Category: article

the World Harmony Orchestra and Choir

from Global Citizen, october 21, 2019:

‘I See the Positive Effect Music Has’: Why I’m Setting Up London’s Most Inclusive Choir and Orchestra

Meet Romain Malan, who’s combined his musical expertise with social causes he is passionate about.

Romain Malan, the World Harmony Orchestra

By Helen Lock

October 21, 2019

Why Global Citizens Should Care

To achieve the UN’s Global Goals and end extreme poverty, everyone can work together using their own strengths to support global humanitarian efforts. Social musician Romain Malan is a great example, using his passion for music to unite people and help support Global Goal 10 for reduced inequalities. Join the movement by taking action here to promote inclusivity and help achieve the Global Goals.


Romain Malan is a social musician, who has created an orchestra of international musicians, and an inclusive choir that raises money for refugees and other causes at concerts all around the UK. He’s also just won a grant to help his musical organisations tackle loneliness and social isolation.

Here, Malan tells Global Citizen all about launching his World Harmony Orchestra and the World Harmony Choir; about the humanitarian causes the groups works to support through music; and about what’s coming up for them and their work in the future. 

What is the World Harmony Orchestra? 

It started three years ago. I had the idea to create an orchestra of professional musicians from different countries who live in London who either study or have studied here, as I had moved here 10 years ago to do from France. We got a group together of a very wide range of nationalities and and then the idea was to use that to promote a message of harmony. Hence the name: The World Harmony Orchestra. 

We wanted to use the orchestra we’d created to raise awareness of certain causes too and use our concerts to raise money for charities. 

Sounds exciting! What causes do you support? 

We focus on humanitarian causes. It’s hard not to be too political but we do try not to be. After the Brexit vote, we did take part in a campaign called One Day Without Us — a campaign to raise awareness of the role of immigrants in the UK — but it was not overtly against Brexit, it was a way for us to talk about it. 

We’ve been long term partners with the Islington Centre for Refugees and Migrants too, a drop-in centre for English classes and activities, because I’ve worked there for a few years. We did our first concert there and we’ve done a few other concerts there too.

A year ago for World Peace Day, we performed music from 18 countries where there is currently a refugee crisis. So it was folk music from those 18 countries, and it highlighted both the crisis and the musical heritage of those places. We’re doing the concert again in Portsmouth at the end of October. 




What is the orchestra’s musical style?

Most of the musicians are classically trained so the majority of our concerts are classical. But I’d like to see more of a mix of instruments in the orchestra and other musical styles. We’re hoping to see more people with experience of being a refugee join too. So far, we’ve done 25 concerts and over 100 people from 35 different countries have played with us. 

Tell us more about your work with refugees?

At the Islington Centre for Refugees and Migrants I work as a choir leader. I also work at a centre for adults with mental health issues and at a care home. Last month I decided to try and bring the groups together, so we’ve launched the World Harmony Choir too. All three organisations will be contributing to the choir.  

These three organisations – the refugee centre, the care home, and the centre for adults with mental health issues — are all places where I work as a singing teacher and choir leader. But they are groups that don’t normally have many opportunities to meet each other.  

We’ve also just begun to offer free music lessons too. We’re offering the lessons on a pay what you can basis, so that some people can attend for free or low cost, for example, people who are refugees. I’ve seen the positive effect music can have on people at the refugee centre and so it frustrates me that there aren’t more opportunities for people to learn. 




You’ve got a lot of projects on the go! What do you want to see happening in future?

I’m trying to establish the orchestra in more of a formal set-up and perhaps found it as a social enterprise. We applied for and won our first grant a month ago, so I’m really happy about that. 

We got the grant for an upcoming project to tackle loneliness. So that means sending musicians to play in people’s homes and care homes for people who can’t go out.

Classical music has a reputation for being a bit elitist, so we’re trying to open it up a bit. We like to think it’s good to be an orchestra that plays it’s part, not just a musical part, but a social part too, you know? I’m aiming for it to be the most inclusive musical organisation in London! 

