UNITED KINGDOM: URBAN MIDDLE-EASTERN DANCE MUSIC FESTIVAL "HUBBLE BULLE 'GRAND BAZAR' TAKES PLACE IN A LONDON CHURCH

Record ID: 753166

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: URBAN MIDDLE-EASTERN DANCE MUSIC FESTIVAL "HUBBLE BULLE 'GRAND BAZAR' TAKES PLACE IN A LONDON CHURCH
  • Date: 13th October 2001
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF THE BAND "MUKKA" PERFORMING WITH DANCER SLV CROWD WATCHING CU/WIDE DANCER PERFORMING WITH "MUKKA" (2 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 28th October 2001 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Reuters ID: LVA8A62TQDBPC0D8T8D9NZSRYEK
  • Story Text: Up to twenty bands specializing in urban middle-eastern dance music came together recently for the first "Hubble Bubble 'Grand Bazaar' Festival" in London.
    Ironically, the bands from a predominantly Muslim background performed in a church.
    Take one hospitable church venue, a free weekend, twenty or so experimental middle eastern music acts, (including an unannounced performance from the genre's diva, Natasha Atlas), all of them drawing on everything from Sufi melodies to Algerian Rai, urban dance beats and Moroccan house.
    Add to that, a host of top DJ's, a pinch of Egyptian, Persian and Turkish dance, some trapeze artists and stilt walkers, one fire juggler, a bar, a "Grand Bazaar" and a Turkish food stall.
    Mix together with an Ottoman-styled chill out zone, the sort that serves mint tea and flavoured tobacco in shisha pipes.
    Garnish with an audience of five hundred or so who like shaking their hips and are up for a good time. What have you cooked up? Paradise on earth. For a short time at least.
    London based musician and festival organiser, Necmi Cavli did just that recently when he staged the first "Hubble Bubble, 'Grand Bazaar' Festival", in of all places a Christian church.
    "...there is a need for this kind of platform to be improved to give a chance to music and musicians and bands coming from communities particularly like North African, Turkish, Kurdish and Middle Eastern communities", says Cavli.
    Inspired by the rich musical communities around him, with sound roots coming from predominantly Muslim cultures, Cavli started "Hubble Bubble" a small club that pumped urban middle eastern dance music out of a north London basement. "Hubble Bubble" served as a platform for Cavli's own band "Oojami" as well as many others from the various communities living in the area. "Coming to church in Islington also was interesting, a sort of mixture of the whole completely, you know, opposite cultures. So we became almost a melting pot for the different cultures and different music", says Cavli.
    The recent festival brought bands together from much further afield. The Tunisian influenced, Paris-based electro-fusion band, "Smadj" and Radio Nova DJ Yves Thibord came over from France while global fusion band, "Lonek's Kismet" and Turkish funkers, "Orientation" traveled from Berlin.
    Over the course of two days a mixed crowd bathed in "Fantazia's", Algerian jazz-fusion, Anatolia's upbeat Turkish folk, oriental hip-hop and traditional Middle Eastern singing.
    Washing away the week's stresses and the fast-spreading apocalyptic public mood that would have us believe the world's people truly are beyond dialogue and understanding.
    Gathered in the cloisters of London's Union Chapel, Turks shared the stage with Syrians, northern Europeans joined-in belly-dancing workshops and Israelis and Palestinians jumped up and down to the rousing rhythms of Momo's wild Moroccan trance.
    "...we're playing a lot of Arabic music, we're playing a lot of Jewish music we all realize it all comes from the same source its the same language at the beginning of the day and I think music is definitely a healing thing. I think the people who are firing the rockets they don't listen to enough music", says "Mukka's" Frank Biddulph.
    A brief dip into "Hubble Bubble's" intoxicating sounds and sensual dance pleasures proved, for anyone present with any doubts, that music crosses the cultural barriers that sometimes seem so difficult to jump in other areas of daily life.
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