Month: August 2023

ACE Dance & Music: Soca Ram-Jam

Birmingham Festival 2023, Soca Ram-Jam, was an event filled with vibrant colour and was eye-catching to say the least. Live steelpan drummers engaged the audience with carnival dancing and costumes, encouraging all participants to feel part of this community. Now that is what I call the true carnival experience, everyone coming together as one!

The rain didn’t stop us from having the true carnival vibes in the Birmingham Rep as we celebrated and partied away on Jamaica Day. ACE dance and music really showed what carnival culture from the Caribbean could bring to us in Birmingham. We celebrated this wonderful occasion with musicians, dancers and drummers from 5 years to adults, who are part of their dance class programme, together with partners from London and Amsterdam. What an amazing event filled with family fun and a cultured learning experience.

What can I say, it was an event full of bright smiles through singing, reminding us of all the importance of being kind to our earth. B Music in partnership with Carol Pemberton from Black voices worked extremely hard to curate an afternoon of choirs performing beautiful songs devoted to our earth. The title alone community spirit united communities through their love of music to engage with audiences and share issues around climate change and culture.

The unique final piece was a joint mass choir song composed by Birmingham’s poet Laureate, Jasmine Gardosi. This final piece emphasised various performance styles of singing, poetry/spoken word/, music and beatboxing to produce an exciting integrated piece. We look forward to Birmingham welcoming more community events joining us as one community.

Veniece Patel