Well here I
am at my first Womad and on the first full day I am looking forward to hearing
the veteran Mozambique singer Humberto Carols Bendica. A veteran 70 year old marrabenta vocalist who
started out as a lounge lizard singer in colonial Portuguese in the 60s…on
independence and the emergence of a distinctive marrabenta style he became lead
singer in Orchestra Star de Mocambique.
Sounds like a real great groove to enjoy on the @BBCRadio3 Charlie Gillet
stage ….except no. No Visa …No Humberto….or as he is now rebranded Wazimbo. A BBC announcer apologizes and invites a
local Bristol band to take his place. Its cool but its not Humberto!
Britain is
not open for business if its business with international musicians. Its closed, and the bureaucratic, and
humiliating process musicians have to face to be “allowed” to bring their music
to our country are turning Britain into
a backwater and doing untold damage to Britain’s reputation as a country open
to the world. New quotas in the Foreign Office push processing visas into a laborious and Kafka like dance, which means that visa applications
which come at a cost are submitted and a tortuous wait is made while a mandarin
decides if the skills a musician offered are unique. Meanwhile an offer of a gig elsewehre comes and a call comes through..."Sorry ....Britain is too slow"
The impact
is not just economic either it’s a social impact. Take for example the Pearl of Africa Children’s
Choir from Uganda. This choir and dance
troupe has for many years toured the UK
each year to raise core funding for children’s education at the Molly and Paul Schools in the slums of
Kampala and rural Uganda. The money they
raise by touring the UK schools supports the education of 3000 Uganda children
in 7 schools. The choir is not coming
this year because the cost of applying for visas and the financial risk if they
are turned down makes it “too risky”.
The association with local schools in North West and South West England
between young people is lost..(many Cornish children visit the Ugandan schools
each year to share experience and education). The Uganda schools will be without books and teachers next year as the budget is cut in half.
There is a
central paradox between Liam Fox and rhetoric
of a post Brexit Britain being “open to world markets open for business” and
the the reality of our suspiciously racist visa policy that’s designed to make visitors and traders to our
country feel like beggars who are praying for the privilege to visit and do
business in our country.
Festivals
like Womad are international beacons of music business – a visitor from Italy I
spoke to this morning said they have nothing like this three day immersive
specialist festival in Italy – so to find what’s happening she comes every year
– that is being strangled by this policy .
Dedicated to share cultural and music across continents, its lifeblood
is to bring the unfamiliar and present the UK music lover and performers with
the BEST on offer in the World – Peter Gabriel and his team including Chris
Smith scour the world to engage with the new and the original. So earlier this week Chris Smith poured out his frustration to Radio Times on how the Festival he programmes is hog-tied by the bureaucracy that visa rules put in the way of free exchange of music....there is unlikely to be a musical clone of wazimbo resident in the UK.
I spoke to
Richard, a festival stalwart last night
who has been coming for 12 years and he says he still does not recognise 80% of the
bands programmed. Yes this year there
are big name headline acts Leftfield, Camille and Django Django, and Goldie but its also the seedbed of the new
and the innovative in music. What is the
fringe of today is the mainstream of tomorrow.
Is Britain determined to become a msuical backwater?
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