Barcelona Band 'Chami Cool & La Fama Jam' Northwest mini Tour to Liverpool

OVER 30 January to the 5 February 2014, Chami Cool & La Fama Jam will be on a mini tour from for the Band in Liverpool, Manchester and Wigan. The main gig is being held at 'The Kazimier' on Saturday, 1 February 2014, with local Liverpool bands in support.

Chami Cool & La Fama Jam are members of the diverse, colourful family and musical collective of 'Manu Chao' in Barcelona. Nourishing reggae, raggamuffin , rumba and dub, they have a natural mix of mediterranean spice and flavour in their sound.

Chami Cool is the song writer, composer and lead singer of La Fama Jam, he is French Morrocan and born in 1975. He has participated as singer and song writer with various bands in France and Spain such as 'El Sol 31' 'Plan B' 'Kabongo' & 'La Fama Street' and 'Manu Chao'

Chami Cool originally comes from France, he sings in French, English and Spanish and plays with 'La Fama' and 'Street Massive' in Barcelona. Chami is a synonym for bright colours, wide smiles projecting joy, optimism, solidarity and hope.

Barcelona Rumba

A music based on the street philosophy of celebration, culture, solidarity and optimism, it reflects and identifies a positive view to day to day life.

In Barcelona the sun draws music out onto the street corners and plazas, with musicians who come from different corners of the world. That multicultural community is representative of La Fama Jam.

A band that brings it's influences from the tastes and smells of underground life, in the allure of this Mediterranean City.

A mix of European, South American, African and Arabian rhythm and song.

Barcelona Rumba is proclaimed around the world and it has a unique sound of it's own encompassing all of it's multicultural roots and influences.

If you want to find out what they are like, please use these links:-  Audio links 1 - 2.

YouTube Video Links:-

Chami Cool and La Fama Street / Official video 2011 / Barcelona - Link.

Chami Cool / La Fama Collective / Dale / Official video -
Link.

Chami Cool and La Fama Jam / Toul Monde / video barcelona -
Link

Chami Cool / Les Gents Doutant / unofficial Happy Feet clip -
Link.

Manu Chao feat Chami Cool / Por La Carretera / Belgrado 14 Sept 2013 - Link.

Chami Cool feat Sebass, Sergio & Peyote / Tribute to Mandela - Link.

LETIZIA BATTAGLIA - BREAKING THE CODE OF SILENCE

Photograph Palermo, 1982. Nerina worked as prostitute and was drug-dealing. She was killed by the mafia because she did not respect the rules © Letizia Battaglia.

THE Open Eye Gallery, in Liverpool, is presenting, for the first time in the UK, the intense work of Sicilian photographer and photojournalist Letizia Battaglia (born 1935 in Palermo, Italy). Featuring a large selection of her iconic black and white images, Letizia Battaglia - Breaking the Code of Silence opens the exhibition runs until 4 May 2014 and will guide the viewer along a journey into one of the darkest periods in post-war Italian history.

Drawing from Battaglia's personal archive, which comprises over 600,000 images, the exhibition showcases work spanning from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s, including stark documentation of the Sicilian mafia's violent reign of tyranny, as well as more recent projects. The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to approach her genre-defining photographic practice (often linked to that of American 'crime' photographer Weegee) and reflect on the role of photography as an individual and collective means for taking action, bearing witness, providing evidence and documenting history.

Battaglia took up photography in the early 1970s, when she realised that, as a journalist, it was easier to place her articles in newspapers and magazines if these were accompanied by images. After a short period spent in Milan where she met her partner and collaborator Franco Zecchin, Letizia Battaglia returned to Sicily in 1974. After relocating to Palermo and regularly contributing to the daily L'Ora, she became the pictures editor until the newspaper was shut down in 1990.

Over the years, Battaglia has recorded her love/hate relationship to her home country with (com)passion and dedication, often putting her life at risk. By alternating stark images of death, graphic violence and intimidation connected to the Mafia with poetic still-life photos and intense portraiture of children and women, Battaglia provides a textured and layered narrative of her country.

Letizia Battaglia worked on the front line as a photo-reporter during one of the most tragic periods in contemporary Italian history, the so-called anni di piombo; or 'the years of (flying) lead', as they say in Italian. "[These were] 18 years in which the ferocious Corleonesi mafia clan would claim the lives of governors, senior policemen, entire mafia families and two of Battaglia's dearest friends: the anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino." (Peter Jinks, The Observer, 4 March 2012).

The selected works on show at Open Eye Gallery illustrate this period and document Battaglia's attempt to come to terms with that history and reconcile the love for her country with the memory of these dramatic events.

Over the last 2 decades, Battaglia has persevered in her struggle against the mafia, a fight that she has pursued not only by means of her photographic work, but also as a politician and public figure, a publisher and as a woman.

The Open Eye Gallery is located in 19 Mann Island on the Liverpool Waterfront, (L3 1BP).

The Gallery is open from 10.30am to 5.30pm on Tuesday to Sunday, during exhibitions and is closed on Mondays (except bank holidays) and during exhibition changeovers.