Our good and true friends at Freemuse.org have sent out a worldwide invitation to celebrate on March 3, 2008 Music Freedom Day. Radio stations, newspapers and musicians across five continents are set to collaborate in raising awareness of the plight of censored musicians all across the globe. Meant as a statement of its commitment to fighting music censorship and supporting freedom of expression for all artists, Freemuse’s Music Freedom Day will leap headlong into an open global conversation that will cross language barriers and cultural differences.
Part of the Music Freedom Day conversation will include a concert and seminar in Oslo, Norway that will be broadcast across the globe. This year’s participants will include Kris Kristofferson from the US, Ferhat Tunc from Turkey, Mari Boine from Norway and Chiwoniso Maraire from Zimbabwe.With the recent threats against Syrian singer Assala Nasry at the First Aden Singing Festival in Yemen by Islamic fundamentalists or the cancellation of Grammy winner Alejandro Sanz’s concert after he criticized Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, the call to end censorship and support musicians across the globe needs your help and participation.
For more information about Freemuse and Music Freedom Day 2008 you can go to Freemuse.org. You can also go to http://www.freemuse.org/sw19297.asp for ideas on how you can participate in Music Freedom Day.
The Freemuse site offers news from around the world about music censorship, information on campaigns and conferences, video interviews with musicians, downloadable publications and radio interviews available free of charge.
Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow.
Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931.
Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.
