"In the Land of My Ancestors"

Trailer for "In the Land of My Ancestors", a documentary exposing how the culture of Native Americans survived in North America and what Americans can today learn from its depth and beauty.

I'm currently working on topics that are very close.

Looking forward to seeing the whole film!!

"In the Land of My Ancestors": Official Trailer

"In the Land of My Ancestors" celebrates the living legacy of Ann Marie Sayers, an indigenous Ohlone elder. Ohlone people are not federally recognized as indigenous nations in the San Francisco Bay Area. This documentary short reveals the resilience and tenacity of Ann Marie as she reclaims her ancestral land, culture and spirituality in the face of a dehumanization narrative that erases the stories and histories of the First Peoples of the San Francisco Bay Area. This film is produced by photojournalist, Rucha Chitnis, with the brilliant cinematography of Jason Taylor of the Source Project.

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"Boris Johnson Has Ruined Britain", NYT columnist

Must read:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/07/10/opinion/boris-johnson-resignation-brexit.html

Boris Johnson Has Ruined Britain

July 10, 2018

“He knows that the verdict of history is about to come down on him — and bury him.” 

By Jenni Russell

Ms. Russell is a British journalist.

Boris Johnson speaking to the media in May. Mr. Johnson resigned his post as foreign secretary in protest against the latest plans for Brexit.CreditJohn Thys/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

LONDON — For the second time in three years, Boris Johnson, a politician whose ambition and superficial charm far outstrip his ability, judgment or principles, is destabilizing the British government and threatening the country’s future. 

On Monday, Mr. Johnson, in protest against Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans for Brexit, resigned from his post as foreign secretary. Now Mrs. May’s authority, longevity and ability to deliver a Brexit without causing an economic crisis are in question. But further political paralysis seems certain. 

Britain is in this mess principally because the Brexiteers — led largely by Mr. Johnson — sold the country a series of lies in the lead up to the June 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union. They did so because neither Mr. Johnson nor his fellow leader of the Leave campaign, Michael Gove, intended, wanted or expected to win. 

At the start of 2016, Mr. Johnson was perhaps the most popular politician in Britain. Supporters and fans mobbed him at train stations and traffic lights; pollsters and pundits thought he could reach the parts of the country that other Conservatives could never touch. But he was also driven and insecure, so desperate to guarantee he would be the next prime minister that he cynically abandoned his own previous positions on the European Union in order to try to secure support from his party’s Euroskeptic right wing. 

Because Mr. Johnson and Mr. Gove were confident that the Leave campaign was a hopeless cause, they were free to make ridiculous claims that they had no expectation of ever having to fulfill. They said that Brexit would make Britain both richer and more independent, with more money for the National Health Service, much greater control of immigration and continued friction-free trade with Europe.

Every earnest warning from the other side — about how any Brexit would damage trade, business and jobs — was dismissed airily by the Brexiteers. There were no costs or downsides in this vision of the future.

This casual dishonesty has had devastating consequences. 

In the two years since the Leave campaign unexpectedly won, nobody, from the prime minister to Mr. Johnson to the Labour Party, has been able to come up with a plan for exiting the European Union that can satisfy both a majority in Parliament and the expectant public. Why? Because fulfilling the false promises peddled by Mr. Johnson during the campaign is impossible. 

The gulf between the easy, prosperous, productive Brexit that its voters are impatiently expecting, and the grim, complicated cost of disentangling economies that have been intertwined for decades has poisoned and paralyzed British politics. 

The Conservatives’ leaders cannot admit to the electorate that they were deceived without splitting the party. And instead of apologizing for misleading voters, Mr. Johnson and the other Brexiteers have doubled down, taking refuge in optimistic slogans and vapid promises, refusing to believe the increasingly agitated evidence from hospitals, airlines, farmers, supermarkets and factories that a hard Brexit will damage them all.

Last week, Mrs. May finally attempted to force a recognition of reality on her divided cabinet by coming up with a compromise; a partial Brexit that allows goods free access in and out of Europe at the cost of accepting many European rules. It was an imperfect plan, but still it provided, finally, a starting point for negotiations with Brussels.

For three days, that compromise held, until the first political delusionist, the Brexit Secretary David Davis, broke free, still claiming that in some magical future Britain could get almost everything it wanted, if only the country would just stand by its demands.

