The opening of this year’s summer festival last weekend once again presented Import Export as a venue with a noticeably diverse audience. People with different migration backgrounds enjoy a concert program together that deliberately does not only follow Anglo-American pop structures. Instead, timbres from all over the world are appreciated by young and old visitors alike.
Nevertheless, Import Export deliberately does not offer such music from all over the world as world music. Instead, the organizers speak of “global contemporary music as a progressive expression of a changing world” with which they celebrate “the overcoming of borders for a festival of hybrid cultures”.
Accordingly, the Munich formation opened embryo the festival with a cross-genre and cross-national program, where she was also supported by guest musicians such as Chrisa Lazariotou, Mohcine Ramdan, Pico Be and others. And although the temperatures weren’t like summer, the spectators enjoyed the Embryo concert as an open-air event on Spiegelplatz before the actual Import Export.
That the formation originating from Cyprus Monsieur Doumani then played in the club was not due to the weather, but to some neighbors’ need for quiet. Although they don’t live right next to Import Export, they still get annoyed when music later in the evening distorts the sound of the local traffic. That’s why an exciting music program will be celebrated by international guests until the beginning of September, both as an open-air event and as a subsequent indoor event.
On Friday evening, the international female vocal ensemble meets here Perperúnawhich emerged from open singing circles in Berlin parks, the Munich women’s choir The Witches Of Westend and the chamber pop duo fallwalker. Street musician Nedjim Bouizzoul and his band will offer Algerian sounds on Saturday Labess. Bouizzoul sees himself as “a little bit of every country I’ve visited and a little bit of every musician I’ve met”.
Phre Festival, Import Export, Schwere-Reiter-Str. 2h, until September 9th, information on the entire festival at import-export.cc