[Music] Musician’s Charity Concert Highlights Colonial Tensions

Musician’s Charity Concert Highlights Colonial Tensions

Aliana Dove - DaVinci collaborative arts correspondent

CITADEL - Synthesized Acoustic’s lead singer and guitarist, Kamal Madari, has announced his group’s first concert tour since the legendary band crumbled during the Reaper occupation - a benefit for colonial development, and aid organizations focusing on displaced colonists.

“It’s gonna be a good time, and I think Asim would approve” he told ANN and the Colonial Sun, when asked about the plans during an interview. Asim el-Baz, the band’s original drummer, voluntarily joined the Alliance Marines after the attack on Earth, and was later killed in action - according to Madari and bandmate Zamir Ishak, this is their way of memorializing him. “He’d hate us if we all stood around mourning when his work wasn’t done,” Ishak notes. His replacement has not yet been publicly announced, though a contract has allegedly been signed.

The concert itself, according to Madari, will be more low-tech his than previous stage appearances, which are infamous for being as much about the complex special effects as they are for the band. “We’re simplifying it, so people can focus on the important part.”

The important part isn’t the music - though that’s what’s going to draw the crowds. Madari is teaming up with still-frame holographer Xue’qin Jia and biotic painter Halley Lacaille for what he promises to be one of the most heart-wrenching, inspirational shows he’s ever been a part of. Lacaille’s Frontiers collection will be the backdrop for Synthesized Acoustic’s new set, performed among Xue’qin’s Drop Zone portfolio, enlarged to life size.

Neither of them are household names, despite being acknowledged within their respective fields, but this may very well change that. SA’s manager, Dominic Kisling, says that both artists were chosen for the ‘power’ of their works, not their prominence, though he hopes that they get the recognition they deserve.

“Jia and Halley have put their hearts and souls into this,” he said in the interview. “For them, it’s personal.” Both women, like Madari and SA, are colonial born.

And like Madari, they’re staying out of the political scene, and for good reason.

“It’s insulting,” condemns Bridget Tescon, leader of the grassroots organization Colonial Freedom. “All of them can hardly call themselves colonists - Kamal Madari and his group may have been born on Demeter, but ask them when was the last time they called anything but Earth ‘home’. And those two women - Alliance-born, bred, and brainwashed! How dare they claim to be helping us when they support the very people who are tearing apart everything the colonies stand for?”

Xue’qin, a Sirona native, built her Drop Zone portfolio after she was drafted into the Alliance as a combat engineer. “This isn’t about the military, or oppression, or politics,” the soft-spoken nineteen-year-old said over a holo-conference with DaVinci. “This is about helping people. It’s about the orphans who have no family left, it’s about the refugees who can never go home, it’s about the people who want so badly to see the colonies as a bright, brave new world again.”

Lacaille, whose Frontier collection focuses on the changed landscapes before and after the war, was unavailable for comment. The twenty-eight year old biotic, who fought with other civilians during both attacks on the Citadel, gave an emotional speech at the memorial dedication to her homeworld of Amaterasu last weekend, where only a small handful of the 10,000 people living on the colony managed to escape orbital bombardment.

Madari outright rejects that there’s any reason to bring politics onto the scene. “It’s a small, vocal minority trying to get attention,” he says, dismissing claims advertising them as ‘traitors’.

“It’s sick, really. Everyone we’ve met, everyone we’ve talked to - friends, family, random strangers on the street - they’re all thrilled about what we’re doing, and so glad that the Alliance is there to help, to take charge. And then you have these small groups coming out and calling genuinely good people like Hal and Jia, whose homeworlds are craters too irradiated to even land on, who’ve barely ever been to Earth, calling them traitors, threatening to hurt them more than they already have been, just ‘cause of Hal’s family, or Jia’s uniform? Sick, people. Completely uncalled for.”

Tickets for the concert series - to be performed at the newly rebuilt Sydney Opera House on Earth and at the Apollo Concert Hall on Demeter in January - are priced at 15 to 300 credits a seat, and both Xue’qin and Lacaille’s collections will be placed up for auction in the weeks following. The full thirteen-month tour schedule, located in most major Terran cities and Class 1 and 2 colonies, can be found [here].

100% of the proceeds from both the tour and the auctions will be donated to charity.

Good on the both of you Gunny, er, I mean El Tee.

Hence the Qualifier 'most'. Nat is not part of 'most' based on the Statement and Evidence.

Personally, I suspect a lot of it comes down to crypto-conspiratorial paranoia. Sure, the Alliance isn't oppressing anyone now - but just wait until they're settled in firmly! (See also: "SATAE is here to stay" protestors). It's one reason why I wondered whether this is some human-specific thing: everyone else's governments date back much longer, and while there's always plenty of cynicism there's a lot less over-the-top distrust.

Except maybe with batarians, but then the Hegemony actually did live down to standard conspiracy fantasies.

No, when I do something, I'ld rather do it proper. A lesson my dad taught me when I was young.
But that won't convince you or Steely (still love you too) or anyone else otherwise, so I am done debating this issue with you so I just wait 5 years and see. I have had it with your snide insinuations about my mental health just because I distrust our benevolent directors.
Plus, if the other side is made up of the Colonial Freedom nutcases... yeah, I don't want to be counted to that crowd either.

Well, I'm not really approving the whole military government idea, as well. Hell, Major O'Neill, our regimental CO, hates it. He says: "If I was going to go into Politics, I should've gone to Yale!" It's funny when you realize he went to Harvard...

...Well. There goes that secret. So much for the hope that this site didn't scavenge culture articles and you all could be left blissfully in the metaphorical darkness. :p

Anyway, merci to everyone who offered the congrats, and to whoeever said they'd never heard of the band, I want to know what asteroid you've been hiding out on since ever.

So those humans are protesting an oppression that *may* happen as if it was happening already? That is a... unique approach!

Yeah, the thing this bitch forgets is that there are people who remember that the colonies stood for the Alliance, and it stood for them, just like Madari was saying there. Shows how much she and her friends in Colonial Freedom took that protection for granted, since only a few goddamn months went by before they started calling for independence. These are just sad, stupid idiots who aren't happy unless they're trying to fuck over things for everyone with a shred of common sense or decency. I really hope Madari's right, though. Would do a lot give me some faith that sanity will prevail.

For something like this, you can forget politics, and all that bullshit that goes with it. And we might as well forget the 'who got it worse' arguments while we're at it. These shows are meant to help people who've lost something to the war, and we can all relate to that. And from what I can see here, it's playing both on Earth and on colonies, so maybe that'll help people find some commonality.


Can't say I was aware of that myself, but I guess it's no big surprise, from what I've seen from you on here. Dunno if I can make it to any of shows myself, but congrats CP. Hope they go well, and that people sit up and take notice of the work you folks are doing.