How to find a common voice

The colours of the orchestra instruments sound like tiny dots. They move like little raindrops that Cymin Samawatie dabs into the space in front of her. Cymin Samawatie is a conductor, composer, and singer – and artistic director of Campus Project 2023, which brings together young musicians from Germany, Afghanistan and Iran.

»Play one note and wait until everyone else in the ensemble has had their turn.«

Everything is free this year. There is no score, no work that has to be obeyed. Members of the German National Youth Orchestra (BJO), the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM), the Barenboim-Said Academy and the Trickster Orchestra improvise in the ensemble. All of them are differently trained and have their own backgrounds and experiences in classical and traditional Afghan and Iranian music, which shape the sound of the ensemble.

In May, everyone travelled to Braga, Portugal’s third largest city, for the first rehearsal phase. Not far from Porto, it is surrounded by forests and hills. After the Taliban took power in August 2021, the ANIM children and young adults found asylum here. Dr Ahmad Sarmast, founder and director of ANIM, has helped nearly three hundred people to escape. Ten of them are involved in the Campus project.

Cymin Samawatie uses gestures to speak to her orchestra, in which flutes and violins sit alongside kamanche, tabla, rubab and sitar. The raindrops can become a downpour when the conductor brings her hands together from the sides. To raise the pitch or volume, she moves them slowly upwards. Cymin Samawatie has developed this way of coming together in free improvisation with the Trickster Orchestra. This is an ensemble that playfully explores genres and styles, performing in ever-changing combinations. This is also the working method for this year’s Campus Project. Everyone is free in what they play. Cymin Samawatie only gives the musicians clear tasks to sharpen their sense of their own role and the possibilities within the ensemble: holding a tone, creating a rhythm, listening more consciously. 

»Every line-up sounds different because different people are playing.«

During the first rehearsals, Cymin Samawatie wants to create a space in which all the musicians can gradually find their place in the improvisation. »And then I am mainly a listener. When I notice that something is developing in the individual voices, I am sometimes there to shape the ground on which they can grow. Until I have to intervene less and less, and am first and foremost a musician in a shared instrument that breathes.«

Poet and writer Mariam Meetra also came to Braga for the rehearsals. She will read a poem about her native Afghanistan, to which the company will improvise. Afghan Dari-Persian is the same as Farsi, the Iranian language, so Mariam Meetra will also read texts by Iranian authors at the concert in September. It is about the fate and emotions that Afghans and Iranians share in the face of the political crisis in their countries, about solidarity and hope.

Sometimes the instrumental voices waver, lost in themselves. Sometimes they sound hoarse and toneless, until a rhythm emerges from the noise, driving the voices forward. And everyone senses what the music should sound like.