It was both an honour and a delight last night to participate in a moving evening of music and storytelling in the Trinity Fare Cafe in Dartford on the evening of Day 4 of the annual walk organised by the Refugee Tales organisation.
Taking Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as its inspiration, the Refugee Tales walk this year is from Canterbury through to Westminster, over a period of 6 days. The walk is undertaken to show solidarity with refugees, asylum seekers and immigration detainees and each evening the walkers are addressed by leading writers with newly written tales that offer new insights into the ongoing plight of refugees and others.
As such, we were delighted to be invited to perform and we shared our musical duties with Mike ‘Dr John’ McKeon, a first-rate blues singer based in the Brighton area.
Expertly compered with wit and wisdom by the host for the evening, Sameena Zehra, we were treated to two new tales by leading writers. The first was The Voluntary Returner’s Tale delivered by Caroline Bergvall and the second was The Barrister’s Tale presented by Rachel Holmes.
I am pleased to report that our own contribution to the evening was well received, and we were pleased to include within our brief set our new composition ‘The Poor Refugee’.
Many thanks to Anna Pincus for both the invitation to perform at one of the Refugee Tales’ events and for the hospitality shown to us on arrival. Thank you also for the excellent food and company. We wish Refugee Tales well with its ongoing work and hope to perform to its walkers again sometime in the future.