Petrified of being outflanked, Mr. Johnson followed suit, bringing with him the implicit threat that he could lead a rebellion against the government that other hard-line Brexiteers will follow. It is a desperate move by a man who has lost almost all the credibility he had three years ago.

All of Mr. Johnson’s weaknesses have been exposed: his lazy reluctance to do detail, his preference for bluster over thinking, his contempt for business. The campaign was meant to secure his future; instead, in damaging the country, he fears he has wrecked his own future, too. As one of his allies told me last month: “He knows that the verdict of history is about to come down on him — and bury him.” 

Mr. Johnson seems to believe that this is his last chance to become prime minister: After his resignation this week, he hopes to be reborn as a rebel who will lead the party. But more likely is that he will once again create political chaos without delivering what he wants. 

Two years ago, the side effect of Mr. Johnson’s ambitious maneuvering was to split the country and risk the prosperity and security of all Britons for decades. Now, just as a fragile basis for negotiation emerges, his selfish drive for vindication, attention and admiration threatens that, too.

It is petrifying that the deliberate deceptions and wild ego of one man can so mislead a nation. (Americans know all about that.) One insider told me that Mrs. May was prepared for Mr. Johnson’s defection, and will outflank him, persuading wavering Conservatives that the time for fantasy has passed. 

But Britain is teetering on the edge, on the verge of making catastrophic, irreversibly damaging mistakes. The danger is that Johnson might tip the balance in the wrong direction once again. 

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Jenni Russell (@jennirsl), a journalist and broadcaster, is a columnist for The Times of London.

Concerning Violence

Reminder:

Concerning Violence - Documentary

Official Trailer 1 (2014) 

From the director of The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 comes a bold and fresh visual narrative on Africa, based on newly discovered archive material covering the struggle for liberation from colonial rule in the late '60s and '70s, accompanied by text from Frantz Fanon's classic book The Wretched of the Earth.

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Music: Siêm Folknomade ❖ 'Diamond'

Beautiful song from a multi-talented musician!!
Sound of love.


Siêm Folknomade ❖ Diamond | #BlackSheepColorist

#BlackSheepColorist _ ❝ Diamond ❞ [ ❖ ] BlackSheeply recommended by Sheepify. First EP #BlackSheepColorist To be blossomed by the next flowers' fall. Stream & Buy | BC : https://siemfolknomade.bandcamp.com Follow | FB : http://www.facebook.com/siem.musiQ Tweet | TW : https://twitter.com/siemfolknomade YouTube subscribe | YT : https://goo.gl/KbsxPK ♩Diamond Music Guest _ Mr Fouad Didi ♩Violin. Musicians & Arrangements _ Christophe Isselee & Fred "Klandestino". Writing, Composing, Voice _ Siêm Folknomade. Recording _ Labo Klandestino Studio, Marseille, FR. Mix _ Ulrich Edorh @DaTown Studio, Marseille, FR. Mastering _ François Fanelli @Sonics Mastering, Marseille, FR. ☁ Diamond Lyrics l'illusion en mon royaume. يا كنز الفجر يا ابها من شروقي ya kenz el fajr ya ebha min chourouqi ô trésor de l'aube plus beau que mes falaises oh treasure of dawn more beautiful than my cliffs ~ Diamond VideoClip Making : Sacha Marcelin & Siêm Folknomade. ✖ sacha-marcelin@laposte.net & http:// sachamarcelin.heb3. org Operations Manager, Framing & Calibration : Margot Thierry. ✖ margot.thierry@hotmail.fr & flipflop.asso@gmail.com Camera Assistants : Eva Leture & Aurélien Ridoux. Thnx Mentions + : Julien De Sousa & Ivan Robert. Video Mounting : Alexia Morel & Siêm Folknomade. ✖ alexia.morel3@gmail.com Image Composting : Florent Scieur & Sacha Marcelin. Artistic Direction & Executive Production : Siêm Folknomade. | My #BlackSheepColorist [ ❖ ] is Yours Now _ enJOY. DIY Music _ AutoProduction _ Siêm Folknomade © & ℗. All rights reserved. Thank you for following & sharing Diamond ! ❤ Bisou Nomade.

"Adore"

Thinking about 1998, the anti-2018, yet for many of us, a year of utter melancholy...

I felt so sad these past 24 hrs. This world is just so hard to fathom. Do you sometimes feel that nothing makes sense?

We, the "Indigenous" people, how did we get here? How did we get so lost...? Was there ever a home for us? It's been so long ago, it feels so unreal...

