Brave Festival, organized since 2005 by The Song of the Goat Theatre in Wrocław, Poland, is a festival of brave people, people who speak about where they come from, what their values are and what their tradition and spirituality is. It is a festival not about works of art, but about art through which it is possible to save and protect thousands of abandoned and forlorn cultures and people. That is why we called it “Brave Festival – Against Cultural Exile”.

Each edition of Brave Festival focuses on a different aspect of either humanity, art or region of the world. That is why our previous editions were so far called: “Magic Voices”, “Asian Voices”, “Drowned Songs”, “Rituals: Out of Africa” “Prayers of the World”. This year we would like to draw our audience’s attention to the incredible richness of various forms related to the art of praying, worshipping and meditation, and we therefore want to present a number of authentic and little known rituals, ceremonies, sacred songs and rites from Asia, Africa and Europe. This is the reason why we have titled the fifth edition of the festival “Prayers of the World”.

Brave Festival 2009 is held in Wrocław, Poland between July 3rd and 11th 2009. The program consists of performances, concerts, workshops, exhibitions and film screenings, as well as artists’ meetings with the audience, will allow our viewers to approach and get deeper understanding of various forms of expressing one’s spirituality coming from all over the world. We will thus have a chance to see, among others, a Zikr ritual performed by an all-women’s group from Georgia, libations to the milungu spirit done by the Gogo tribe members from Tanzania, Korean shamans and their mudang rituals, Corsican polyphonies based on Requiem, as well as the Vimbuza healing dance from Malawi, Ahellil chants of the Berbers of Algeria, and the Azer songs of Mugham (the latter three representing art from the UNESCO Intangible Cultural  Heritage List).

Our aim is to prevent expelling people from their own cultures and sensitivity. Brave Festival is a festival of people who do not accept the models promoted by mass culture, people searching for the deepest possible sources of inspiration – the inner one. In relations with such people and traditions we want to promote diversity, multiculturalism and peace.

We believe that intercourse and an attempt to understand distant traditions is only one of the manners to preserve cultures. The other is charity, which means that all our revenues from ticket sales support the activities of Rokpa International, an organization running educational and cultural projects in various parts of the world. The aim of Rokpa is to raise children, who are aware of their identity, from their early years till adulthood. This is how we want to save cultures, traditions and languages in a very practical and palpable way.

Listen to Brave’s sample music

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More infos at www.bravefestival.pl