music art film review - REDEFINE magazine
Transgressive North’s Everything Is New Project: Indie Musicians Raise Awareness For India’s Destitute Children

Over 500 destitute children are cared for by Scottish Love in Action (SLA), who fund the Light of Love Children's Home and School in Tuni, India. Most of these children have lost at least one parent. Some have physical disabilities or a parent with a disability or AIDS; some are Dalits, or untouchables. The children are fed, clothed, housed, educated and given medical care, and SLA's ultimate purpose is to enable them to lead independent, poverty-free lives.
In association with SLA, Everything is New is an international outreach project run by Transgressive North, an Edinburgh-based arts collective. The project has culminated in a film and two epic albums of music featuring recordings of the voices of every one of these children. The aim of the project is to raise funds and awareness, as well as to instigate an empowering experience for the children involved.
Marram Ft. Owen Pallett - "With Us Instead" Music Video
The Film: Everything Is New
Jamie Chambers, the Co-Director of Trangressive North, describes how the Everything Is New project was creatively inspired by music and film, both valued cultural forms within Indian society. The organization wanted these children to experience what it is to be at the heart of creating joyous and celebratory new music and "to see themselves as the heroes and stars of an exciting, colourful movie on the big screen." A red carpet premiere for the Everything is New film was organised at one of the local cinemas in Tuni. All 500 of the children saw themselves on the big screen. The elation and pride felt by the children was palpable and both humbling and gratifying for all those involved.The Music: Marram's Sun Choir And BOATS


Marram's Sun Choir
Sun Choir is a full-length album written for and featuring the children of the Light of Love Children's Home by Edinburgh based art-pop collective, MARRAM. It features contributions from Jarvis Cocker, doseone, Owen Pallett, White Hinterland, and Scottish folk singer Margaret Bennett, alongside specially composed lyrics by Scottish writers and poets. The 'Sagrada Familia' of post-rave art pop, Sun Choir is an explosive and maximalist mesh of choirs, orchestras and drums featuring more than 1000 voices, musicians, and singers from around the world.BOATS
BOATS is a 29-track compilation album of exclusive new tracks created by celebrated international artists. Each individual act used samples of the Light of Love Children’s Choir, recorded for Marram’s Sun Choir, to create a new song. As a result, BOATS is a diverse and kaleidoscopic concept-album with the children's voices at its core. Conceived and produced by Transgressive North, BOATS features new tracks from Bear In Heaven, Califone, Capybara, Dan Deacon, Deerhoof, Doseone, Four Tet, Gang Gang Dance, YACHT, and more.An Organically Growing Process
Jamie Chambers, musician and Co-Director of Transgressive North, found himself working in an increasingly responsive way with the children as he became more and more acquainted with their personalities and voices. "I would spend almost every day recording with the children, and in the evenings, would edit the recordings and put them into place in the songs," he explains. "This process, and having so much quality time with the kids, gave me a lot of scope to respond to what I was hearing, and to try and increasingly tailor what I was writing to what the kids seemed to respond to." The merging of the east and the west, with all its complexities, is embodied within these two albums of music. What shines through is the fragility and open-heartedness found in the children's voices. Underprivileged children in India love to have their photograph taken, even if they just see it for a split second on the screen of a traveller's camera. It seems to be an acknowledgement of their being and their worth -- and knowing this, it seems impossible not to picture their huge smiles and sense the immense joy they must have felt from being filmed and recorded. The Everything Is New project has not only raised global awareness and funds, but has also served to acknowledge the existence of these children and their value as human beings. Chambers describes a particularly poignant experience whilst working with one child in particular, saying, "I would make a habit of letting the kids hear something resembling the finished assembly. I remember, in particular, when I played them their voices on the second verse, singing alongside Jarvis Cocker on 'What if We'..." He remembers some accomplished singers amongst the children, including a "wonderful but very shy girl" named Nagalaxmi. "When I put all the pieces together, it just sounded incredible," recalls Chambers "I remember Nagalaxmi's face so clearly, her jaw dropped and she clasped both the headphones to her ears so she could hear it as loud as possible. Then she turned to me, and said, 'Is this me?' when I told her it was, she just shook her head, asked to listen to it again, and again, and again the next day." The completion of the project was marked by a huge listening and dancing party in Tuni on New Year’s Eve, with a huge PA system ringing out with the children's voices under the stars. It is easy to picture the powerful effect of this on the whole community -- as well as the musicians involved. Says Doseone of the project and its repercussions, "No caste system on earth, no matter how rigid or omnipresent, can take our song from us."www.everythingisnewproject.com
Information & Statistics about Untouchables
Dating back as far as 1500 BC, sacred Sanskrit texts which lie at the heart of the Hindu belief system, including The Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita, have categorized people based on their occupations. According to Hindu belief, being born as an untouchable is a ramification of bad behaviour in a previous incarnation – and this idea forms the core of what we know today as the caste system. Those on the lowest tier are called untouchables, and the word says it all. They are those who are below any class system, whose interaction "contaminates" the rest of society by sheer incident of their birth.
music art film review - REDEFINE magazine
Transgressive North’s Everything Is New Project: Indie Musicians Raise Awareness For India’s Destitute Children