Raise Your Banners 2009
November 6th to 8th
To celebrate his 75th Birthday year Leon Rosselson is putting on his TURNING SILENCE INTO SONG concert as the centre piece of the Raise Your Banners Festival. Leon will be joined by Frankie Armstrong, Roy Bailey, Martin Carthy, Sandra Kerr, and Janet Russell. Each of these singers have sung and recorded "Rosselsongs" over the last few decades. The messages in the songs and the enthusiasm of their performance motivate and entertain whilst telling truths that governments would have us ignore. "Turning Silence Into Song" starts at 3:30pm Saturday 7th November at St Peter's House, on the edge of Little Germany below Bradford Cathedral.
Raise Your Banners 2009 festival weekend starts with a concert on Friday night (7:30pm). Chumbawamba lead an amazing line up of Bleeding Hearts, Tracey Curtis and Gary Kaye.
From 10:00am Saturday come along to listen to speakers and poets at the bookfair. Take your drinks and food and sit and listen to the RYB showcase for singers and musicians in the Green Hall. In the afternoon (1pm) and evening (7:30pm) choirs and singing groups from around Britain are performing in Bradford Cathedral.
The Saturday evening concert (8:00pm) brings Alun Parry, the founder of the Liverpool Working Class Music festival, to Bradford to get the evening off to a good radical start.
The General Will - Dusty, and friends old and new - offer their own special style of political song and satire following an impressive come back last May Day at Manningham Mills.
The Sunday afternoon concert (2:30pm), hosted by and starring Claire Mooney with the Hall Brothers, Sex Patels and Imani Hekima is a fitting finale to what must be the best and most diverse programme of music, poetry and literature in Bradford for many a century.
Raise Your Banners celebrates the power of political music and the campaigning arts and gives voice to struggles for liberation, equality and justice, in defence of the environment, and for a better world. The festival's main focus of political music will be embellished by a radical book fair and stalls from organizations promoting peace, protection of the environment and human rights.
"Raise Your Banners" is run every second year by volunteers with strong support from performers and audience since 1995.
www.raiseyourbanners.org for more details