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Introduction | Gig/Tour News | CD Releases | Features | The band | Contact | Music Workshop | |
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Tajikistan June 2008 Maroon Town are going to this Central Asian Republic in June at the invitation of the British Embassy there. This country borders Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and China. Maroon Town will play three concerts as well as taking in a jamming session with a group of local youth. Watch this space to see how it goes! (click here to listen to music) Turkmenistan
June 2006, In
June Maroon Town travelled to the little known ex-Soviet republic
of See some footage of the trip: . .Wandsworth Prison 2007 With a grant fromt the Big Lottery's Awards for All Maroon Town put on four workshops with inmates from one of the wings of the prison in April. The workshops culminated in a live 'show' of all the songs that the participants had written and arranged during the course of the workshops.
(See band video of song shot whilst on tour in Brazil (featuring MC SirReal) Maroon Town short film On just about all our tours we take a Digital video camera (kindly provided by R. Grigges Group Dr Martens footware). Dan West, a recent graduate of film school, using this array of footage has crafted and edited a 6 minute video using Maroon Town's 'Sunset in Calcutta' (Dognoise Remix) as a soundtrack. The film captures beautifully the essence of Maroon Town's musical mission. Dan accompanied the band to Switzerland on a British Council organised tour to provide a video installation to go alongside the band's live performances. To watch the film on youtube click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nMpKaxxZzA To contact Dan email him on: danlwest@hotmail.com About Maroon Town
Sponsored by Dr. Martens Maroon Town made history when they were sponsored to the tune of £100,000 by Dr. Martens. This was Britain's biggest ever deal between an unsigned act and a major corporate sponsor. It guaranteed the independence and autonomy of the band who used the sponsorship to write, record and promote their latest album Don Drummond. Performing Rights Society Foundation
Maroon Town gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Performing Right Society Foundation for the award given to them as a result of an application to the Performing Right Society Foundation Awards to Ensembles. The aim of The Foundation is to encourage, promote and sustain music creation and its performance, of all genres, at all levels of activity. This support has been very effective for the band. It is an excellent programme.
British Council Canada At the invitation of the British Council and the British High Commission, Maroon Town played at 'Alternafest' in Ottawa in September at the National Gallery of Canada. This was a four day musical event which formed part of 'UK Accents', a year long festival of British arts and culture as well as new UK sounds. Also playing were Nitin Sawhney and Martyn Bennett Maroon Town go Caracas! As a result of the single 'Are You Ready?' being a constant on radio playlists during 1998 in Venezuela the band were invited to tour with MTV nominated group, Molotov. They played 3 concerts in the main cities to a total of over 10,000 people. Their album Don Drummond was released in Venezuela in March 1999. Maroon Town, one of the few bands ever to do so were invited to play to the inmates of Brixton Prison for their Christmas 99 celebration. The response from the audience was overwhelming with a near riot ensuing in the chapel as inmates clambered on chairs ripping off their standard issue shirts in an exuberant melee of dancing. The Governor's letter of thanks said it all "surely your career can only go up now you have played Brixton Prison"! Midem 99 Maroon Town appeared live at Midem in January (the music business equivalent of the Cannes Film Festival) on the same bill as Squeeze on a platform devoted to the "Best of British" an initiative which aims to promote up and coming British talent. Started in 1997 it is the only event where all the major Organizations and Societies from Recording, Publishing and Copyright collaborated with the agreed aim of promoting British Music as a brand. Maroon Town were unanimously voted the hit of the event.
