THE NILE PROJECT Coming to Harris Center, 2/12

The Nile Project brings together artists from the 11 Nile countries to make music that combines the region's diverse instruments, languages and traditions. The concert at Harris Center for the Arts aims to inspire cultural curiosity, highlight regional connections, and showcase the potential of trans-boundary cooperation.

Passion and affection spring forth via one of the tightest cross-cultural collaborations in history. Forged over weeks of carefully calibrated workshops and participatory composition, the Nile Project Collective members hail from all along the great river, from its sources beyond Lake Victoria to its delta in Egypt. Featuring musicians from countries along the Nile, all of whom rely on the common shared resource of the river and its water, but historically who have developed independently from one another. Together for the first time they are now creating a new sound and pan-Nile way of working together; the parallels between the Nile and California with its system of shared water rights, especially in this time of drought, promises to make this a stimulating event that will generate new understandings and dialogue.

The Nile Project takes place on Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 7:30 pm. Tickets are priced at $19-$29; Premium $39; Students with ID $12. Tickets are available online at www.harriscenter.net or from the Harris Center Ticket Office at 916-608-6888 from 10 am to 6 pm Monday through Saturday, and two hours before show time. Parking is included in the price of the ticket. Harris Center is located on the west side of Folsom Lake College campus in Folsom, CA, facing East Bidwell Street.

The Nile, one of the world's most iconic rivers, has captivated the imagination of millions throughout time. Originating in two sources - Lake Victoria in East Africa and Lake Tana in the Ethiopian highlands - the 6,670-kilometer river flows northward through a diversity of climates, landscapes, and cultures before passing through Egypt and emptying into the Mediterranean Sea.

Its 437 million inhabitants are projected to more than double within the next forty years, placing an ever increasing demand for Nile water; water that is tied to all aspects of life - from the food on tables to the electricity that powers homes to people's health.

The Nile River Basin is wrought with political, environmental, economic, and social challenges requiring a new approach to better address the myriad challenges it faces. As regional tensions flare, the Nile Project offers a unique grassroots strategy to effectively mobilize thousands of people across the Nile Basin and beyond in constructive cross-cultural dialogue and collaboration.

Members of the Nile Project Collective have learned each other's traditions well enough to create substantive music together, work that goes far deeper than mere meet-and-greet jam sessions.

To craft this music, Egyptian and Ethiopian artists have mastered each other's wildly different modal systems. A Burundian bassist has become the foundation within head-spinning Ugandan rhythms. Instruments that parted ways millennia before are reunited and pushed into new tunings and new places. Love songs and lullabies have crossed geography and language barriers to forge new songs and new, close friendships.

Creating together, with the role of lead and soloist rotating among the players, the Collective has crafted emotionally stirring, musically complex pieces that weave together over the course of a concert into one long and shifting composition. This work serves as a rallying point to draw more and more people from more and more places into a meaningful conversation, where love and art intertwine with politics, history, ecology, and commerce.

Yet it all starts with sound and with listening. "In the end, it is all about learning to listen," reflects Egyptian singer and Nile Project musician Dina El Wedidi. "I think that is what we all take away from this, whether it is the participants or the audience. Listening is the basis for understanding."

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