Festival of the Greater South

18 May

Peoples in Motion, Living Cultures

First Edition – From 4 PM, OSC Headquarters, Addis Ababa

Launched by the Organisation of Southern Cooperation (OSC), the Festival of the Greater South: Peoples in Motion, Living Cultures is an annual event firmly grounded in the boundless richness of the heritage of peoples, communities, and nations of the Greater South, with cultures that, far from being mere folklore, are alive, constantly in motion, evolving, and transforming.

Venue

The First Edition of the Festival of the Greater South will be taking place at the OSC Headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 4 PM.

Egypt St., Lideta Sub-City, Woreda 04, House N° 1986, 1165 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

A Grand Convergence of Artists and Poets

For the public tribute to Palestinian Heritage, Culture, and the Arts and to remember Hiba Abu Nada and Refaat Alareer, Shuar Amazonian poets from Ecuador, poets from Cambodia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, “designer” artists from Palestine and Addis Ababa, as well as painters from Senegal will gather around Le Trio Joubran Group, to raise their voices accompanying the kites towards the azure sky.

Composed of three brothers from Nazareth, Le Trio Joubran is a Palestinian oud group, one of the oldest instruments in the world. The group has gained international recognition by combining into an orchestra an instrument, that for millennia was played solo, and by making oud music the centerpiece of the performance when tradition relegated the instrument to an accompanying role.

The Festival will also be enriched by the encounter between Cuban musicians and dancers and, the shoulder dance of Ethiopia, with the fathers of reggae from Trinidad and Tobago… All this in an atmosphere of creative emulation, generating rhythms and blues notes of music and poetry.

Raul Paz, one of the most innovative Cuban musicians of his time, even though he is nourished by “son cubano”, traditional guajira, has considerably broadened his universe by training in violin, wind instruments, the classical performance of singing and music, stage direction, poetry. Raul reinvents Cuban music, weaving hip-hop, dub, rock riffs, poetry, and a unique rhythm that bursts forth with authentic originality in plural diversity: a silent revolution in form and meaning… Thus surrounded by the myriad of artists from the Global South, Raul Paz, his musicians, and the dancers from Cuba, will be at the center of a gigantic whirlwind of virtuosos whose spiral or snail-like movement, characteristic of all living cultures, will lead the Peoples towards a future of justice, freedom and dignity: a Third Way of Development —from the South, for the South and for Humanity.

The Festival looks forward to the following points

To provide a vibrant meeting and exchange space for artists, creators, and the Peoples in motion of the Greater South. The Festival presents an opportunity for all artists arriving from diverse artistic forms and genres to express, through voices and bodies, the various and multiple narratives that shape the realities of the majority and silenced world, offering a glimpse of the future that the South, and humanity as a whole, deserves.
To assert the living nature of the cultures of the Greater South, neither ousted from their past, nor stagnant within it, but in perpetual transformation and constant balance between the settlements of the past and the uprisings of the future.
To democratize culture, not as a mere object of observation, but as a vital force both shaped by and shaping, remaining true to itself concerning its past, authentic to its essence in dialogue with and within the world.
To unveil the continuity that extends across the three continents of the Greater South, with contemporary cultures that preserve the memory of ancient exchanges and foster the vitality of their Peoples' integrative aspirations towards an authentic future.
To awaken the multiple forms of cultural expression of the Peoples of the Greater South, offering new readings and interpretations, through the diversity of artistic expression, and reality, and inviting to forge roads by walking.