Your Backstage Story

Text and photos by Zeynep Gülşen

Zeynep Gülşen, graduated from Landscape Architecture in Istanbul came to Rome for to continue her studies on cultural management and experience design. Having a passion to music and cinema, she is interested pretty much everything that creates a cultural dialogue within the urban life, and hopes to live her Roman experience as long as possible.

I am one of those people who believes in music… as in the movie, August Rush says ‘… the way that some people believe in fairy tales.’ And I also happen to know the fact that this pale blue dot is the only home we have ever known. That’s all we have got. When Carl Sagan says that ‘Up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable perception awaits us. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic, religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.’ So it makes me believe in music like a fairy tale where there is something else besides us in this universe, a harmonic connection between all living things. The Miriam Makeba Tribute is the celebration of what ‘Mama Africa’ represents for this harmony. It is the celebration of life, humanity, music and fun. No body can sit in their places while listens to her Pata Pata. So that is what we are going to do on the 13th of March. We are going to stand up, stand up to everything and celebrate. Auditorium Conciliazione will be our common stage, our blue dot without boundaries but our reconciliation place for peace.