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My heart is somewhere floating with yours, in the eternity of time. I just lost the connection tonight.
It's you that I adore. And "adore" is the only reason to go through this.

"Angel, you know it's not the end 
We'll always be good friends 
The letters have been sent on" 

Please, universe, send me a few more songs...

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The Smashing Pumpkins - 'Ava Adore'

It's you that I adore
You'll always be my whore
You'll be the mother to my child
And a child to my heart
We must never be apart
We must never be apart

Lovely girl you're the beauty in my world
Without you there aren't reasons left to find

And I'll pull your crooked teeth
You'll be perfect just like me
You'll be a lover in my bed
And a gun to my head
We must never be apart
We must never be apart

In you I see dirty
In you I count stars
In you I feel so pretty
In you I taste god
In you I feel so hungry
In you I crash cars
We must never be apart

Drinking mercury
To the mystery of all that you should ever seek to find
Lovely girl you're the murder in my world
Dressing coffins for the souls I've left behind
In time
We must never be apart

And you'll always be my whore
'Cause you're the one that I adore
And I'll pull your crooked teeth
You'll be perfect just like me
In you I feel so dirty in you I crash cars
In you I feel so pretty in you I taste god
We must never be apart

Songwriters: William Patrick Corgan

Ava Adore lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Universal Music Publishing Group

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The Smashing Pumpkins - 'Perfect'

"Perfect"

I know we're just like old friends 
We just can't pretend 
That lovers make amends 
We are reasons so unreal 
We can't help but feel that something has been lost 

But please you know you're just like me 
Next time I promise we'll be 
Perfect 
Perfect 
Perfect strangers down the line 
Lovers out of time 
Memories unwind 

So far I still know who you are 
But now I wonder who I was... 

Angel, you know it's not the end 
We'll always be good friends 
The letters have been sent on 

So please, you always were so free 
You'll see, I promise we'll be 
Perfect 
Perfect strangers when we meet 
Strangers on the street 
Lovers while we sleep

Perfect 
You know this has to be 
We always we're so free 
We promised that we'd be 
Perfect

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About Indigenous Musicians in Canada

A type of music dear to my heart... 

This is a sponsored article from The New Yorker but a lot more interesting and insightful than many music articles:

Illustration by Adria Fruitos.

Indigenous Musicians are in the Spotlight in Canada

From British Columbia to Nunavut, how the Indigenous music scene is producing genre-spanning sounds and new opportunities for cultural understanding.

By Katie Bain

In 1995, Leonard Sumner had never been to a nightclub. His community, the Little Saskatchewan First Nation in Manitoba, was light years away from glossy, big city nightlife. The area was surrounded by rolling plains, thick forest and vast freshwater lakes. There weren’t any nightclubs. There wasn’t even a record store.

Obsessed with the hip-hop exploding out of New York and Los Angeles in this era, the then-adolescent Sumner wanted to be like his rap idols. He could rhyme and write music, but his lyrics about clubbing and money felt bogus. His life on the reservation as very different from those of the platinum-selling artists popping bottles south of the Canadian border.

But as he got deeper into his craft, Sumner realized he could emulate his influences simply by telling his own story with the same vivid honesty with which they were proclaiming theirs. He sat down to write about his world and found the lyrics flowed easily and in abundance. With this shift, he was making music connected not only to hip-hop, but also to his own ancestors.

“Anishinaabe people, Indigenous people, we've been storytellers since we've had language,” Sumner says. “There’s been this image of the Hollywood Indian that’s made us out to be stoic people incapable of emotion. I didn’t feel that, and I was sick of other people telling our stories. I knew my story was valid, and that I was capable of telling it.”

Sumner immersed himself in music, releasing his debut album, Rez Poetry, in 2013. Lyrics about life, death, hope, dreams, addiction, and the northern lights of his homeland weren’t all happy, but they were honest, and they were his. The album’s success led to Sumner playing major music festivals throughout Canada, which helped establish him as a key player in the country’s Indigenous music scene.

From the pristine glaciers of Nunavut to the towering mountains of British Columbia, Indigenous musicians are in the midst of a renaissance as a new wave of artists reclaim their histories and collectively redefine what “Indigenous artist” even means. These singers, instrumentalists, beat makers, and curators are creating and sharing music that celebrates thousands of years of cultural heritage through styles both traditional and innovative. This music addresses the challenging history Indigenous peoples' have with Canada while celebrating the resilience of their cultures. Through music, Indigenous musicians are educating audiences and fostering cross-cultural understanding.

