Poverty Requiem: Express yourself against poverty

The Poverty Requiem is a musical piece that gives people the chance to raise their voice to make an artistic and political statement for the struggle against world poverty. It has been created by campaign organisations to remind world leaders about their promise to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The Poverty Requiem is a musical piece for choir, percussion and two soloists (alt and soprano), and gives as many people as possible the chance to raise their voices to make an artistic and political statement for the struggle against world poverty.

The people involved, use this musical manifestation to draw the attention of the public, the media, politics and everybody else who wants to listen to it. Taking part in the Poverty Requiem means using your voice to sing against poverty.

The Millennium Goals
In 2000 189 member states of the United Nations promised to really push back poverty in the fifteen years to come. That promise was expressed as eight Millennium Goals. GCAP, Civicus and Oxfam Novib campaign internationally to remind the world leaders on 17/10/07 that they are already halfway the period set for achieving the Millennium Goals. The Poverty Requiem will then be staged at different international venues.

The piece
The Poverty Requiem is a vocal work, composed in the idiom of world music. The work consists of five movements. These movements put to music the different ways poverty effects people: suffering, anger, mourning, humour and hope. Short dances can provide a beautiful addition to the theme at such moments. Peter Maissan, composer and conductor, wrote the music for the Requiem. Sylvia Borren, Oxfam Novib’s general director, wrote the text.

The Requiem is intended for a large choir of unlimited numbers of singers, women and men. This choir is divided in 4 groups; a children’s choir, a scratch choir, an experienced choir and a mail choir. During the performance they stand in a circle, dressed in white. The audience stands in the circle. A raised platform is located in the middle of the circle. It is where you find the conductor, the percussion ensemble and possibly a small dance ensemble. The two soloists are driven on bicycles around the circle, in opposite direction. A soloist passing by is for the choir’s singers an important cue for performing a new text. In this manner a natural change in the time and space in the different sound images emerges.

The Requiem has several layers and is for multiple voices, allowing for the effortless mixing of children’s choirs, beginning and experienced choirs. The requiem follows the basic principle of making music democratically. Nobody is excluded on the basis of musical experience or knowledge, age, sex or cultural background. The participants absorb the material with the help of audio and visual examples and instructions to be published on the website, and will thus obtain a big, autonomous share in the whole. This makes it possible for every singer to prepare at home, and limits the number of full repetitions to a minimum.

Even You Can Join the Poverty Requiem.

Performances
The very first performance of Poverty Requiem during the WSF in Nairobi was a great experience! It showed how the performers (More than 200 Kenyan students and children) and the global audience connected to the music.
"It was such a great joy to sing the Poverty Requiem!”, said one of the singers afterwards. “You know what it means to be poor so when you sing it, it relieves you from up till down."

Global White Band Day
For this years Global White band Day, October 17th, the Poverty Requiem is one of the mobilization-activities.
We would like to create a global chain of performances in a sequence of countries all around the world. A tidal wave of noise rippling will go around the world, creating an unbroken 24-hour performance!

For these performances we are looking for individuals, initiatives, organisers and organisations who feel inspired by the Requiem and its underlying theme. We are looking for people and groups of people who feel touched by either the innovative artistic form and methods used in the Requiem, or the political message it encloses, or a combination.

To make happen a staging of the Requiem it is important for a group of enthused people to join forces and starts working with local partners to realise both the production and financing of the Requiem.

The possibilities
The Requiem can be staged in every social and cultural context, with smaller and bigger casts of existing and new choirs especially set up for the occasion, and in combination with other artistic elements, such as dance. This means that it is possible to stage a Requiem – appropriate for the specific choir, venue selected or in the context of another event – which links up with the wishes and possibilities of those directly involved. The Requiem’s voice thus builds a bridge between groups of people with different cultural backgrounds, between different continents and nationalities. The Requiem can be considered a community art project, in which a balance is created between amateurs and professionals and between artistic performance and political message.

The support
It is the local initiators and implementers who carry and realise every local staging of the Requiem. They can count on the support of the central coordination point. This production team provides promotion and makes the music, text and background of the Requiem free accessible via a website, which will go online on March 1, 2007. On this website the Requiem is offered as a score, in text, audio and video files, for all those involved to be able to absorb the Requiem. The site has also been designed to allow for participants to communicate interactively about their own performances with one another and the central coordination point.

In addition to the website the production teams offers support in fundraising, and provides formats in production, press and PR, and communication with those involved. The production team can also mediate in finding conductors, soloists and percussionists, and organises, when desired, instruction meetings. The production team maintains an intensive contact with all local performances.

More information
Interested in the Requiem?
Do you want to know more about the different opportunities for participating or organising a performance?

You can contact the general production team production@povertyrequiem.org
phone +31 (0)6 22.54.37.67

You register for the newsletter with an email to the same address, mentioning ‘newsletter’.

Visit the Requiem’s website for more information from March 1, 2007:
http://www.povertyrequiem.org