Building on the workshop Tasting the Past – Hearing the Present: Towards Disrupting Intergenerational Silence by hany tea (part of Echos der Bruderländer), HKW collaborates with curators hany tea and Amuleto Manuela to realize a project that centres music as a form of remembrance and transgenerational dialogue.

Two internal sequential workshops bring together former contract workers from Cuba, Mozambique, and Vietnam, and their children. Through personal storytelling, shared memories, and musical traditions, participants explore how music can hold, transmit, and transform historical experiences, especially those marginalized in the context of the GDR.

The first workshop focuses on migration and life in the GDR; the second explores strategies for preserving and passing on these narratives through musical memory work and creative tools. This final public programme on 22 November 2025 invites the public into this process—through sonic offerings such as concerts, lecture performances, conversations, and shared listening, unpacking the complexity of memory and migration through sound.

The workshops culminate in the creation of a cassette, conceived as a sonic capsule that gathers fragments of conversations, shared songs, and newly created sounds. The cassette is presented during the public programme on 22 November 2025, inviting the wider public  into the process. Through concerts, conversations, and collective listening, the symposium unfolds the complexity of memory and migration through sound.

The programme includes a conversation on memory, history, and the role of music, alongside the cassette listening. The audience is also invited to experience a Cuban and Vietnamese Bolero listening session, exploring the resonances of longing, displacement, and transnational soundscapes.

Musical contributions and concerts feature Lotus Quartett, The MahuGang, and Alafia con Iré, whose performances weave together diverse musical traditions, tracing shared histories through rhythm, melody, and collective memory. The evening  concludes with a live DJ set by MoLateef, accompanied by Daniel El Congo Allen on saxophone.

Programme

15:00–15:20
Welcoming Words
hany tea & Amuleto Manuela
Safi Faye Hall

15:25–16:10
Introduction by Paz Guevara, HKW Curator (Exhibition Practices)
Keynote by Nhi Le
Safi Faye Hall

16:15–17:00
El camino de Bô-lê-rô: A conversation and listening session with Cube and hany tea
Perspectives from children of former contract workers from Cuba and Vietnam
Safi Faye Hall

17:10–17:50
The MahuGang
Concert
Safi Faye Hall

17:50–18:20
Break

18:20–19:00
Lotus Quartet
Concert
Safi Faye Hall

19:10–19:50
Cassette-Listening: Listening to the Past, Hearing the Present
A conversation on music, memory, and history.
With: Alfredo Mahumane, Cecilia Schaaf, Lê Mạnh Hùng, Milagro Álvarez
Moderated by Nguyễn Phương Thúy
Safi Faye Hall

20:00–20:55
Alafia con Iré
Concert & Performance
Angie Stardust Foyer

21:00–22:00
MoLateef and Daniel ‘El Congo’ Allen
DJ Set & Performance
Angie Stardust Foyer