MISSION

Babel Sound is a world music event and an artist residency, that aims to be the interactive meeting point for various cultures and various branches of art.

Artists get a real opportunity to get in touch with each other and with their audience.

Unlike in traditional music festivals, performers spend several days or even each day of the festival with us.

They build bridges: professional and cultural relationships.

We create an environment that encourages creative co-operation, play and personal encounter.

The artists performing in Babel Sound are true representatives of their countries and nationalities.

Their mission is to present and pass on their cultural heritage and deepen the mutual respect for each other through arts.

Cultural mission and CD release

Traditions, cross border artistic coooperations

The mission of Babel Sound is to generate long term professional relations between artists coming from different countries of the world. These relations create new bands, new formations or projects, new pieces of arts.

The project ‘Songs of the Inner Heart’ is a beautiful example: a special fusion of literature and music which was created with the spirit of intercultural collaboration and tolerance. The Egyptian ney player Mohammed Antar and the Israeli singer Tal ben Ari met in 2012 at Babel Sound festival. Their collaboration resulted in the adaptation of the poems of the Muslim poet Muḥyiddin Ibn al-Arabi and the Jewish poet Abraham Ibn Ezra. With the contribution of the Sirian singer Rabeea Anka the piece was presented in April 2015 at the New London Synagogue in England. In 2016 Babel Sound Festival brought this project to Balatonboglár and to Budapest, joined by several other musicians such as the Egyiptian Bassim Waddie, the Russian Dmitry Globa-Mikhailenko, the Indian Akash Bhatt, and the Polish Bogusz Wekka.

As an imprint of the experiences gathered during the festivals Narrator Records, the record label of Babel Sound Festival releases each year some of the festival-born formations on CD -this way producing an abiding form of the common pieces of arts (Ethnómada / Hungarian-Spanish, Naked feat. Amir Gwirtzman / Serbian-Israeli), and several bands returned later to our studio for recording their album (Oi Dipnoi (ITA) Amariszi (NL), Shama Rahman (GB), Maria Keck & de Cobre (ESP), Amir Gwirtzman (ISR), Naked (SRB)).

International relations

We’re continously building our international relations by attending Europe’s important trade fairs and cultural events (Babel MED, WOMEX, Fira Mediterrania etc.). Culture is an important part of our life, and keeping in touch with embassies and cultural institutes enables us to actively contribute to the presentation of different cultures. We consider as an acknowledgment of our work on this field that several countries’ ambassador or cultural attaché (Spain, Indonesia, Israel, India, Italy) already honoured us by visiting a Babel Sound event.

WORDWIDE

HUNGARY