In the spirit of keeping things warm and going after an energizing winter festival in December 2024, a couple of smaller TüFolk concerts were scheduled for March 2025. The timing was interesting: among upsetting uncertainty about the project continuity — due to the unfortunately usual underfunding of independent art projects of public interest —, we were feeling closer than in a long time; the festival had been cheered by many in our beloved community and attracted a welcome surge in people interested in the project. We were motivated to, at the very least, top such an amazing season off. So, after a short break, there we were, back to our weekly Friday rehearsal sessions at Fichtehaus.
Photo from Rosa Bandera
The idea for the March concerts was to present some of the more well-rounded pieces from the festival, plus new ones learned in January and a few more that we could propose to play in small ensembles, subsets of the orchestra. For me, personally, it represented a nice opportunity to resume a Brazilian song we had practiced a few months before, but ended up never playing publicly: Eu Vi Mamãe Oxum na Cachoeira, a percussion-intensive traditional praising for entities of iorubá-influenced Brazilian religions like Umbanda and Candomblé. It would be a challenge: we had no more than a couple of months left to practice until the concerts (it may seem like a lot, but time flies!), with the added complication of a 3-week absence on my end for a long before planned trip home.
Other ensembles didn’t have it easier — after all, finding time to practice beyond our normal sessions, trying to accommodate all sorts of personal and external constraints, is not a relaxed task. However, TüFolkers are used to making it work amidst restrictions, and so we did: making concessions to each other and counting on support from friends and community — from finding practicing venues to repeating lessons together —, we found a way.
Having the concerts in the same place where our regular sessions take place was also an interesting plus. The familiarness of the Fichtehaus stage and coziness of the Saal, while not preventing butterflies in our stomachs (after all, an audience is always an audience), made the whole process more natural and fun — thus aligned with the essence of TüFolk. This ended up being a valuable lesson from the March concerts: the less pressure and fear of making mistakes, the more fluidity and truth we feel in the process.
Photo from Rosa Bandera
In this warm-hearted environment, we were glad to deliver a diverse setlist to a full house: Yek Mûmik, a Kurdish wedding song that celebrates love and reunion; Kalyan, an Indian composition on inner serenity by Sharad Joshi; Tsangala Da Gogona, a lively and rhythmical chant from 60s Georgia about a dancing boy and girl; Deutscher Nr. 58, a German fiddle tune likely from the late 18th century; El Helwa Di, an iconic Egyptian song from the early 20th century by Sayeid Darwish, picturing a beautiful woman’s ordinary morning; and Cumbia del Monte, an energetic and metalinguistic representative of the traditional Colombian rhythm. Besides the core setlist with the whole orchestra, our self-organized small groups presented some novelties: Si Me Quieres Escribir, an emblematic republican chant from the Spanish Civil War; the popular Italian revolutionary anthem Bella Ciao; a traditional Greek ballad about the journey of an ingenuous young man, Kemal; and the aforementioned Afro-Brazilian rhythmical piece.
Photo from Rosa Bandera
The second round of the concert was performed a couple of weeks later with fewer members (some of which had to be out of town) and a smaller — but just as kind and attentive — audience. A couple of pieces had to be altered or dropped, but we had the joy of seeing two new small ensembles: the Cristóbal Araya Altamirano and David Torrejon super wind-guitar duo performing the Chilean cueca La Torre de Huillinco and Um Tom pra Jobim, a forró-samba-bossa tribute to Tom Jobim by Brazilian musician Sivuca; and the graceful duo Yasminebi, by Maia Mirziashvili and Olivier Gemin, presenting a diverse set of folk pieces in cello, voice and guitar.
Photo from Rosa Bandera
We are grateful to have had the opportunity of doing this together and hope that many more will come. A special thanks goes out to our beloved mentors Maia Mirziashvili, Cristóbal Araya Altamirano, David Torrejon and Gabi Wunderle; Nour Ahmad who was involved in many production and organizational aspects during the whole process; Klangfolk e.V, the organization behind this and many other important projects for our community; and, of course, our amazing audience and supporters.
See you next season!
Text from Raysa Benatti