This is not just entertainment; it’s revolution.

Up in Nunavut’s capital city of Iqauluit, roots rock band The Jerry Cans preside over the northernmost outpost of the scene, a place where the sun rises for four hours a day in the winter and lights the midnight sky at summer’s peak. This five-person group performs in Inuktitut, an Indigenous language widely spoken throughout Nunavut but considered vulnerable by UNESCO. Through their output, The Jerry Cans are celebrating and preserving Inuktitut and, with online streaming, sending the language to places on the planet that would never have encountered it otherwise. The band’s singer, Nancy Mike, also incorporates traditional Inuk throat singing. Intense and transportive, throat singing is meant to emulate the sounds of nature—animal calls, thunder, crashing waves—and is thus intimately connected to Nunavut and the people who have called it home for millennia.

“The tradition was almost wiped out when missionaries arrived,” Mike says on the phone from Iqaluit, her four-month old daughter crying softly in the background. “My mother's generation did not do any throat singing at all. My generation, we decided to pick it up.”

As the tradition has been resurrected, so too has it evolved. Inuk throat singing icon Tanya Tagaq has performed with symphonies, electronic acts, and rock bands around the world. In 2015, two adolescent throat singers stole the show when they performed at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 2015 swearing-in ceremony. (“I got verklempt seeing throat singing at the swearing in. <3” Tagaq tweeted after.) Nelson Tagoona, a 24-year-old artist from Baker Lake in central Nunavut, combines throat singing with beat boxing in a style he calls “throat boxing.” He’s performed throughout Canada, including a 2017 performance with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Meanwhile, venerable electronic group A Tribe Called Red has long incorporated traditional powwow singing, drumming, and dancing into performances rooted in digital music.

But Indigenous music extends well beyond genres traditionally associated with Indigenous peoples. Sumner’s work is hip-hop and country. The Jerry Cans make soaring roots rock. Jarrett Martineau is the founder of Toronto-based Indigenous music platform and record label Revolutions Per Minute and hosts a CBC radio program “Reclaimed.” The show features music from different genres, eras, and Indigenous cultures worldwide. While it was a major victory when the Juno Awards (Canada’s version of the Grammys) added the Indigenous Music Album of the Year category in 1994, many artists who fell in that category now just want to be judged by the same criteria as everyone else.

“Artists now are like, ‘I don't want anything to do with it as a genre. I want to be best new artist, or best pop record. I want to be recognized for the work I make as an Indigenous person,’” says Martineau. “But there's a shared perspective among artists, and especially younger artists, who feel proud of their cultural connections and rep their culture in their music, but also feel they can do with that whatever they want.”

This perspective continues to gain influence and attention. At the 2018 Juno Awards, A Tribe Called Red won the award for Group of the Year, while The Jerry Cans—nominated for Contemporary Roots Album of the year and Breakthrough Group of the Year—performed during the ceremony, presenting the once almost lost throat singing tradition to 1.5 million viewers across the country.

Once in the spotlight, many First Nation artists use their platforms to bring attention to issues in their communities. In 2014, Tagaq won the Polaris Prize–awarded for the year’s best Canadian album–for her work “Animism,” on which she addressed issues related to environmental degradation. During the ceremony she performed barefoot in front of hundreds of names of missing and murdered Indigenous women, receiving the night’s only standing ovation. When guitarist Derek Miller won the Juno for Aboriginal Recording of the Year in 2008, he accepted his award by saying he wished his community had clean drinking water.

This representation of ideas and art forms is evolving perceptions about Indigenous peoples, even while the institutionalized racism at the root of the issues they’re bringing attention to remains. “Everyone is looking for that turning point, asking, ‘On what day did it become cool to be Indigenous?’” says Dené Sinclair, Director of Marketing at the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada. “None of us really know. The experience I'm having as an Indigenous person in 2018 is certainly very different from the experience my grandfather had.”

In this way, the music scene’s expansion is greater than the sum of its parts. Sinclair recalls a quote from Métis leader Louis Riel, who in 1885 stated, “My people will sleep for one hundred years, but when they awake, it will be the artists who give them their spirit back.” In the aftermath of colonialism, musicians are reinvigorating their communities, traditions, and messages. 

