All posts tagged as: mali
View From The Desert
I’ve been talking a lot about Mali’s Festival Au Desert, which The Sway Machinery just performed at. For some reason, I’m just totally captivated by the idea of a music festival right in the middle of the desert sand dunes. When I found BBC World Service’ gallery of photos from the festival, I knew I had to share some of them here:
Help The Sway Machinery Get to Mali!
The Sway Machinery has put together a very special fundraiser to help them along in their pilgrimage to Mali for Festival Au Desert, and that is taking place 12/12 at The Sixth Street Synagogue in NYC:
LIVE AND IN CONCERT
SHAKING THE PULPIT
OF THE 100 YEAR OLD SIXTH STREET COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE
325 E. Sixth Street (between 1st Ave. and 2nd Ave.)
The Sway Machinery
Saturday December 12 @8:30PM
A WILD CELEBRATION of the 2nd NIGHT of CHANUKAH
-A CONCERT FUNDRAISER FOR-
*THE SWAY MACHINERY PILGRIMAGE PROJECT*
PURCHASE TICKETS ONLINE NOW
$15.00
— OPEN BAR —
Rocker-Cantorial innovator Jeremiah Lockwood accepts an historic invitation to be the first Jewish performer to hit the stage at Mali’s “Festival of the Desert” taking place in the heart of Islamic West Africa
IN 3 AND A HALF WEEKS!
The band needs your $ support to unleash
“THE SWAY MACHINERY PILGRIMAGE”
film documentary, CD recording and fund raising effort with Emmy Award winning filmmaker, Jonathan Hock who will follow The Sway Machinery on an extraordinary journey thru the Sahara desert and Malian recording sessions as ombudsmen of peace, reconciliation and collaborative musical discovery.
“The Sway Machinery Pilgrimage, as they have entitled their Africa project, is a beautiful example for the world of the great role artists can play in building bridges of love and understanding between cultures. This project is of clear importance in establishing new and positive images of Jews and Muslims engaging with each other.”
–Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Chairman, Cordoba Initiative
GOOD NEWS ABOUT JEWS AND MUSLIMS
DOESN’T SELL AS WELL AS BAD NEWS
WHICH IS WHY THE SWAY MACHINERY NEED YOUR HELP
- TO RAISE FUNDS IMMEDIATELY-
AND MAKE SOME NOISE
Pilgrimage, pt. II
Hey everyone.
The temperature in my brain keeps mounting as I work my way forward with all the logistics of our trip to MALI! We are planning a big kick off benefit concert Saturday night, December 12….more about that soon! Still, I’m rapidly tying up all the loose ends, getting my travel inoculations, finishing arrangements for the new material we will be recording, trying to talk to as many people as possible about travel in Mali to prepare myself!
We are still crazy short on funds for the trip, so if anyone out there feels like supporting this project, here’s a link to a donation site.
THE SWAY MACHINERY: Pilgrimage
Hey everyone!
I am in a state of great excitement preparing right now for The Sway Machinery’s first trip to Africa!
We have been invited to perform at the legendary Festival of the Desert in Mali, the festival that launched the career of Tinariwen and has featured all of the greats of Malian music (Ali Farka Toure, Selif Keita) as well as international luminaries like Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin and Manu Chao!
We are hitting the big time: playing for an audience of 10,000 in the middle of the SAHARA DESERT…I kid you not.
The Sway Machinery will also be the first band representing any aspect of Jewish culture at this massive Malian festival. As you may know, Mali is an Islamic nation, where Judaism was formally banned in an Inquisition in the year 1492 (the same year as the more famous Spanish Inquisition and Expulsion of the Jews), so the prospect of traveling to Africa as a representative of the Jewish community is extremely daunting, exciting and deeply humbling!
While in Mali we will also be followed by a small film crew documenting our experience, PLUS we will be recording our next album in Mali after the festival
It’s all too much to describe in one blog entry, so I will attempt to post weekly updates about the progress of our preparation here on the JDub blog page. Also, I’d like to put it out there that we are still grossly under budget for this project. Feel like getting involved? You can make an immediate impact on the success of this unprecedented meeting of cultures by making a tax-deductible donation. Click for the donation page of our fiscal sponsor, Joodayoh, Inc:
Above is a video clip from the Festival. Feast your eyes! Khaira Arby, who is featured in this clip, will be one of the guest artists performing with us on the new Sway Machinery album that we will be recording!