Critical Heritages Folk Oratorio 'Rivers of our Being'

Folk Oratorio Rivers of our Being The oratorio was created as a creative research by practice output as part of the European Union-funded Horizon 2020 CoHERE project (the project seeks to identify, understand and valorise European heritages, engaging with their socio-political and cultural significance and their potential for developing communitarian identities). It was developed in partnership with Newcastle University, Heriot-Watt University and the Latvian Academy of Culture. Rivers of our Being proposes a celebration of the diversity of European musical traditions: taking its inspiration from the rivers of Europe, the piece invites audiences to have a unique auditory journey across different European musical traditions. Intertwinned with reflexive texts from CoHERE authors’ works and other sources, musical construction provides additional meanings to the established contexts of folk music and initiates reflexion on such topics as culture and identity, identity and performativity, “others” as a threat to identity, populism and multiculturalism, cultural heritage and local identity. Music: Valdis Muktupāvels Text: traditional, Rabindranath Tagore, Hamish Henderson, Ullrich Kockel