Refugee Songs: A Musical Journey
Refugee Songs is a new musical/concert experience that weaves together an original world fusion and acoustic-rock musical score with spoken word poetry and storytelling to narrate the journey of a young Persian American musician uprooted from Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and his subsequent struggle to create a new home for himself in the United States. Interwoven with spoken word poetry inspired by oral histories gathered from refugees living in Southern California, Refugee Songs offers an intimate close-up on one young man’s experience of childhood displacement and coming of age as well as wide-angle poetic musings on the triumphs and tribulations that many displaced people experience, albeit differently, in their own journeys.
Inspired by violinist and songwriter Bahman Sarram’s experience fleeing Iran with his family following the Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise to power, Refugee Songs is a creative collaboration between Sarram and his band, the Mystic Groove Collective, and scriptwriter Anita Casavantes Bradford, associate professor of Chicano Latino Studies and History at the University of California Irvine.