THE CITY’S SONG | "oFF" Voix de Femmes

Two musicians, a documentary maker and a photographer travel to distant cities. Each time they take a song. In their ‘city of arrival’ they make music with singer-songwriters and musicians and they share stories. A lot comes together here. Together the musicians, photographer and documentary maker create a new and topical musical-visual portrait of ‘their’ city.
In a first phase (April 2016), musician and initiator Thomas Noël left for Ramallah, along with violinist Wouter Vandenabeele and photographer Sammy Van Cauteren. They met musicians, poets and artists and immersed themselves all the way down the city. Together with singer-songwriter Shadi Zaqtan, multi-instrumentalist Faris Shomali (Bel3Ax) and oed player Noor Alraee, they exchanged music and played sessions in local music clubs. At the same time, the project was further documented and city  audio and video clips were collected as pre-production material. A first try-out of the musical program was presented to the Palestinian audience on April 17, 2016 at The Palestinian Circus School in Bir Zeit.

A final ensemble was formed and the Belgian and Palestinian crew traveled together to Belgium to present two concerts (in the Expedition and De Centrale) in Ghent in the context of the Eye On Palestine art festival. The ensemble was completed at that time with Percussionist François Taillefer (Canada) and the Dubai-resident Palestinian vocalist / oed player Azza Zarour. For a third concert, the group worked with Bruno Deneckere and Lieven Tavernier, who previously participated in The City's Song-Gent, Fluitiste Žofka Kašparová (Czech Republic) and accordionist Kieren Alexander (Australia).
The responses to the project were extremely positive, both from the organizers and the public and their own crew. Although it was necessary to make low-budget production and the actual preparation time was very limited, the quality of the performances was of a high level. The physical encounter between the artists in both homelands as well as the fact that they have traveled as a group throughout the whole journey  make this project a success in the human field and so does the fact that  the story is authentic in itself.