Oh Big Blue in Concert
JOHN ENEFER
A remarkable night is in store at the Stade Hall on 5 July which will showcase both the breadth of musical talent in Hastings as well as the big heart that beats within the local community of musicians and songwriters. Oh Big Blue in Concert is the brainchild of soprano Chiara Vinci, who has pulled together an array of talent to raise much needed funds for the Al-Mawasi community in Gaza, to which Hastings is officially linked.
Chiara was inspired to organise the concert after seeing an exhibition of poetry and art from Palestinian children in Hastings last year and also the book which accompanied the exhibition.
“I went to the Oh Big Blue exhibition on my own,” she remembers; “I came away silently and profoundly moved and full of hope. The book and the artwork captured my imagination, and my heart – these poems were songs. Something to be created and held in consciousness for all time. But I needed collaborators.”
Stepping up to help Chiara realise her vision was the Hands Up project (an organisation that works – using art and theatre – with Palestinian children), the Hastings and District Palestine Solidarity Campaign as well as a slew of local musicians, singers and composers, all of whom have adapted the children’s poems into music.
At the concert people can expect a variety of music from acoustic to classical, from established names like Bev Lee Harling, Frank Moon and Chiara herself, to promising new artists like Ruby Colley.
Funds from the event will go to the Hands Up Project and Hastings friends of Al-Mawasi, which for the last three years has offered friendship and practical solidarity to the community in southern Gaza, enabling them to install solar panels on roofs, construct a bakery inside a war-damaged building as well as other initiatives.
People from the Al-Mawasi Resilience Committee hold Zoom meetings with their supporters in Hastings to give updates on their projects and their lives in general. The work of the Resilience Committee, and of Hastings Friends of Al-Mawasi, only grows more vital as Israel tightens its siege on Gaza. In May there was confirmation that a ban by the Israeli government on 37 foreign organisations operating in Gaza, including Save the Children and Oxfam, will be enforced. Summing up the situation in Gaza since the ‘ceasefire’ began last October, Oxfam states: “Civilians in Gaza continue to face the horrors of a genocide. Indiscriminate attacks on homes, schools, hospitals, and refugee camps continue by the Israeli military. And life-saving aid is still being blocked.”
Speaking of the concert, Chiara says: “As a collective of artists and musicians from Hastings, we deeply feel the urge and the desire to keep showing up in solidarity and support for Palestine.” She promises the concert will be ‘an evening to remember’.
Oh Big Blue in Concert will take place at the Stade Hall, on Sunday 5 July at 7pm. Tickets are available from Eventbrite.
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