[Music] Musician’s Charity Concert Highlights Colonial Tensions

Musician’s Charity Concert Highlights Colonial Tensions

Aliana Dove - DaVinci collaborative arts correspondent

CITADEL - Synthesized Acoustic’s lead singer and guitarist, Kamal Madari, has announced his group’s first concert tour since the legendary band crumbled during the Reaper occupation - a benefit for colonial development, and aid organizations focusing on displaced colonists.

“It’s gonna be a good time, and I think Asim would approve” he told ANN and the Colonial Sun, when asked about the plans during an interview. Asim el-Baz, the band’s original drummer, voluntarily joined the Alliance Marines after the attack on Earth, and was later killed in action - according to Madari and bandmate Zamir Ishak, this is their way of memorializing him. “He’d hate us if we all stood around mourning when his work wasn’t done,” Ishak notes. His replacement has not yet been publicly announced, though a contract has allegedly been signed.

The concert itself, according to Madari, will be more low-tech his than previous stage appearances, which are infamous for being as much about the complex special effects as they are for the band. “We’re simplifying it, so people can focus on the important part.”

The important part isn’t the music - though that’s what’s going to draw the crowds. Madari is teaming up with still-frame holographer Xue’qin Jia and biotic painter Halley Lacaille for what he promises to be one of the most heart-wrenching, inspirational shows he’s ever been a part of. Lacaille’s Frontiers collection will be the backdrop for Synthesized Acoustic’s new set, performed among Xue’qin’s Drop Zone portfolio, enlarged to life size.

Neither of them are household names, despite being acknowledged within their respective fields, but this may very well change that. SA’s manager, Dominic Kisling, says that both artists were chosen for the ‘power’ of their works, not their prominence, though he hopes that they get the recognition they deserve.

“Jia and Halley have put their hearts and souls into this,” he said in the interview. “For them, it’s personal.” Both women, like Madari and SA, are colonial born.

And like Madari, they’re staying out of the political scene, and for good reason.

“It’s insulting,” condemns Bridget Tescon, leader of the grassroots organization Colonial Freedom. “All of them can hardly call themselves colonists - Kamal Madari and his group may have been born on Demeter, but ask them when was the last time they called anything but Earth ‘home’. And those two women - Alliance-born, bred, and brainwashed! How dare they claim to be helping us when they support the very people who are tearing apart everything the colonies stand for?”

Xue’qin, a Sirona native, built her Drop Zone portfolio after she was drafted into the Alliance as a combat engineer. “This isn’t about the military, or oppression, or politics,” the soft-spoken nineteen-year-old said over a holo-conference with DaVinci. “This is about helping people. It’s about the orphans who have no family left, it’s about the refugees who can never go home, it’s about the people who want so badly to see the colonies as a bright, brave new world again.”

Lacaille, whose Frontier collection focuses on the changed landscapes before and after the war, was unavailable for comment. The twenty-eight year old biotic, who fought with other civilians during both attacks on the Citadel, gave an emotional speech at the memorial dedication to her homeworld of Amaterasu last weekend, where only a small handful of the 10,000 people living on the colony managed to escape orbital bombardment.

Madari outright rejects that there’s any reason to bring politics onto the scene. “It’s a small, vocal minority trying to get attention,” he says, dismissing claims advertising them as ‘traitors’.

“It’s sick, really. Everyone we’ve met, everyone we’ve talked to - friends, family, random strangers on the street - they’re all thrilled about what we’re doing, and so glad that the Alliance is there to help, to take charge. And then you have these small groups coming out and calling genuinely good people like Hal and Jia, whose homeworlds are craters too irradiated to even land on, who’ve barely ever been to Earth, calling them traitors, threatening to hurt them more than they already have been, just ‘cause of Hal’s family, or Jia’s uniform? Sick, people. Completely uncalled for.”

Tickets for the concert series - to be performed at the newly rebuilt Sydney Opera House on Earth and at the Apollo Concert Hall on Demeter in January - are priced at 15 to 300 credits a seat, and both Xue’qin and Lacaille’s collections will be placed up for auction in the weeks following. The full thirteen-month tour schedule, located in most major Terran cities and Class 1 and 2 colonies, can be found [here].

100% of the proceeds from both the tour and the auctions will be donated to charity.

Must everything have to be interpreted as a political statement these days...

Anyway, since last I checked, she frequents this forum, congratulations Ms. Lacaille!

I'm dating a celebrity now?

Guess it's time to go off to the mess to lord it over the other guys.

Well good for Halley. I've honestly never heard of this group before, but, hey, if it's for a good cause, might as well check them out.

You share one improvised scouting mission with a woman and she turns out to be famous. Galaxy is a funny place.

... Paint Brush Lady is not a traitor. Of course, being that I'm a salarian, a fat lot of good my word would do with fanatics.

Calling a genuinely good person a traitor, or brainwashed or whatever.... That's stupid and evil.

...Riiiiight. Because good people never do bad or stupid things.

Shouldn't your parents be limiting your access to websites with terrorist links or something?

Are those musicians on the alliance's payroll? No?
Man, there are so many valid concerns one can have about the 'new' Systems Alliance and they go after freelance artists?
You know what? Fuck that, if one side is becoming oppressive and the most vocal resistance is obviously nuts, I seriously considering the hierarchy as an alternative. I mean if all things I fought for becoming null and void, I might as well get the original flavour of collectivism and start singing Die for the Cause.
Or maybe I compromise and just go visit the concert or at least buy a holo-stream pass.

Why has everything have to bring those colonial seppers into this. They are a vocal minority. Those that claim that the alliance, with it's five year plan, is oppressing us humans. I, as a new citizen of the systems Alliance, do not feel opressed. I have seen the improvements the Alliance is making right here. Mombasa was back to being a operational port in less than three months. Unlike the last guys in power, they are actually dealing with the rampant poverty in Africa. We have leaders, we have electricity, food and water all over my country.
Two years ago, I might not have been able to say that.
Once this plan ends, and it will end, I will be voting these guys back in.

... Are you retarded?

I think you should review who you're quoting.

I've seen stupider. Close, but not stupid enough.

You sure you want to become a turian?

No.

Najhil does not understand all the Hate for the Alliance. Najhil does not really see the Oppression that Everybody keeps talking about.

Does anyone have a schedule for when they'll be playing on the Citadel?

Congratulations to Celestial Palette! I look forward to buy the holo of the concert!

I get the impression it's one of those things that doesn't translate very well between species.

Nah, I'm having trouble seeing it either.

Halley, this is fantastic! I'll be able to tell Hope you're famous now. If you're coming to Eden Prime, I'll be sure to take the girls to see it.

Perhaps Humans tend to have a looser Definition of Oppression than Najhil, nq29, and Nat.

Ah, now I remember why I left Alliance space.

I believe Nat is human, miss Holken.