point zero.” Felipe got together with people like Marielle Ramires and others from across Latin America to create a media platform built around citizen reporting and collaboration, which would tell the stories mainstream news outlets were ignoring.

Out of that came Circuito Amazônico de Festivais. Occurring annually over three days, the initiative consists of eight different festivals, each held in various cities across the Amazon region, from Porto Velho to Rio Branco. Each night, 5,000-10,000 people take over two to three stages set up in public spaces like city squares, clubs and other venues. By bringing people across the Amazon who would otherwise never travel to these locations, the festival aims to create dialogues to show what the Amazon is creating in terms of culture and connect them to the wider Latin America.

_{Filomedusa (AC) & Ana Clara at Festival Se Rasgum, Belém, 2023}

With its location, the festival is inseparable from the climate crisis. Manoel Rolla, a festival producer from Roraima, asserts, “The Amazon is so important, not only to Brazil, but the entire world. However, people have a disconnection to this land.” The circuit aims to remedy this, showing that humanity’s relationship with the land need not be extractive, and that we need to accept the land’s Indigenous people as its rightful owners. Responsible for preserving 80% of the world’s biodiversity due to their role as stewards, despite making up only 6% of the global population, these voices were sidelined under former president Jair Bolsonaro’s government; the festival aims to showcase the musical and environmental knowledge of these communities. “Recognising the need for nature-based solutions to address the climate crisis is crucial,” states Mídia Ninja’s co-founder Marielle Ramires. “Indigenous people, with their deep ancestral knowledge, are best equipped to lead these efforts.”

The final element in uniting the people and the Amazon is our collective love for music. “There are so many conservatives in Brazil,” says Ramires. “Festivals are the perfect place to show young people that they can be so much more.” “We want to build another imaginary,” she continues. “As an intangible cultural heritage of the Brazilian people, music can help us do that. Samba, choro, pagode, bossa nova, [baile] funk, the mangue beat movement… and other rhythms are woven into the multicultural history of the Brazilian people. We listen to music whether we are smiling or crying, having fun or fighting. Music is a fundamental part of our presence in the world.”

Circuito Amazônico de Festivais may have been built at the dawn of the internet, but their role in both preserving ancient knowledge and setting the agendas of future generations, always with the collective power of music at the centre, will be crucial for decades to come.

+ Circuito Amazônico de Festivais’ Manoel Rolla is taking part in the discussion ‘Music and Activism in the Global South’ at WOMEX 2024 (Manchester, October 23-27)

TRANSFORMING CONFLICT

Beyond Skin have made Belfast a beacon of hope for exiled musicians

The Belfast which Darren Ferguson grew up in was divided. Segregated across religious and political lines, he often saw how music would entrench this segregation, with both marching band culture and traditional Irish music helping reinforce the identities of silos. Conversely, in a bigger way, through projects like Different Drums of Ireland (created in Derry in 1992), he saw how music could respond to conflict and bring communities together.

It was with this in mind that he founded Beyond Skin in 2004. Taking inspiration from Nitin Sawhney’s anti-apartheid anthem of the same name, and the social justice work being done by musicians like Jamie Catto, Duncan Bridgeman and Peter Gabriel, Darren wanted to strengthen community relations and foster interaction between different cultures through music. 

From the start, he wanted to do things differently to other organisations within the peace-building sector. “I’ve fallen asleep at many peace conferences,” he tells me, laughing over Zoom, “it can be quite a dull space creatively.” Taking the same punk-minded approach that Factory Records did when creating ‘Madchester’, Darren wanted to push boundaries and platform the unexpected. “We’re one of the few organisations that are doing crazy things,” Darren tells me, “like bringing together musicians from 22 countries to create a John Cage interpretation, or putting heavy metal musicians in the same room as Loyalist flute bands.”

