AKAR

AKAR is a musical and visual artistic creation in a collaboration with the following artists: Shama Bongo (Singer, Projects producer & manager), Sarah Carlier (Singer-songwriter, Musician, Music Producer), Rokia Bamba (DJ, Sound designer), BenRichard (VJ, DJ, Sound designer).

The project was born in Brussels during the Afropolitan festival in July 2021, following a « carte blanche » offered by BOZAR. And what was supposed to be a one time thing became something bigger.

Each artist of AKAR has a particular and very personal link to its origins but also has a link with Africa and with Music. AKAR is made up of french, belgian, white, black people… One man and three women. AKAR is Europe, AKAR is Africa, AKAR is generation X and Y. 

Shama Bongo surfs, juggles, carries with her voice and the perfect mastery she has of it.

Sarah Carlier travels between her voice, her guitar and her computer, and composes with words and notes.

Rokia Bamba plays with the sounds of everyday life, the ambient noise of the city or nature, as a sound designer or the song of the moment as a DJ.

Ben Richard challenges with the way he plays with the senses, what we hear, what we see, is a unique and inseparable playground for him.

As impromptu as their meeting was, it appears to them today as an evidence.

They all use different dialects but speak the same language: music.

At a time when dialogues between cultures and differences are becoming less and less obvious, natural, the message they want to convey is that beyond all the things that make them different, there is always something that brings them together, something in the other that looks like them, that makes them understand each other.

At the end of 2021, AKAR has been in residence at the Belgian Museum of Africa. In this context, the collective had conduct research in sound, video and photographic archives. The idea is to play, transform, assemble, tell stories and use them as fragments in the show.

The name AKAR includes all this humanity and therefore has several meanings in several languages and even on several continents… It means ROOT in Sudanese, Malay & Indonesian, WILLINGNESS in Hungarian, FLOW in Turkish, and DISTURB, AGITATE & MAKE TABOO in Hebrew.