It Sounds Like Courage: An Evening That Stayed With Me

Last Friday I took my daughter and husband to It Sounds Like Courage, beautifully curated by Anoushka Shankar.

I arrived knowing only two names with any familiarity: Nikita Gill, whose poetry has quietly accompanied me for years, and Anoushka herself, whose music so often fills my headphones on early morning journeys to teach, steadying me, grounding me, reminding me to arrive with intention. I hadn't looked at the line-up. What unfolded was an unexpected gift.

It was heartening to see Sadiq Khan open the evening, wearing his now familiar Choose Love T-shirt, a quiet but powerful reminder that compassion is always a choice.

Guided with warmth and wit by Nish Kumar, the evening unfolded through extraordinary performances from Nadine Shah, Nai Barghouti, Seckou Keita, Nectar Woode, MoYah, Mudibu (J.P. Bimeni), the London Contemporary Orchestra under Robert Ames, the moving voices of the Citizens of the World Choir, and the powerful words of Nikita Gill, Salena Godden and Inua Ellams. Together, they created something far greater than a concert, a collective act of witness, remembrance and hope.

There were moments that made us smile. Others that brought tears. And moments where the entire hall seemed to breathe together.

The word that stayed with me all evening was courage.

As I listened, I found myself thinking of my own family. My parents and grandparents were forced to leave the only home they had ever known in Kenya, carrying memories they could never return to and building a life elsewhere from fragments of loss. Refugee, Immigration, Migration, is so often reduced to politics or statistics, but beneath every headline is a family, a home, a language, a recipe, a photograph, a childhood left behind.

Their story is not unique.

Today, across the world, we continue to witness gen0cide, displacement and families being torn apart. Children growing up far from home. Parents making impossible choices. Communities carrying grief that words can barely contain.

And yet, in a concert hall filled with strangers, music, poetry, spoken word...did what it has always done. It dissolved the spaces between us. It reminded us that art can bear witness when words fail; that poetry can hold grief; that song can carry memory across generations; and that courage is not always loud.

Sometimes it is simply the quiet determination to keep loving, to keep creating, to keep believing in our shared humanity.

Thank you, Anoushka Shankar, every artist who shared their voice so generously, and everyone who made It Sounds Like Courage possible.

Some evenings entertain.

Some evenings stay with you.

This was one that will echo for a long time.

From left to right:  Salena Godden, Nikita Gill, Nai Barghouti, Anoushka Shankar and Nish Kumar