Osagie Airen is looking for a place where he can live, work and make music in safety. Where he comes from, that is no longer possible. Why else would he have left Nigeria, his family and his friends there? “It was not a plan to be a refugee,” Osagie Airen sang almost five years ago at the Heimatsound Festival in front of hundreds of people in Oberammergau. The audience clapped in approval and chose the song “Refugee” and the band Vue Belle third place in the competition. Probably very few people had any idea what it feels like to have to flee your homeland, what it means to be a refugee. Osagie Airen, who calls himself “Prince White” as a singer, is still a refugee after all these years. He has friends in Munich, a job and the opportunity to make music. Now he should be deported. His asylum application was rejected.
The deportation of Prince White would be “very regrettable” for Munich, that is the “clear position” of the cultural department. “Prince White enriches the city as a musician, we would be very happy if he had the prospect of staying,” said Elke Richly, the people’s culture representative, when asked. This sounds more cautious than she probably means. Because also Richly, which takes place in mid-May Festival “Loud Yodeling” co-organized, Prince White has known him as a special musician for a long time. He will perform at the festival on two evenings together with singer Anna Veit.
Veit studied at the Munich University of Music and at the Vienna Conservatory. She says of her Nigerian colleague: “Prince White is a poet and a very musical person.” Although he is not an opera singer, he can sing anything straight away. She raves about how he gets into the call and response game with her on stage. Even when yodeling. Veit says he immediately understood everything that this style of singing does to singers. She is enthusiastic about his openness, his energy and his great stage presence. Even during rehearsals, Prince White exudes incredible energy. The fact that the legal situation alone decides the whereabouts of a person from abroad and that refugee artists have such a “bad lobby” disturbs the singer. “Their skills and training are not recognized.”
Osagie Airen has lived in Munich for a good six years. He came to a refugee camp in Fürstenfeldbruck via Italy, where he was looked after by a psychiatrist because of his trauma. He gathered courage and successfully applied to the Munich Art Academy. He was able to study there for two years in the media class with Professor Nils Norman, but had to give up his studies because he could no longer afford it financially.
Grotesque, but true: Even a degree would not be enough training for a temporary right to stay. Osagie Airen now only has vocational training as a chance to extend his stay in Munich – at the discretion of the immigration authorities.
He is currently working as a forklift driver. If the 37-year-old could complete a three-year apprenticeship, a residence permit would then be possible.
But if Osagie Airen actually has to leave Germany immediately, Munich would lose an artist and an important refugee project. He founded Vue Belle together with the club “The Long Run”. All band members have refugee experience or a migration background and find confirmation and balance to their stressful everyday lives in singing and performing. The lead singer writes many of the Afropop songs himself, weaves in his experiences, sings about hate and humanity, about freedom and death, but never in a loudly loud manner. Vue Belle has performed, among other things, at the NS Documentation Center, was present at the Long Night of Music, was heard at the Theatron and several times at the Munich Kammerspiele. The musicians are currently one of the highlights at the LautYodeln Festival.
The refugee aid association “The Long Run” is horrified by the impending expulsion of the Nigerian singer. “Munich must not lose this important cultural figure in the city,” says a press release from the association. “He makes an important contribution to our society as an outstanding musician and artist.” Paul Huf, who is an artist himself, founded the association two years ago. But he has known the singer’s fate since his arrival in Germany. Prince White told him about Nigerian clans, about the death of his brother, the threat to his mother and brutal experiences on the run. Still, Huf says, Prince White never sees himself as a victim. What he wants is to live and make music, like he used to in Nigeria. “He is an artist through and through and has often proven that he is good for Germany,” says Huf. “It does something that we as a society need.” Huf is convinced that it would make sense to put more effort into people’s participation in our society than into deporting them.