The Decolonise Choir

Check out its amazing songs "I Notice Myself Tangling" and another about Palestine

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I don’t know about you, but I can’t get enough of “decolonising” things - especially when it’s taxpayer-funded “decolonisation”.

I was delighted, for instance, to hear of the initiative “Decolonising Contraception”, which received over £85,000 in government grants last year:

My joy was only trumped by the news that taxpayers are subsidising a Bolivian student to “decolonise” Bolivian museums in Bolivia - another sign of how much the university sector contributes to the British economy:

Why are we paying for a Bolivian student to "decolonise" Bolivian museums... in Bolivia?

Never mind the hundreds of other taxpayer-funded university projects designed to decolonise everything from the city of York…

How do you 'decolonise' something?

… to folk music:

There seems to be no end to such empowering initiatives to “decolonise” things - indeed, yesterday I even learnt that we need to “decolonise” singing.

Meet, the “Decolonise Choir” at Tara Theatre, “for people of global majority.”

Tara Theatre explains:

The project is supported by Decolonise Fest, a festival by and for punx of colour focused on programming alternative and punk musicians of colour. Decolonise Choir was formed by community musician and organiser Ishani Jasmin, aiming to create a space for our global majority community to experience the joy, the resistance, and the healing of singing together. We aim to use collective song and songwriting to exist and to coexist.

Here’s more information about “Decolonise Fest” if you’d like to buy a ticket (but only if you identify with the label “punx of colour”):

The choir is led Ishani Jasmin, an “organiser, facilitator, and community musician” whose “focus in recent years has been on diversifying the London music scene”.

She’s certainly made an impact. I love this stunning hit by Decolonise Choir below about Palestine (full version here):

And also this classic-in-the-making, “I Notice Myself Tangling”:

Here’s the Decolonise Choir in rehearsals:

A choir of principles

It’s important that any new member of Decolonise Choir is on board with its ethos, embodied in a manifesto - which makes clear that no discrimination will be tolerated in this choir for people of colour only:

Further resources include a Decolonise Choir playlist - to help you get into the mood of decolonising things - featuring Johnny Cash, Sugababes and Nelly Furtado:

How much?

Decolonise Choir is playing at Tara Theatre (Tara Arts Group on the Charity Commission)…

… which has received over £600,000 in government grants since 2019:

Supporters include Arts Council England and Wandsworth Borough Council…

… as well as the Mayor of London - no stranger to Global Majority projects:

Starting today: "Global Majority" festival funded by Sadiq Khan

In writing this piece I discovered that Tara Theatre has blocked me on X (both my normal and Woke Waste accounts) - a real mystery given the incredible work its doing. Doesn’t it want the world to know about Decolonise Choir and other acts?

Like this fantastic poem from one of its events:

Being a technological genius, I simply used another X account to have a nose at Tara Theatre’s output.

Like Decolonise Choir, the theatre takes geopolitical issues very seriously…

… even joining a “Palestine walkout” organised by “major cultural institutions”:

Such actions remind me of Pavithra Natarajan, a taxpayer-funded student researching “Early years in Scotland: An exploration of "race", class, gender and coloniality in child-centred learning within home educating communities of colour” at the University of Edinburgh.

She, too, was brave enough to step away from her state-subsidised work to support a Global Strike:

Wanting to discover more about the Decolonise Choir?

You can find videos, including its “Decolonise Choir noise machine”, on Instagram.

And buy tickets to its shows here.

So what are you waiting for?

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