Manchester Collective x Sidiki Dembélé: Constellations

Manchester Collective are often interested in how things talk to each other: the past with the present, the canon with the experimental. In Constellations, that line of communication is drawn across cultures, with West African and European traditions placed in dialogue.

It sees Manchester Collective’s string ensemble joined by Sidiki Dembélé, a locally-based percussionist born into a family of griots – West Africa’s hereditary musicians and keepers of oral history. If you’ve seen Sirocco, the Collective’s long-running collaboration with cellist Abel Selaocoe, you’ll recognise Dembélé as the percussionist. Here, he takes centre stage, bringing folksong and storytelling from the Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal.

On the other side of the conversation, Rakhi Singh has arranged a selection of British music for string ensemble. Rather than grand concert hall statements, expect music for dancing and storytelling: tunes from John Playford’s dance collections, incidental music Purcell wrote for the London stage and the traditional ballad ‘Johnny Faa’.

Adding her own voice is Nwando Ebizie, a Northern composer and multidisciplinary artist whose work takes in experimental theatre, ritualistic dance, and a pop alter ego, Lady Vendredi (a blaxploitation heroine from another dimension!). Her new commission is filtered through her own strand of Afrofuturism, drawing on the power of ancestral heritage and rites.

The destination of the concert is where these cultures meet, the last word being shared: the evening closes with Simiya, credited jointly to Dembélé and Singh, paired with the Welsh lullaby ‘Suo Gan’.

The tour’s Manchester stop is at the RNCM on 9 October, before crossing the Pennines to the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds the following night – with an earlier outing at Liverpool’s Tung Auditorium on 2 October.