This awakening is fostered by the exceptional depth and beauty in Indigenous art forms, from the precise choreography of powwow dancing to the hypnotic rhythm of the drums to the layers of meaning held in many songs and performances. And as new styles and traditions emerge and spread, the magnitude of this awakening grows.

“Together we must acknowledge that all of these stories are a part of our collective truth in Canada, “ Sinclair says. “Making art about these things is not perpetuating negativity; it's about reclaiming these stories and giving Indigenous peoples their spirit back.”

This process is not exclusive to the hundreds of Indigenous nations across the country. Visitors to Canada have an abundance of opportunities to experience the music scene and the cultures inherent within it. In May, the 13th annual Manito Ahbee Festival celebrates Indigenous arts, culture, and music in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The city will also host Indigenous artists from around the world for sākihiwē festival June 15-17. In Ottawa, the Summer Solstice Indigenous Festival attracts tens of thousands of attendees for four days of music, dancing, food, elder teachings, and an area focused on reconciliation through art. Festivals and gatherings in the Yukon, Nunavut, Saskatchewan, Quebec and more will host hundreds of musicians and other multidisciplinary artists into the fall of 2018.

These experiences are a subtle form of adventure tourism, with visitors challenging their preconceived notions rather than their bodies and finding new ways of relating to other cultures and the individuals within them. In this, the reclamation of spirit and healing of communities is possible for everyone involved.

“The most important thing is telling the truth about your existence and your story,” says Sumner, whose latest album, “Standing In the Light,” addresses prayer, faith, forgiveness, healing, corruption, broken treaties, and the water that flooded the reservation on which he first dreamed of becoming a successful musician.

“People recognize that truth,” he says, “and they gravitate towards it.”

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KATIE BAIN

Katie Bain is a writer in Los Angeles. Her works appears in publications including VICE and LA Weekly. She grew up near Green Bay, Wisconsin, where she developed a love of nature that has brought her on assignment to rural regions of the United States, Israel, Peru, Mexico and Canada.

Link: https://paidpost.newyorker.com/article/canada/indigenous-musicians-spotlight-canada-reclaiming-stories

Legacy of War: Giles Duley @ 5x15

Please listen!
Marvelous work.

If we could all contribute a little to the same message, we'll end conflicts, we'll end poverty, we'll stick together in solidarity.

Thanks to Giles.

Giles Duley @ 5x15 x Eden Sessions: 

Legacy of War

Photographer Giles Duley tells the stories of those without a voice. Giles Duley is a photographer, writer and CEO of the charity Legacy of War Foundation. Duley was as a successful fashion and music photographer for ten years during the nineties, working for such publications as GQ, Vogue, Esquire, Arena and Select Magazine. However,having become disillusioned with celebrity culture, he decided to abandon photography and left London to begin work as a full-time carer. In 2005, he returned to photography, personally funding trips to document the work of NGOs focusing on the stories of those affected by conflict across the world. He photographed the work of charities such as the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), EMERGENCY, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and documenting the lives and stories of people whom he describes as “not victims but victims of circumstance.” In 2011, whilst working in Afghanistan, Duley was to “become the story” after he stepped on an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), losing both his legs and left arm. He was told he would never walk again and that his career was over. However, characteristically stubborn, Duley told his doctors “I’m still a photographer”, and returned to work less than 18 months later. His first project, In October 2012, took him back to Afghanistan to complete his original assignment. His return was the feature of documentary, Walking Wounded: Return to the Frontline, which has since won the Association for International Broadcasting (AIB) Award for Best International Current Affairs Documentary (2013) and the Foreign Press Association (FPA) Award for TV Documentary Story of the Year (2013). Duley has since documented stories in Lebanon, Iraq, Cambodia, Laos, Colombia, Uganda, South Sudan, Angola and Jordan amongst others. His work has featured in numerous papers and magazines, he presented for the series Channel 4 series Unreported World, and he has talked about his experiences on television, radio and at numerous international and national events. His TEDx talk was voted one of the top ten TED talks of 2012. In 2015 he was commissioned by UNHCR to document the refugee crisis across the Middle East and Europe. This year long project produced the exhibition and book – I Can Only Tell You What My Eyes See. Duley was also awarded the Women on the Move media award for his work highlighting the plight of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. In 2017 Major Leoluca Orlando made him an honorary citizen of Palermo for his work with refugees. He is best known for his project Legacy of War that documents the long-term impact of conflict. This project has led to numerous collaborations including with the musicians PJ Harvey and Massive Attack. In 2017, inspired by the stories of those he meet through his work, Duley founded the charity Legacy of War Foundation. An NGO’s focused on supporting communities and individuals to rebuild lives after conflict. Recorded at The Eden Project in Cornwall in June 2018. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: http://5x15stories.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/5x15stories

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Follow: Legacy of War Foundation 

https://www.facebook.com/legacyofwarfoundation/

No To Brexit: United for a better Europe, together

#NoToBrexit - Update July 2018

United in Europe!

