After months of work with Germa Adan, we’re delighted to have released our latest online Resource: Haitian Communal Singing: Black Voices in Common
This forms part of our collection of resources for use in schools commissioned from artists from the Global Majority.
The others include; Black British History and Folk Songs (Angeline Morrison 2023), Black Singers and Folk Ballads (Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne, 2020) and Black Sailors and Sea Shanties (Adriano Adewale, Hazel Askew and Carla Brown, 2015).
The Haitian Communal Singing: Black Voices in Common resource is an introduction to Haitian music, and features recordings and sheet music for four traditional Haitian songs in beautiful arrangements by Germa Adan. It also contains teaching guidance and slideshow resources, audio and video files, as well as introductions to key concepts in Haitian culture contributed by Steveen Ulysse.
The resource is designed for use at Key Stages 2 and 3, but is suitable and available for all.
Haitian Communal Singing: Black Voices in Common
In February this year, as the National Youth Folk Ensemble we were awarded an ABO Impact Award for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for significantly increasing Global Majority representation through working with artists such as Germa Adan, Adriano Adewale, Kuljit Bhamra MBE, Raghad Haddad, Camilo Menjura, and Suntou Susso who all brought music from diverse cultural heritages to the Ensemble.
Later this month, 17 October, we are once again in collaboration with the Black British Folk Collective for the second ever Black British Folk Takeover at Cecil Sharp House. This festival-style all-dayer includes traditional folk sounds, modern British music inspired by folk traditions, workshops, live conversation and much more. Curator Angeline Morrison and friends take over the House with folk sounds, songs, and stories that shine a long overdue light on the African Diaspora's love for, and ongoing conversations with, British folk.
Performers will include: Dundee singer-songwriter Andrew Baird, fiddler Hamilton Gross and ethereal singer Angeline Morrison, British-Ugandan singer-songwriter Daudi Matsiko, groundbreaking English-Jamaican carnival legend Linett Kamala (in conversation), traditional Jamaican Maypole Dance led by Linett / LIN KAM ART, a participatory folk club for everyone to get involved, banjo star Island Girl and singer, songwriter and composer of British-Burundian heritage Muco.
Book for the Black British Folk Takeover
Later in the year, on 16 December, we will be hosting the new BPOC / Global Majority Folk Club Winter Solstice edition.
The Black British Folk Collective x Ffern Folk Foundation are inviting you to bring your own instruments or borrow from our instrument library during the session; and bring your voices to raise in song, bring traditional songs and tunes from where you reside, from your ancestral homelands, or even new songs from your imagination.
Book for the BPOC / Global Majority Folk Club
Wishing you an inspiring Black History Month from everyone here at the English Folk Dance and Song Society at Cecil Sharp House.
