Launch of These Are Our Friends Too Album
Our Musicians Unite to End FGM project is proud to announce the launch of These Are Our Friends Too, a unique album that highlights the work we do towards ending FGM (female genital mutilation). The album is the brainchild of FORWARD and founder of Tse Tse Fly Middle East Simon Coates, and continues FORWARD’s These Are Our Friends project, a collection of poetry from young people from London, Bristol, Manchester and Birmingham that responds to the themes of FGM and its consequences. The first stage of the project resulted in a book of the same name that features more than thirty pieces of work, a short film made with Media Trust, and the new collaboration will see nineteen of the poems re-imagined.
Known for their live experimental music productions, interventions and artworks that are used to draw attention to human rights issues, Tse Tse Fly Middle East hand-picked a selection of female artists and musicians, and each one was given a spoken word recording of one of the poems read by members of the FORWARD team and poets from the book. The artists then composed and recorded a sonic background for their designated piece, with the resulting spoken word and experimental music compositions making up the new, nineteen-track set, These Are Our Friends Too. The album features contributions from some of the foremost female proponents of noise from Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Serbia, Bulgaria and Sweden, as well as UK-based collaborators. And the visceral, uncompromising and unsettling tracks that result reflect the disturbing nature of female genital mutilation.
These Are Our Friends Too is now available to buy on Bandcamp – as well as being available to stream online.
Everyone involved has given their time for free, with all proceeds from sales of the album going directly to FORWARD.