_{Swar Ahmed & the Navigators of Sound (Orla Rice, Conor Pelan, Davy Bates)}

This approach, while playful, has shone a light on the reductive way that many in the aid sector work. Darren recalls being asked to put on a multicultural event and the organisers   being bemused when artists from Iran, Palestine, Brazil and Slovakia got together and performed a rendition of George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper’. “They asked for a multicultural band, and that’s what they got!” Darren exclaims exasperatedly, “While some musicians we work with do celebrate their traditional cultures through music – others want to do 80s pop songs!” This frustration also bleeds into booking acts. “It’s really hard to get the musicians who came to our shores for sanctuary included in line-ups on stages,” explains Darren, “But when there’s a refugee-themed event, the council are very quick to get on the phones and ask them to play for nothing. It’s my biggest gripe – these people are professional musicians, and they deserve to be on stage with other professional musicians!” 

Despite these barriers, Beyond Skin have, over their 20-year span, delivered over 4,000 activities, facilitating workshops, exhibitions, concerts and festivals between artists from Northern Ireland and over 32 other countries. Of the overarching aim, Darren says: “It gives us a chance to cement a sense of belonging. To connect with ourselves, but also our global local neighbours.”

One particular project which highlights this ethos is ‘In Gham-e-be Haya’, a song and music video which was recorded over lockdown and fuses traditional Irish and Afghan instruments. Due to increasing Taliban restrictions, the song’s collaboration with the Afghan Women’s Orchestra meant that the project involved some risk. 

_{Beyond Skin musicians (L-R): Swar (from Syria), Amita (from India), Berie and Meron (both from Eritrea)}

Responding to the ever-increasing Taliban restrictions, Beyond Skin are now supporting female Afghan painters by selling their work locally and internationally and sending the money back. Darren has taken this a step further and has successfully encouraged recording artists to use the art as vinyl album covers. “We’re supporting women at risk, but it’s also two fingers to the Taliban,” says Darren emphatically. “We’re saying ‘look, we’re going to put this artwork on the covers of albums, distribute it around the world, and there’s damn all you can do about it.’ I want to put the artists next to the music. That’s a powerful thing for Belfast to be involved in.”

+ beyondskin.net

Re-Tuning History

‘Queer people have always existed, so where are they in our folk music?’ was the question on the minds of Sophie Crawford and George Sansome when they started Queer Folk, a project researching and recording queer folk music

Growing up, the pair had a difficult relationship with the genre, and at 13, Sophie turned away from it to pursue theatre. “In retrospect, I recognise this was because I was gay, and I was drawn to an environment which was more open to that,” she explains over Zoom. George, who continually performed, was getting increasingly frustrated at being congratulated for singing from a female perspective when performing non-gendered folk love songs.

They realised their shared yearning to interact with the genre more authentically on the Facebook group, ‘Nowt so Queer as Folk’. After spending months on Zoom writing proposals, they met for the first time, singing and researching together as part of a residency.

However, without a strong academic background, neither of them had a clear idea of where to start. “I can remember, in a moment of frustration, just typing the word ‘gay’ into a folk archive search box,” George laughs. However, the pair soon found avenues which worked, with one library having a section on ‘cross-dressing’ encouraging a path into gender-bending (leading to the discovery of broadside ballad ‘The Female Husband’) and another into dance traditions which allowed for areas of sexuality/gender misrule.

They also learnt to look into queer coding, a massive part of queer history. “We found language, like that of flowers, that we could map onto songs, and by doing so discovered how people would flag certain things,” explains Sophie. This was juxtaposed by finding very explicit content, including songs where both candlesticks and violin bows were used as dildos for various orifices.

“The main takeaway was thinking about how hard this side of the genre has been to suppress because it’s so prevalent,” says Sophie.

So why, then, if all it took was for Sophie and George to scratch the surface, have these stories been omitted from history?

Sophie boils it down to the strong storytelling element in folk music. “Queer erasure occurs because there’s a wrongful sense in the genre of ‘doing this right,’” she explains.

_{Queer Folk at Saltburn Folk Festival, 2024 (L-R: George Sansome, Georgie Rix, Sophie Crawford, Island Girl, Theo Dussek) © Rosie Reed Gold}

George is quick to point out that this erasure isn’t happening in a vacuum, that as long as queer people have existed, they’ve been oppressed – no matter what genre or even what vocation they exist in. “That tension and conflict with the past is a big part of folk music, but also queerness and tradition in general,” he explains, “it’s all connected.”