For a better union, together... 

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Still appalled by the ridiculous conditions of negotiation between the EU and the UK, feeling like a child torn between her divorcing parents, I started a modest contribution last year in July:

By gathering the voices of the art world who strongly reject the idea of a "Brexit", we can join the forces willing to build a better future for the UK, not in opposition but in collaboration.

You are welcome to join!
Read, share, contact me.
I'll work to get a column publish in the British, French and German press - to start with.
Any other idea is welcome.

All the best to you all,
melissa

Picture by myself: Massive Attack in Hyde Park, London, on July 1st, 2016, after interpreting their song 'Eurochild' and deploring the "Brexit" vote. 

You can notice that the colours of the lights on stage match the European flag...

#NoToBrexit

A European call to action from the art and music world 

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Introduction / Invitation

In the rainy month of November 1993, my English teacher organised a trip for all our classroom to go and visit England. We all took the bus to Calais and the ferry to Dover to cross the Channel and drive up to Canterbury, Oxford and of course London. And despite the wet weather and a visit to the National Maritime Museum with a series of an impossible-to-answer Q & A about British history… it was love at first sight. It was only my third trip outside of France, after a week of student exchange in Germany and a family visit on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, and for the first time of the three, I could actually understand local people… I realised I could speak fluently a foreign language. I was already, at 13 years old, a massive fan of popular music, and the songs of the Beatles and a few other more recent bands had taught me English much more than my schoolbooks. 

This experience was made possible because we were part of the European community. A few years later, the community became the European Union and the Eurostar opened, enabling thousands of French teenagers like myself to visit London again in only three hours. I want again. And again and again. And in 2009, I settle there, as a young journalist, passionate by travels, who had lived six months in Czech Republic, travelled across all Italy and central Europe and lived a year in the United States in 2008. Moving to the United Kingdom is one of the most powerful experience life has sent me. It also came after a family loss and without this move, I don’t know if I would have recovered the same way. I was hired by the BBC World Service to use my skills in French to broadcast news to French-speaking listeners in Central and West Africa. It was an eye- and mind-opening chance to understand our world more globally and to get to travel and live in Africa a few years later. When I came back from Nairobi, I didn’t hesitate, I moved back to London, not Paris. I found in England a second home and an educational challenge, and a change of perspective on our changing world.

Once again, this was made possible because of the existence of a very special political body, the European Union, which enables the citizens of its member states to live, study and work in any country of the Union. One of my dearest British friends thus studied a year in Portugal. A French friend studied in Germany and met in Prague her future German husband, to later settle together in Luxembourg. In London and later in Bristol, I met half a dozen of Spanish people who could feed their family back in Spain thanks to the jobs they found in English. Teachers, waiters, drivers, nurses, even doctors from all over Europe now work in the United Kingdom, because potential local employees for these skills are lacking in the country…

From early 2015, after having settled back home in Paris with a new job in radio, I came back to England to write about its thriving music and art scene. I came to Bristol to meet with my favourite musicians and write a book about them, retelling the incredible story of their diversity in this wonderful city. Bristol was then the European Green Capital, sharing its skills in developing an environment-friendly economy with others cities in Europe. It was a thrilling time to be a reporter in England again. But suddenly, later that year, the Prime Minister, David Cameron decided to finally organise a referendum on the future of the UK inside the EU. An appalling campaign took place in 2015-16, in which his own party, the Conservatives, finally mainly advocated to convince people to leave the European Union, a campaign led by the former mayor of London, Boris Johnson, a city thriving with European presence and passion… 

I witnessed and reported on the campaign, while also covering the appalling refugee crisis that was reaching Europe and got many countries, including the United States, France and the UK to only react in disdaining refugees… Claiming they had no means to be able to help the people running away from poverty, dictatorships and wars from Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Eritrea and Afghanistan that the Western World was partly to greatly responsible of. While Greece, Italy and Germany kept receiving these stricken fleeing people. It was a terrible time, but I was betting that most British people would recognise that a withdrawal from the European Union would only make our problem-solving efforts more difficult. But unfortunately, they didn’t. 52% of them didn’t and voted to “Leave” on June 23^rd, 2016. 

