OMM ROCK CHOIR

Songs of Freedom Concert

As we learned last week, beginning in 2012, the Deans Marsh OMM Rock Choir has changed and grown over the years. Weekly workshops on offer to all communities include; drumming sessions held separately in Colac, Geelong and Deans Marsh, and choir rehearsals run locally in Deans Marsh and in Colac and Anglesea. Soloists and an accompanying band of local musicians are brought in as determined and each group gradually brought together in the weeks leading up to final performances.

OMM is constantly changing and has come to represent the changing face of our community. Louise Brown, the person behind the formation of OMM, has already used her talents to lead many local music based community projects.

The next OMM project, planned for March 2018, is the ‘Songs of Freedom Concert’ which is a regional initiative embracing the broad community in order to engender a sense of belonging in a growing multicultural region. This proposed activity has sprung from grass roots support and has developed its own momentum. Local volunteer efforts have already raised $9,000 towards production costs at events like Birregurra’s ‘Rock for Refugees’, with the remaining $3,000 needed to be raised over coming months.

Music and singing are now fundamental aspects of education and socialization in these schools. The ‘Songs of Freedom’ project takes this to the next level by engaging with our refugee community to celebrate, through music, our cultural diversity. It gives us as a community, a platform to express our thoughts and feelings on issues which need to be addressed.

Commencing rehearsals in early February, there will be eight weeks of arts/music community engagement activities, involving 200 participants culminating in a large-scale performance during Cultural Diversity Week at the Deans Marsh Festival on 25th March, 2018. The performance will include residents from 9 towns across the region and will incorporate world music, original compositions and songs about social justice to promote harmony.

The creative rationale for this project stems from the community’s desire to find new ways and opportunities for culturally diverse groups within the region to come together and express themselves and their stories. Regional Communities need creative outlets to develop their sense of belonging. The project will nurture and create artistic opportunities that are difficult to access in the country. It will encourage participation through music and help to build and strengthen connections between communities. It is inclusive and accessible to everyone: to all age groups and levels of musicianship.

The ‘Songs of Freedom’ project aims to enable those in the community, new and old, to join together through song and celebrate our diversity as well as embrace our shared humanity. Locally we wish to bridge the widening gap that exists in our towns and to celebrate our diversity and the common thread we all share as a people. Globally, this is all about coming together as a people for those who have no voice.

OMM is the story of the passion of people to create projects and involve community. In the case music is the glue. Our communities need more projects like OMM.

OMM Rock Choir