The Circle of Grieving Voices

The Circle of Grieving Voices is an invitation by the artists Aziza François et Hoda Siahtiri to a collective practice of grief. Rhythmic practices developed by Aziza’s will meet some specifical grieving vocal techniques from Hoda to find your grieving voice(s). Together they will share breathing and vocal practices to connect to your body and resonate with the emotions residing there. 

• My name is Aziza François. I was born from a chadian mother and a belgian father in Chad. singing, writing and composition started early in my young age as a precious tool to transform and go through emotional difficulties. I developed these creative practices since I arrived in Brussels by working on various projects as a backing vocalist or bass player. My musical universe mixes a lot of different influences (african music, soul, electronic, hiphop, rock etc.). I have a particular attachment to traditional rhythms and sounds. I often use repetitive vocals as a backing sound on my compositions. They remind me of sacred African music. I had the luck to propose my practices into circles of women, like the Cercle de femmes de Globe Aroma – and a workshop for the project “A Ma Chère Arrière Arrière Petite Fille” de Liselore Vandeput. In my spaces of singing, I try to give everybody a place to open the voice as naturally as possible and compose a collective sound.

 • My name is Hoda Siahtiri, a multidisciplinary artist and researcher in Audiovisual and performance art. My artistic and professional background is in cinema and theater. I define myself as a storyteller who narrates and mediates voices that have been silenced somewhere in the past. I am deeply invested and interested in the feminine body, knowledge and heritage. I do an artistic research in the frame of a PhD project named "Singing The Silences", on the singing tradition of Bakhtiari women in the Zagros mountains in the west of Iran, which is my ancestral paternal lineage. Lament singing is the major part of the singing tradition of Bakhtiari women. 
One of the outcomes of my research is a vocal workshop of grief based on lamenting vocal techniques, and the sense of a collective and common circle of emotional release through body and voice. The workshop, named “The Circle of Grieving Voice'', is based on a practice I have developed through many laboratory experiences in working with participants and other voice practitioners.