Over 600 people gathered at the Salle Pierre Mercure in Montreal on the evening of June 13th for a moving program of choral and instrumental music, narration and storytelling. The concert, titled Hommage à la Liberté [Hommage to Freedom], was a collaborative contribution to the global #OurStoryisOne campaign that honours the struggle of Iranian women for gender equality and marks the anniversary of the ten Baha’i women who, forty-one years ago were tragically executed by Iranian authorities in the city of Shiraz, Iran for refusing to renounce their faith. The event brought together forty-three professional and amateur musicians, singers, and actors from diverse backgrounds to interpret the themes of unity in diversity, gender equality and freedom of expression at the heart of the campaign. The concert was accompanied by an art exhibition held in the same venue which featured pieces from local artists exploring similar themes.
“Hommage à la liberté is principally a community project,” said Lucie Dubé, a local composer and the artistic director of the concert. “Over 10 months ago, a group of friends who regularly met to sing together were touched by the story of the 10 Baha’i women and the principles of justice and gender equality that animated their short lives,” said Dubé, “Following many conversations, we were moved to create a concert incorporating the talents of both amateur and professional singers in a single program. The dedication of our choir to this project over the past ten months, whose members are from diverse religious and cultural backgrounds, is a beautiful testament to how stories of suffering awaken our shared humanity. Though these 10 women were killed in Shiraz forty years ago, we still connect with their story in Quebec so many years later,” she concluded.
Throughout the two-hour program, concert attendees listened to original choral and instrumental music, punctuated with story-telling, that connected the stories of the 10 women to contemporary experiences of women striving for greater gender equality in Canada.
Marlyne Tshernish, a resident of Uashaat Mani-Utenam in Northern Quebec, spoke about the intergenerational trauma experienced by the Innu people in Canada and expressed her hope for her daughter’s total emancipation and freedom from this painful history.
Zara, a young woman who recently fled her country of birth to avoid a forced marriage and was persecuted for converting to Christianity, spoke of her unwavering commitment to live according to her faith and her desire to transform her pain into a source of upliftment for others, “…to give love to others instead of hate, breaking the cycle of violence, this is what my ten sisters did. This is what we are doing today,” she said.
The final speaker, Simin Khavari, whose sister, Zarrin Moghimi, was among the women killed forty years ago, recalled her sister’s intellectual curiosity and her special talent in writing and poetry. Khavari remarked that ongoing oppression around the world continues to deprive society of the special contributions each individual has to offer, “Our story is one because it is the story of the violation of human rights, it is the story of oppression. It is the same around the world and the sooner we recognize and speak up when we see that a human right is violated, the better off we will all be,” she said.
The concert concluded with a soul stirring rendition of Hommage à la liberté, a piece of original music composed specially for the concert.
A recording of Hommage à la liberté is available here. Concert highlights are available here.