22-26th of October – WOMEX, Tampere, Finland
Happy times in Tampere, Finland, for Womex 2025. Fantastic concerts of The Handover, Compota de Manana, Dal:um, Etuk Ubong, K’boko, The Zawose Queens, Meral Polat, AySay, … great talks, food and drinks, glad to have met all of you and hope to see you again. And wonderful being in Tampere again, discovering more of the city, its surroundings, trees, factories and sauna’s of course.
20-21st of October – Visit to Global Music Centre, Helsinki, Finland
Thank you Maailman musiikin keskus, Jaana-Maria Jukkara and Janne Ahonen for the introduction in the Global Music Centre, it’s archive and team. During the same days we visited the Finish Literature Society where we heard the earliest recordings from Finnish and Baltic music, collected by Risto Blomster, and the Music Archive Finland, where Maaret Storgårds and Jouni Eerola learned us everything about archiving, digitisation, metadata, and Finnish jazz.
23rd of September – Feniks
Fenikses (phoenixes) are the imiration of human bodies, carefully wrapped in a white piece of fabric, carried around the city to bring the sadness of the ongoing genocide in Gaza to the streets of Ghent (Belgium). The initiative of Ip Man and Vrede vzw was accompanied by Ledebirds playing compositions of Dick van der Harst. We walked through the center of the city, ending with a meaningful moment at Kinderrechtenplein close to the Lieve canal.
18-27th of July – Ghent Festivities, Trefpunt
The woven fabric, first installed for the walk in the scope of the Poorten expo, got a second life during the Ghent Festivities in Baudelopark, where it served as a beautiful sun screen or a colourful decoration.
10th of June – De Poorten, walk and performance
The expo De Poorten from STAM Gent, organised walks around the 19th century neighbourhoods of Ghent, during which we installed a woven roof made of recycled fabrics (thanks to Open Plaats) between the remaining structures of an old textile factory. For each group of visitors, we played De 4 Getouwen, the old workmans song by 19th century singer Karel Waeri, later reinterpreted by Walter De Buck. We accompanied the song with some instruments and the rhythmic sound of the weaving machines. A project by Op & Neer, weaving atelier.
