2 new pieces in Partizan Jam collection
- News
Dear comrades,
Free Home University together with Arkadiy Kots Band are happy to share the TransEuropean Partizan Jam project initiated in May 2020. Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the victory over nazi-fascism, we recorded some tracks as a way to continue our studies on what is antifascism today, how it may sound, and what it may teach us.
We contacted many musicians, non-musicians, activists from all over Europe to start a sonic investigation based on the simple gesture of revisiting the most important songs of the partisan tradition which exists as a multilingual and inclusive language for people united against nazism and fascism.The partisan anti-nazi movement was mostly self-organized, yet it had an incredible impact on the results of WWII. It was a fearless network of people organized all around Europe, fighting for self-determination, liberation from occupation, and freedom for all. These movements also used music and poetry as a way of transmission of their ideals and struggles, and reinforce alliances and solidarity across Europe and beyond.
We also invited visual artists to accompany the pieces with their artworks, and we are building an archive of oral testimonies and personal stories from each contributor on our multi-media website TransEuropean Partizan Jam where you can find additional material about the songs, translations, and related essays.
Among the contributing musicians and artists, we’d like to thank and salute:
Rena Vladan (Beograd \ East Berlin)
Enza Pagliara & Dario Muci (Salento)
Aliaksandra Osipava (Pinsk, Belarus)
During 2020, in the middle of the pandemia, we succeeded to produce from remote positions four of the ten anthems we wish to record:
BELLA CIAO - apparently the most sang Italian combat song of all times;
AY CARMELA! - the anthem of the Spanish Civil War;
ZOG NIT KEYNMOL -the Song of Jewish Partisans;
KONTRATAK, - based on a poem by Wladyslaw Szlengel, the poet of the Warsaw Ghetto
Every new piece of the TransEuropean Partizan Jam will also pop up at FireflyFrequencies.org - our vernacular radio for insurgent forms of life and (un)learning.
All this was only possible thanks to the support of Musagetes (Canada) and the Ecoversities Alliance
We wish you a real antifascist 2021, hoping you will find a lot to discover surfing through our website, listening, watching, reading the stories, singing along or keeping this tradition alive
yours in struggle,