You can find out more about the World Harmony Orchestra and their upcoming projects here and on Twitter and Facebook. 

quote from Steve Earle

“When I write something simple I’m always really proud of it. When you write something that simple with that much air in it and the whole premise behind it is something pretty obvious – that everybody wants to be happy and free – the song is sort of an exercise in not forgetting that’s what you really want and what you really need. We can get caught up in a lot of other stuff.” —Steve Earle, 2016

click here for the full rolling stone interview with Earle and Shawn Colvin

2019 Kennedy Center Honors

“We would hope that art would bring us together as a nation, and make us all a little closer. We don’t want to, by any means, undermine the freedoms of the artist to see challenging things and to speak their truth, but at the same time it’s nice to see people brought together.” —LL Cool J, 12/8/2019

Click here to read more in the New York Times

quote from Jeff Tweedy

“I feel like I have opinions, but like anybody else, I’m a citizen. As a citizen, I feel like I’m doing my best to be a good one. I stay aware, and I contribute. My job is to be inspired, to keep making things and hope that somebody will stumble across them and become inspired to make something themselves. It’s more of promoting this idea that aligning yourself with creativity rather than disruption is a good idea.” —Jeff Tweedy, August 2019

read the full interview at radiomilwaukee.org

Joe Henry on folk songs

“There is a coarse grain in the air of the American Experience, and know it or not it has marked all of us, the way coal dust etches fixed black lines upon the lungs of miners who feel the tug with every laugh and sigh.

It is a weather system all its own, our humid cultural atmosphere: sweet as magnolia, as oily and foreboding as gunmetal upon the tongue. From the auction block to the Harlem Renaissance and on to Selma; from the Appalachian Trail to Attica; from Lewis and Clark to Harpo, Chico, Sacco, and Vanzetti; Lincoln and Douglas through to Washington’s current rancorous desperations — our national narrative, historically, has been a moveable feast, both beautiful and brutal, and it’s never been more authenticall articulated than in the language of folk songs, for they stand outside of time and speak freely, with loyalty to nothing but the truth.

Understand that when I speak of folk, it is not as a genre distinction beholden to any particular tone or instrumentation, but rather is specific to songs — ones that grow out of a regional landscape, and speak to and of those who have done the same; thus the great long table has chairs not only for Doc Boggs and the Carter Family, but Little Richard as well. Sister Rosetta sitteth at the right hand of Louis Armstrong, the father almighty, but also across from Link Wray and Nina Simone; Leadbelly and Lee Dorsey; Charles Mingus, Robert Johnson, Woody Guthrie, Geechie Wiley, and Duke Ellington; Bessie Smith, and Hank Williams; all of them giving voice to the country’s collective ragged and weary soul, its ferocious and troubled heart.

Songs tell our story most authentically because, like us, they are constantly evolving within their framework, forever being reimagined and reanimated. Every time they are taken up and sung out they are newly ratified, as all truths demand to be. Facts are cast in bronze — throw shadows and collect dust, I mean to say, but Truth is a river; and it’s sliding moan is our familial song upon it. Songs deconstruct our singular experiences and reassemble them as useful mythologies, to be parsed and shared in both sharp unison and blurred harmony. “Spike Driver’s Blues” and “Pretty Boy Floyd” underscore our distinct human condition, our cultural character, more authentically and viscerally than does, say, the Constitution. They represent only two, but are true living documents that stride and wail, invite themselves onto our tongues and then into the air like sparks from a stirred fire; are rooted in suffering and borne aloft by the deep desire not to be.

Songs are our signifiers, lifting our spirits and bubbling beneath us like subtitles, explaining us to ourselves.”

Opening paragraphs of the article Go Tell It On The Mountain: Greg Leisz And The Architecture Of Song by Joe Henry

Fretboard Journal, issue #33, November 2014

article about The Highwomen

“When we were in the studio doing our unison thing, it sounded so good,” Shires said. “We all looked at each other thinking, ‘This is what the people can do. They can sing with us, and we’ll all be unified, together.’” —Amanda Shires, 2019

read the article at nyimes.com