GWMF in new ‘BrightMed’ initiative

The Gibraltar World Music Festival 2017 is expanding. The sixth edition of the festival will see the introduction of a new initiative called ‘BrightMed’ with the aim of celebrating the values of peace, universalism and spirituality as “convivencia”. The three day event – Tuesday 6 to Thursday 8 June – under the umbrella of the GWMF – will include films, talks, a conference and exhibition as well as the annual music concert all under the theme of “GWMF 2017: Uprising”.
The festival this year will mainly focus on African artists, said organiser Yan Delgado at a press conference yesterday morning.
Each year, he said, the GWMF tried to tell the story of a region of the world or a specific style of music always delivering the same strong values of peace, universalism and spirituality as ‘convivencia’ and inter-cultural exchange.
The aim as always is to make Gibraltar the unique meeting point of North-South/East-West, added Mr Delgado, and as the organisers they had invited Sages - World Peace Leaders - to discuss world issues starting with “Convivencia” in the hope of bringing together all the different elements that make up this year’s festival.
With BrightMed, he explained, the organisers had wanted to go beyond the music and the festival itself.
The events of the week will also include the BrightMed International Conference which is expected to be held at the University of Gibraltar. A BrightMed Film Festival is also being organised which will take place at Leisure Cinemas and will be showing documentaries reflecting the struggle of musicians from Mali: ‘They Will Have To Kill Us First: Malian music in exile’ is a feature-length documentary following musicians in Mali and the second is ‘Mali Blues’ a musical journey following Fatoumata Diawara.
This said Mr Delgado would be followed by the BrightMed Talks, based on the Ted Talks concept, which would be made available to local students. These talks are expected to be led by peace leaders and other relevant speakers. The names will be released in the coming months.
Both Yan and Fatush Delgado, were keen to point out that the Gibraltar World Music Festival would remain as the music entertainment of the week emphasising its theme “Uprising” which would further illustrate the concept and introduction of BrightMed.
Various local artists from the Gibraltar Fine Arts Association will also join in the BrightMed Art Exhibition called “Convivencia”. The Gibraltar Academy of Music and the Performing Arts (GAMPA), the Gibraltar International Dance Academy (GIDA) and local schools will be amongst those participating in the festival’s annual street party which this year is called ‘Afreeka’ and which will take place at Commonwealth Park.
“The GWMF will tell the story of artists from Africa (Ethiopia and Mali) and their continuous fight to exist as musicians despite the oppression from extremists,” said Mr Delgado.
“Musicians who are struggling to exist as musicians because in their countries, such as Mali, they are prohibited to play music.”
And with this in mind the final day of the festival will as always feature a concert in St Michael’s Cave which this year will involve three artists: Yossi Fine with music from the Blue Desert, Gili Yalo from Ethiopia, and the Malian Ngoni player Bassekou Kouyate.