Renaissance Peace Chants - arranged for peace walks

Renaissance Peace Chants

A story about connection to Oxford read over a traditional spiritual/protest song

How do we connect ?

A celebration of the unusual,  Weird Old Donald is a tribute to an entity that has dedicated its life to eradicating humanity from Planet Earth. Otherwise known as Cthulu this fantastical story teller - DT - has developed formidable techniques for instilling nihilistic despair in all who encounter him through an inspired ability to create a stream of meaningless sound that emulates Republican values (itself an impossibility to comprehend) and reduces all aural victims to a desire for collective suicidal oblivion.

Vocals: Ciaran Walsh
Operatic excess: Luccy Lindling
Other stuff: Malcolm Atkins

Weird Old Donald

A guide recording for Still No Room at the Inn 

molla mammad jan

This is a recording  of a Lament for Gaza that has been recorded as a guide for performance in Still No Room at the Inn.
It includes a lament for Gaza based on a Punjabi setting of a Palestinian melody by Nuzhat Abbas that was translated and developed by Lynn Hawkins and Malcolm Atkins
A traditional Hebrew Lament
A setting of a German text used for peace rallies in Germany in the 1988s and 1990s
A setting of the poem If I Must Die by Refaat Alareer

These different parts are here sung by Lizzy Spight and Malcolm Atkins
The image is of the Tapestry for Peace created by Oxford artists in collaboration with the Oxford Peace Camp earlier this year/

Gaza Lament in English

Two short poems from the book Moon tell me truth

I am in Love with the Moon by Najah Nayef Al-Muqayad (aged 9)
Dreams and Moon by  Noran Bilal Ismael (aged 9)

Music composed by Malcolm Atkins
Vocals: Lizzy Spight
Vocals and other stuff Malcolm Atkins

The Moon and Dreams  by  Najah Nayef Al-Muqayad  and  Noran Bilal Ismael

I Always Dream of a Life is a poem written by Obada Mohammad Abu Oda, aged 14. Obada was killed by an Israeli strike on his home on 25 October, 2023.

It was featured in the Hands Up project book Moon Tell Me Truth and has recently been shared through West England Bylines. 

Vocals:   LIzzy Spight
Reading and other stuff:  Malcolm Atkins

I Always Dream of a Life by Obada Mohammad Abu Oda

An African round repurposed for the current crimes against humanity that fill our reluctant media 

Stop the Genocide

An early canon repurposed to comment on televised mass murder  as supported by Labour Friend of Genocide

We Want Action

'When I was young I struggled to understand how a nation could fall under the spell of Nazism and commit unimaginable atrocities as a consequence. How did one person manage to upend the values of an entire nation? In my lifetime only one person has had such an effect on my own nation. I know the atrocities are not comparable, but nor is the aftermath. Germany has pretty convincingly agreed amongst itself that it stuffed up back there but we sadly remain, as the baton is passed from Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron and Clegg, Thatcher's Britain'. Miles Doubleday

The Moon and Dreams by Najah Nayef Al-Muqayad and Noran Bilal Ismael

Westbury People's Gallery

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