Small Island Big Song “Our Island” Tour

Description

Small Island Big Song is a multi-platform project uniting the seafaring cultures of the Pacific and Indian Oceans through songs, a contemporary and relevant musical statement from a region at the frontline of the Climate Crisis. Framed in a theatrical narrative amongst panoramic visuals of the artist’s homelands, the audience experiences a musical journey across the breadth and into the soul of island nations of Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean, meeting an ancient seafaring ancestry and confronting the impacts of climate change head on, as the performers and youth ambassadors share their island's voice supported through the cinematic sequences. https://www.smallislandbigsong.com/ Drawing on a roster of respected first nation artists, the concert features musicians performing irresistible oceanic grooves to soulful island ballads engaging audiences from huge festival stages to intimate theatres. Combining music, spoken word and live cinema with AV projections featuring footage collected during a 3-year film trip across 16 countries guided by the artists on their homelands. Moving beyond the concert experience, Small Island Big Song offers a variety of opportunities for students and audiences to investigate the environmental, political, social and cultural contexts on our oceans’ islands. Motivated by the 5th IPCC report, Taiwanese producer BaoBao Chen and Australian music producer/filmmaker Tim Cole spent three years visiting artists on their homelands, recording with their guidance in nature, sharing songs from island to island. The outcomes include two award-winning albums, a feature film, edu' programs, and a live concert that has toured around the world across four continents reaching over 200K+ live audiences since the world premiere at SXSW 2018. Small Island Big Song explores the cultural connections of the vast ocean through the Austronesian migration. Working with artists who have made a choice to maintain the cultural voice of their people, to sing in the language, and to play the instruments of their land. These unique lineages mixed with their diverse contemporary styles - roots-reggae, beats, grunge, RnB, folk & spoken-word, establishing a contemporary musical dialogue between cultures as far afield as Madagascar, Aotearoa, Taiwan, Mauritius, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Tahiti and Rapa Nui, creating "One coherent jaw dropping piece" as described by Rob Schwartz - Billboard.