Performer Tags Used in Events

Opening performance

We welcome you. This is an original song written and produced by Esther Obediah

Song - Way Maker

Song - I worship you Almighty God

Angelos Angelou and his team, Filippos Fasoulas, Dimitris Tassenas, and Riad, took Deep in Love from Baldwin's list and made it part of a Greek folk musical tradition, which is not afraid of influences from the East.

The traditional Greek song – Κοιτα με γλυκια μου αγάπη (Look at me my sweet love, is merged with Deep in Love. Aggelos chose to create and Amane in this fusion. Amanes is a distinctive type of monodic, heavy, and drawn-out lamenting song, sung in the “eastern” manner which is rooted in Byzantine music. For a period of time during the Ottoman era Amanes was not sung. It took its name from the frequently repeated exclamation “aman” (meaning “mercy, pity”). From a musical perspective, amanes follow their own specific technique. To deliver a single distich, the performer may extend the song for as long as five whole minutes.

So, I chose a text by Baldwin about racism and the color black.

Texts woven together with poems written by James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, and Martin Luther King Jr. plays is narrated while Mikel and Kofi perform. On the projection in the background, you can see the live event organized in Geneva during the projects exhibition when Mikel and Kofi created a gathering which opened an alternative platform, shaped through art, hip hope battles and community. Through this event, they created space for connection, visibility, and collaboration with local Black artists in Geneva, offering a powerful reminder that community can be built even in places where it feels invisible. All this in a city where we questioned as Afro-Greeks whether a Black community exists.

Greece, do you love me or not? I wake up in the morning to go to school, but I sit at the back of the class and mess around because deep down I don't feel welcome.

Greece, do you love me or not? Returning home, I wait for the subway, get in and sit next to a woman, but she gets up and leaves. Showing me in an exemplary way that I am stink.

Greece, do you love me or not? I go to the office to get a document and a birth certificate. And even though I was born and raised here, they tell me to go to my country to get those

Greece, do you love me or not? The day comes for me to visit my girlfriend's parents and the first thing her father says to his daughter about me is, "Of all the men, you had to bring him."? Greece, do you love me or not?

And finally, I return home and see my mother exhausted from the three jobs she has to do to make ends meet, She is unhappy because she doesn't know if her son will ever make it in Greece In the end, she looks me in the eyes and says "Don't give up, we didn't make it today, but don't lose faith, there is hope for tomorrow."

Greece, do you love me or not? Thank you.

The practice of the collective community project—in progress—the AfroGreeks is based on the moving image as the starting point and end point of public actions that are filmed. Each member of the project participates in a filmed open-ended discussion which is unscripted. The conversation can vary beginning from introducing who they are, what they do and what their views are on topics they are interested in. These videos can be from an hour to 3 hours long depending on what the person wishes to share, and some members of the project have been filmed multiple times over the years. The work presented here is a 3-channel digital video composed from segments of these interview, carefully put together without compromising altering or influencing the perspectives and words of the protagonist.

Song - Mercy Mercy Me

Song - Down by the River

There are days—this is one of them—when you wonder what your role is in this country and what your future is in it. How, precisely, are you going to reconcile yourself to your situation here and how you are going to communicate to the vast, heedless, unthinking, cruel white majority, white majority of this place. I am terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart, which is happening in my country. These people have been deluded themselves for a long, they really don’t think I am human. I have to base this’ll on their conduct, not on what they say, and this means that they have become in themselves moral monsters. It’s a terrible indictment.

Mc Yinka one of the most famous and influential artists in Greek rap. Tracing back who coined the term Afro-Greek, the term is found in Greek in his song to Kerma, released back in 2009.

Mc Yinka’s story truly encapsulates the lived reality of Black young boys in Greece in the 1990s and early 2000s. During that period, the legal gap in the Greek migration system left many children of migrants—those born and raised in the country—without citizenship at birth. They were literally left without any form of legal identification that could justify their presence in the country. All they possessed was a birth certificate, which did not count as a valid identification document. While the first generation of migrants was eventually required to obtain residence permits to prove their entry and employment status in Greece, there was no corresponding legal provision for their children. This “second generation” was left in a state of bureaucratic limbo. For Black boys in particular, this gap had severe consequences: they were frequently racially profiled and stopped by police as early as age 15 or 17. During such encounters, their birth certificates were dismissed as insufficient proof of identity, leading to prolonged interrogations and detentions that could last for hours while authorities attempted to determine their legal status.

Mc Yinka narrates this story in a strikingly creative way – through rhyme, rhythm and singing- but the choice of words is intentional and deeply political. Through his music he has always brought attention to injustices embedded in our everyday lives and his memories and experiences are transformed in his work into powerful social critique

This is the song where I traced the earliest mentioned of the word Afro-Greek documented in Greek.

