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Barber and Hairstylist & Artist and Poet.

Thinking about the friends and loved ones that have left me recently, and how much they form part of my inner landscape. Whether hill or mountain, lake or ocean, they are a treasured and constant part of my world, even if I can’t see them on the outside anymore.

$This weekend in the Sydney Morning Herald, my review of an important new album released in Australia, a response to the government's inhuman and criminal policy of indefinitely detaining people who have committed no offence other than seek asylum. FULL TEXT: Keyna Wilkins & Jalal Mahamede, Set Me Free (keynawilkins.com), ★★★★ During 2021’s full lockdown in Sydney, Arab Ahwazi poet Jalal Mahamede, an asylum seeker from Iran detained for 9 years under Australia’s brutal mandatory detention laws, collaborated on this project via Zoom with composer-curator Keyna Wilkins and 19 guest musicians, who recorded their parts at home. The opening line, “I love my tears as much as my laughter,” delivered over Wilkins’s serene flute and Shane Carpini’s agitated drumming, sets the album’s tone. Mahamede’s stoic, deliberately stilted delivery suppresses his emotions, making us concentrate on every word spoken, as if he fears that opening up a fraction more would make him fall apart completely. Poems like Chains, The Gardener and Doomed to Life describe minute details of emotional states experienced in captivity, leaving improvisers including Elsen Price (bass), Carl St Jacques (viola), Rhyan Clapham (drums), Gumaroy Newman (didgeridoo), Josh Shipton (vocals) and others to interpret them. Mahamede was released on a temporary visa two weeks after the album launch. The work endures as an act of solidarity; evidence that creative possibilities can be endless, even when trapped and in despair. EUGENE ULMAN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #music #album #albumreview #musicreview #newrelease #newmusic #newalbum #iran #ahwazi #australia #australianmusic #sydneymusic #sydneymusicscene #poet #poetry #improvisation #asylumseekers #refugees #refugeeswelcome #recordcollector #recordoftheday #nowspinning #albumcover #musicians #musiclife #art #artist #globalcitizen #writing #musicjournalist$

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Leo ,,,

@leo_cutz21