BBC Radio | The Strand Interview

Profound is a word that very much applies to Green Fire Islands, I believe!  What are we doing?  Pointing the way forward by accessing what is deep. Visiting the future by sourcing the past. These were threads of the conversation between Steve Cooney, myself and the inspired BBC presenter Samira Ahmed in our radio interview. Full interview 10 minutes in HERE. 

Before the interview I noted down a few points for Steve and I to contemplate. 

I guess what we have to attempt to do in this interview is throw out a few stepping stones of consciousness for people to look forward to experiencing the "magic" of Green Fire Islands.  On one level its "just" a show.  It has a limited life in time.  It begins, it ends.  However as we witnessed in New Zealand it has the power to make an impression that opens up a space in people's hearts.  

"We are stopping time for just a moment.  Not to tell anyone what to do….but to create a space for people to make a choice, to realise they have a choice".

The world is undergoing a huge paradigm shift.  We are being compelled to look for ways to move from competition to co-operation.  On a very real level a creative collaboration is a microcosm of a new way of operating.  Not that it is without  difficulties and misunderstandings, but when it begins to work, it is a quantum leap in creative energy… when 1 plus 1 no longer equals the obvious result but much more.

Green Fire Islands has developed as a collaboration, and there have been many voices contributing to it, and there will continue to be many voices adding to its life, enriching it.

When she visited New Zealand, Mary Mc Aleese said in her speeches  that Green Fire Islands "was an extraordinarily important project setting out to build a musical bridge between two creative island cultures.  By translating the ancient, and honouring the well of tradition out of which it comes Green Fire Islands would create music that is new and vital."  Pretty good words!

The beautiful sounds of taonga puoro, the ancient Maori instruments that have been experiencing a renaissance, (as has Irish traditional music), are one of the many highlights of Green Fire Islands.  

Some more thoughts, in the form of quotes:  "There is a place beyond the mind where Life stores its raw ingredients.  Music has a key to this storeroom and can give us a preview of things to come, things that have not yet been fully thought out.  A creative spirit who has the courage to use this key can present us with songs or music that can transport us to Life’s storeroom."

"The great function of art is communication, since mutual understanding is a force to unite people.  The spirit of communion is one of the most important aspects of creativity"

I like contemplating the innumerable polarities that Green Fire Islands embodies:  

• North/South
• Northern hemisphere "western" consciousness/ Southern hemisphere polynesian consciousness
• The individual consciousness /the group consciousness  (NB this will be being emphasised especially through the movement team this time!)

The list can be extrapolated!

There are also the contrasts of conflict working through to harmony… death through to rebirth.

Food for thought.

Love Bronwen