Now a year later, my book on British art and music has been released in France and I’m working on the English version. Meanwhile, I reported on the consequence of Brexit for a German radio, in Northern Ireland, in London and more recently in Scotland, appalled by the lack of political vision and the disunion provoked inside the Kingdom.

Talking almost daily with British friends, mostly teachers, workers of the NHS, artists, thinkers, journalists and musicians, we are all appallingly saddened by this decision and by the ill-treatment of the negotiations with Brussels led by Boris Johnson then Theresa May.  

As a French citizen, world-traveller and European, passionately in love with the United Kingdom, a country that has never stopped enriching my life since 1993, I’m now willing to publically call on to every European citizens who want to make their voice heard on the issue. A so-called “Brexit”, withdrawal of a key member of our European Union, would do no good to the EU and definitely no good to the citizens of the UK and the millions of Europeans living there. 

For science, research and education, it predicts a disaster. For artists and musicians, travelling all over Europe to share their performances and views on our world, it is a tragedy.

Here is therefore an invitation to join a list of artists who agree and will call on, in their own words, to think again, as European people, as British citizens, as MPs, as workers of the EU bodies in Brussels and Strasburg, as musicians or journalists, about the future of the UK inside of the European Union. For the good of us all. As we are in this situation together… 

In these times of general turmoil and political instability, we need European solidarity and political vision more than ever. And even more that we need the single market. Let’s bring back upfront the values that united Europeans together after World War II: a thirst for peace, a will to rebuild our continent, a desire for more knowledge and a better education for all, a better and more stable future together. It is never too late to reverse a bad decision…

Melissa Chemam

Freelance journalist and writer, French citizen, European thinker and UK lover

Email: melissa.notobrexit@gmail.com 

Twitter: @melissachemam / https://twitter.com/melissachemam
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/melissaontheroad

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On board for now:

Melissa Chemam, French journalist reporting in the UK

Keziah Jones, Nigerian and British musician

Angelo Bruschini, British / Italian musician with Massive Attack, The Blue Airplanes and Saint 

Mars, based in Bristol

Chris Bird, British director at United Visual Artists based in London

David Mowat, British and Swiss jazzman based in Bristol

Toby Wilsher, British theatre director, musician and communication Coach for business, whose clients are mostly European 

Michael Eyre, British citizen living in Sweden

Roger Surridge, British graphic designer resident in France

Dan Leyland, British company director

Geoff Alsopp, British musician and writer, based in Somerset

Edson Burton, British poet, writer and researcher based in Bristol

Adam Evans, British music producer

Andy Smith, British artist from Manchester / Bolton

Sarah Barden, British journalist leaving in Austria

Seth Ferris and Henry Kamens, British journalists based in Sweden

Liliane Horton, former Journalist, French citizen living in the UK and married to a British man

Madeleina Kay / Alba White Rose, remain artist and member of the No.10 Vigil group

Catherine Moss, co-organiser of the #StopBrexit Manchester March on September 30

Amy Racs, radio producer from London

Sara Hayward, British artist from Worcestershire

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Join us!

melissa.notobrexit@gmail.com 

Eurochildren

A song that documented the UK's resistance regarding its belonging to the European continent, back then in 1990-94, when it was written.

Relevant to hear in these days, while the Brexit endeavor is stuck and even more stuck...

Massive Attack - 'Eurochild' - Live in Gdynia, Poland, 05.07.18

Massive Attack Live in Gdynia at Opener Festival with 'Eurochild'.

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For those who can read French better than Polish, the France's version, for the visuals and messages:

Massive Attack - 'Eurochild' @ Les Nuits de Fourvière, Lyon, France - 01.07.2018

"The New World", by Terrence Malick | The Lost Art of Grief

This week's exploration:

The New World | The Lost Art of Grief

An examination of sorrow and grief in Terrence Malick’s The New World based on Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow. Featured films: The New World Music: Mendelssohn - Symphony No. 3 in A minor (Scottish), Mov. 1, Op. 56 - courtesy of Musopen: https://musopen.org/ Patrick Cassidy – Vide Cor Meum (Cover by Lucas King) Elgar – Enigma Variations, Mov. 1, Op. 36 - courtesy of Musopen