Mc Yinka gives a brief explanation of the word Afro -Greek, Mc Yinka

The first thing that he does as soon as he gets on stage is check with the audience if they are having fun – something he does several times during his performances - and immediately interacts with, once again the clap and response is used to elevate the energy in the auditorium.

Song - Work Song, Nina Simone

Original song by Mc Yinka, Song - Χαιρετισμός (Salutation)

This performance stitches together a powerful symbolic tapestry, with the intersection of Nina Simone’s Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child. A song heavily emotionally charged, with a melancholic undertone, together with the diasporic lament of abandoning home of Από ξένο τόπο (From a foreign place), and together with the urgent directness and rhythm of rap, all foregrounding themes of loss, exile, and endurance. At the background of this performance, the projection includes clips from the trip the Døcumatism team made to the forgotten village in Avato in Northen Greece, where Black Greeks have lived for hundreds of years.

Gumboot Dance

Song - They don’t really care about us. Original song by Adedeji.

The song begins with a quote James once said, “History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history. If we pretend otherwise, we are literally criminals. The quote is split in parts and read in different languages, first in Greek, then in Igbo language and then English

Song - Oruku. Original song by Adedeji. Adedeji is a prolific singer, guitarist and composer, whose music is an infusion of the Traditional Yoruba music with Jazz, Soul & Funk, in most of his songs he sings in Yoruba) -Oruku means darkness or cold in Yoruba.

The rhythm is contagious; the audience is beginning to stand up from their seat and dance with each other.

Song - Morenike. Original Song by Adedeji.

Audience Dancing

Audience Dancing

Audience Dancing

Introducing the band

Projection

Negros Tou Moria – or “Black Morris” – is one of the most influential Greek rappers to have emerged in recent years, he mixes trap beats with traditional Greek folk-music (rebetika) and has developed his own Greek-language genre called the trabetiko. Black Morris is the approximate translation of Negros Tou Moria, which in its original Greek is an adroit play on words with Geros tou Moria, a legendary general of the 1821 Greek revolution against the Turkish occupation – this twist on a symbol of classic “Greekness” goes a long way in describing the artist’s ethos, creativity, and cultural background both Greek and Ghanian. His newest album is called Mavri Ellada (Black Greece). Translation : Hello, this is your white friend Negros toy Moria. I would like to be with you but unfortunately, we have rehearsals and preparations to do the upcoming presentation of the Black Greece album. However, I'm waiting for you to join us, so we can show the AfroGreeks project not just only to you but to the other guests who will be here. So, they all know that I’s an experience and I would add and say it’s also a promise that there are also a Black Greece. There are also Black Greeks. I hope you're having a great time and again, I'm sorry I'm not there with you. I'll be waiting for you on the 31st of May.

Song - Wade in the Water

Medley of songs

Here we witness a fusion of Nigerian praise-and-worship traditions with gospel. This is a reflection of the long, intertwined history of West African musical spirituality and African American Christian expression. Polyrithms, call and response, mixture of Yoruba and Igbo dances as well as gospel harmonies and improvisation.

Song - Oh, Happy Day

Celebration right after the event

This live action was a theatrical workshop in form of a game, put together by director Eleni Mavridou, actor Samuel Akinola and musician Giorgos Mavridis. 6 children from the 26th primary school of Kypseli with the help of their art teacher Eirini Bazara participated in the workshop in which poetry was merged with Greek folk songs and West African songs and drumming.

Steven Aderinto performs soul and gospel songs on the rooftop of the City Hall of Athens. One of the songs he sings is: Sam Cooke’s A Change is Going to Come.

Street dance by dancers Mikel Ergar and Kofi Yadom. The recitation was done by Grace Nwoke. Poem "Where I Am" by Marcelino DosSantos.

This performance was put together by four dancers and performers (Jessica Anosike, Grace Nwoke, Demelza Okoji and Maria Sackey) guided by the instructions of dance anthropologist Natasha Martin. It was a fusion of body percussion, singing and afro dance

This performance took place in the neighbourhood of Kypseli, on the terrace of a local bookstore called: Literature House. Mc Yinka was inspired by poetry and improvised using rap. He also performed two of his original songs.

The final live action of the all day event was a musical encounter of Greek folk music with, soul, R&B and rap. Eleni Nzanga, Grace Nwoke, Steven Aderinto, and Mc Yinka performed blending seamlessly their distinct musical styles.

At the end of that day, the restrictive curfew measures in the city, started to take effect. An online discussion on zoom was created, where the artists who participate in the events during the day could discuss online with the participation of viewers who tuned in. Many questions were asked and a lot of them were people who have lived in Athens for several years and had no idea about the effects of racism on the Black community, neither were they aware that the Black community is strong enough and big enough to co-create such artistic interventions. The artists on the call all agreed they aspire to work together more and they will continue to fight stereotypes and prejudices through art.