Windrush 75 Festival: Unforgotten Voyages
The glorious finale of our week-long festival: soaring voices, hypnotic drums, roaring brass, and fiery jazz soloists. The full might of the 20-strong Grand Union Orchestra, together with Hackney Empire Community Choir and a Pan-African drumming ensemble, telling the backstory of the Windrush Generation.
Admission: choose what you pay £10/15/20
For many of their forebears, the journey began 500 years ago on the shores of West Africa, with millions transported to Brazil, Cuba, the Caribbean and southern USA in the transatlantic slave trade. Through unimaginable horror, they retained and continued to practise their ancestral traditions – customs, religion, music and dance.
“For 40 years, Grand Union Orchestra has been mixing jazz with dance and carnival, young artists with major established names, choirs with steel bands. And through it all, with a huge sense of fun”
Unforgotten Voyages celebrates the indomitable spirit and legacy of the African diaspora and its immense impact on the world today, especially through music. At its centre is a specially-assembled drumming ensemble whose heritage includes Angola, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, Nigeria, South America, and the Caribbean, playing instruments from djembe, conga, and dum dum to talking drum, balafon, and kalimba.