Maroon
Town performed in Barbados in December 99 at 'Pure Fusion' - a week
of activities organised by the British High Commission in celebration
of youth culture at the turn of the millennium, They then travelled
to Jamaica at the invitation of the British Council for a single show
at the 5,000 capacity National Arena as well as giving a workshop
at the legendary Alpha Boys School, a haven for orphan and deprived
children responsible for the legendary jazz musicians who went onto
record the ska classics of
Sri Lankan Tour As part of their effort to represent modern and diverse British music abroad the British Council arranged for Maroon Town to tour Sri Lanka in February 2000. The band performed an outdoor concert in Colombo, travelled to Galle and Kandy to do two other concerts and put on a workshop for young musicians in the capital. Indonesian and Brunei tour In March and April 2000 Maroon Town were invited to tour in the Far East by the British Council where they performed several concerts and gave music workshops . They travelled the length of Java with local ska sensation Jun Fan Gung Foo. In Brunei they performed for the Sultan of Brunei's son, Prince Malik. See Brunei promotional materials
See Maroon Town at a boys prison in Kazakhstan on Youtube: Maroon
Town also visited a pioneering independent Drug Rehabilitation Unit
set The band also had a chance to jam in a couple of different night clubs with local musicians. A theatre/performance group called Rara Avis who had previously heard Maroon Town's 'Sunset in Calcutta' had created a sublime performance piece to accompany it and performed at two of the concerts on the dance floor. See their performance - click here Maroon Town also visited Kyrgzystan - a spectacular eight hour road trip with the Tien Shan mountain range to one side and the steppes stretching out endlessly to the other for the entire trip. Here they played also played at the Kyrgyzstan State university as well as in a vast and grand Soviet style Theatre to over 2,000 music hungry youth. Jerry Dammers and Basement Jaxx in Benefit Concert for Zhusan Rehabilitation Centre In
December Maroon Town organised a Christmas benefit concert in Brixton.
Local ska legend, ex-Specials founder member and creator of the inspirational
'Free Nelson Mandela' anthem, Jerry Dammers kindly spun disks as well
as other locals - Basement Jaxx. Mucho Respect to you! The result
of this fabulous evening was that we raised over 1,600 pounds. Everyone
involved (and there were a lot of friends who put their time in) were
elated to find out that the Zhusan Centre purchased a a tractor with
the proceeds to farm a small plot of land they possess. This will
help to generate desparately needed revenue for the centre. Drug rehab
in Kazakstan as yet receives no state funding, a sign of the dramatic
and recent rise in drug abuse and addiction in this great country.
Tour
of India November and December 2001
Ukraine November 2002 The band travelled with new additions - front man Sirreal, vocalist Dina Vass and keyboards Ali Pearce to this former Soviet Union republic for one week at the invitation of the British Council. From Kiev an overnight train ride took them to the city of Donetsk in the east of the country. There they played to 400 orphan and homeless children in the Gorkogo Palace of Culture.
Back
in Kiev, after a stack of television interviews as well as recording
a
This was such a great trip, we learnt a lot about a part of the world, we know little about and met great people. This is a country ripe with enormous potential. Finally a big thanks to Liliana and our man Valentine of the British Council for making this trip possible and so brilliant.. Brazil - May 2003 In
May 2003
Maroon Town went to Brazil for nearly three weeks to One thing led to another and we played on the Ane Marie Braga show - a daytime national TV institution in Brazil. From there we with the help of friends we made there, we got onto the Jo Soares show - a celebrity chat show. A little bit about Jo Soares and his 'Progamo do Jo' - this is the equivalent of the United State's David Letterman show - one of Brazil's best known programes. Jo Soares is a larger than life character and highly regarded in Brazil. Apparently as word goes the last Brit on the show was Sting talking about the rainforests! All 8 of us were interviewed on the sumptous leather sofas one finds on these kinds of chat shows. I told him about a gig we did in a Jamaican prison, a day after which 27 inmates broke loose and escaped. Quick as a flash Jo quipped "they heard you were coming back!" Anyway halfway during the interview (because the producers had observed us playing football beforehand) a football was suddenly produced in front of the 400 strong TV audience (and between 10 and 25 million Brazilians watching the show - choose what number to believe!) and we were invited to demonstrate our soccer skills to the Brazilian nation! Well, I think the joke may have been on us - but what the heck - we were willing. We played a song to see the show out and the audience simply would not accept just one so Jo invited a second! Watching back that night at the edited broadcast - they put everything in we did - not an edit. To be invited to Brazil by a great organisation, to make some wonderful friends and to play football and music on one of their most popular TV programmes - now that is what we call having fun! Central Asia - Uzbekistan - September 2003 Click here to read about this tour. Please email me.if you have any comments or questions Deuan
German
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