Musicians in the Middle East will pay tribute to the Arab uprising and commemorate the death of an Egyptian musician during the Cairo demonstrations as part of this year's international Music Freedom Day on Thursday. Music Freedom Day, the brainchild of Freemuse, an independent organisation advocating freedom of expression for music makers world-wide, is bringing together artists in over 20 countries to highlight the plight of colleagues around the globe who suffer censorship, imprisonment and even death.
"It may not be difficult to silence the individual musician but you can't really silence their songs," Freemuse co-founder Ole Reitov told Reuters by phone. "We've seen with many of the songs or singers that have had problems that although they may put the musicians in prison, their songs somehow survive." The event kicked off with concerts in Mumbai and Kabul and ends with a session in New York and special broadcasting programmes in Canada after events in Egypt and Lebanon paying tribute to Egyptian musician Ahmed Basiouni, who died on the fourth day of demonstrations in Cairo earlier this year. Freemuse was founded in the late 1990s to document censorship in music, raise awareness of the problem and offer support to the musicians and their families.
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