Today is the International Women’s Day and we would like to pay tribute to those women, whoever and wherever they are, who stand against the terror and fight for their rights.
The International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation has a long tradition of organizing concerts and stage productions delivering strong messages. Utopia or not, we still believe that music remains an extraordinary and essential vector for harmony and tolerance between populations and people. We leverage our strenghts to bring together musicians and artists from very different cultures, backgrounds and horizons. That’s when unexpected and magical outcomes often appear.
The productions of concerts allow for an extraordinary experience of the arts but stir reflection about one’s own perspective and wider meanings.
Hence the concert “Voices for Peace” at the Cirque Royal in Brussels in 1997 featuring seven women from areas of the world in which poverty or oppression were facts of life. Seven women who sang for peace and gave a beautiful lesson of humanity and dignity, accompanied by the traditional instruments of their culture.
The International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation invited seven singers from all over the world to come and sing peace at the Cirque Royal. The choice of performers and their originis was no coincidence since the omnipresent message of this evening was to pay tribute to these women, whoever they are, who oppose terror.
It might seem a little utopian – voices as beautiful as they are were never able to silence weapons – but when the moving Algerian Houria Aïchi began to sing the sound of the flute and bendir, you did not have to be an expert in international politics to feel the pain of an entire peaple.
The bubbling gypsy Esperanza Fernandez, the Tibetan Mantras of Yang Du Tso, the Israeli-Yemeni singer and crusader for cultural harmony Noa, the spokesperson for millions of Amerindians Luzmila Carpio, the legendary Iranian singer Marzieh, and Miriam Makeba, a symbol of the struggle against the apartheid irradiated the Cirque Royal.
For the final, the seven singers all united under Yehudi Menhin’s direction and delivered a powerful message for peace.