Where the pair seem to agree, however, is in the overarching importance of a project like this. At a time when the far-right is gaining footholds globally, recognising that our history held space for all sorts of people has never been more important. “Folk music has been co-opted by the far right in the past,” explains Sophie, “it’s vital to acknowledge that the genre can be used as part of a collective liberation movement.”

This movement is already hitting the ground running. Moving beyond the research, the pair have spent time organising meet-ups for queer musicians in rural areas, curating festivals, hosting radio shows and even running regular queer ceilidh nights.

They’re also releasing an album early next year. “We want it to be a resource which shows there are fewer boundaries between genre and art form,” explains George. “If we make only one person who is straight not adopt the poison of heteronormativity when interacting with folk, that’s great.”

Fighting Stigma

Musika Na Kipaji, an all-female festival, has burst out of the DRC with an ambition not only to build female careers, but to break social barriers

Gender inequality statistics paint a grim picture for the DRC: over half of all women will experience violence from their partner, more than one in ten girls will be a mother before they’re 20, and women are close to half as likely to go beyond primary education than men.

Fabienne Balola and the music festival that she presents, Musika Na Kipaji, want to change the narrative by shifting the focus to female achievements. “Musika Na Kipaji means ‘Girls with Talent’ in Swahili,” Fabienne tells me in a bubbly voice over Zoom. After the festival organisers saw her singing in Goma, they asked if she wanted to get involved. “I was a girl, and I had talent,” she tells me, laughing, as though the connection was destined.

She seems to embody the festival’s ethos. “We want to have a cultural activity where we can show the talent of the young girls and also show the good things about living in Goma town,” explains Fabienne passionately when I ask her about the festival’s aims. “We want to show that, despite people dying, we can also expose the goodness in the world.”

And this goodness comes in many forms. The festival includes singing, dancing and poetry, with its last edition welcoming over 23 solo artists and multiple folk groups over various stages. I ask Fabienne what genres often come up. “We like to perform all types of music. We can bring you rumba, we can bring you salsa,” she reels off. “But the most important thing is what we say through the music. Our artists are activists, so they sing about peace, love and women’s rights. This is the message we want to give.”

^{Musika Na Kipaji’s young talents © Tony Mwema}

And that message is spreading. The festival is now in its fifth iteration, and last year welcomed artists from Zimbabwe and Burundi, reaching 1,500 people in person and a further 300,000 online. The festival’s reach goes beyond the day’s activities. Leading up to the festival, a group of artists and makers went to refugee camps to train groups of people in skills like baking or tailoring. “The aim is to encourage economic autonomy,” explains Fabienne. “These people have lost everything but still have hope. At Musika Na Kipaji, we want to give people the tools to start a new life where they are.” Their crafts and wares are then displayed via exhibitions at the festival, not only offering people a chance to make money, but also to network and build community.

To make all of this happen, the organisers have many obstacles to overcome. “We are in a red zone,” explains Fabienne. She details what she explains is a common occurrence for female artists. “Say, I have a club to go and sing tonight, but on my way home, I encounter military personnel that will harass me, either physically or sexually. After that, I will not have the courage to go to the club again and show my talent.” Courage is hard-won. “We are already traumatised. Imagine giving birth in war, growing up in war, all of this can affect your mental health,” she explains. “A lot of women don’t believe in themselves.” There are also issues concerning the stereotypes which come with being an artist in the DRC. “Some parents tell their daughters that if they sing, they’ll become prostitutes and, if they rap, they’ll become robbers,” she says.

And this is why Musika Na Kipaji is so important. Not only to change stereotypes of what women from the Congo can be from within the nation, but internationally. “I want the festival to inspire further organisation and government action”, says Fabienne. “I want it to impact our country, but for that impact to be known internationally.”

+ Musika Na Kipaji’s Fabienne Balola is taking part in the discussion ‘Women Artists in War’ at WOMEX 2024

This article originally appeared in the November 2024 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe today