DESCRIPTION:
APosition International Music Forum (APositsia) - X, 2014, Saint-Petersburg, Russia.

Famoudou Don Moye, is an American jazz percussionist and drummer. He is most known for his involvement with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and is noted for his mastery of African and Caribbean percussion instruments and rhythmic techniques. At Apositsia 10 Famoudou will perform in a duo with another percussionist Baba Sissoko from Mali.

Baba Sissoko is a musician and vocalist. Sissoko is a master of the talking drums. He is also a jeli by birth. From childhood, he played tamani, often accompanying the traditional female griot during wedding and other traditional ceremonies.

“New music” as an autonomous and independent art form in Russia dates back to the Soviet era. Contemporary Music Club in Leningrad (1979-1982) was the first semi-official institution with rich and diverse artistic programme: from “classical” avant-garde to free improvisation to avant-rock and then exotic ethnic music. The Club was banned by authorities in 1982 and the tradition – under the name of Open Music festival – could be resumed only in the late 1980s, with Gorbachev’s radical reforms. In the 1990s the focal point of the new music movement shifted to Moscow, to Dom cultural centre with enthusiastic and tireless Nick Dmitriev at its helm. In St. Petersburg the tradition was sustained by the SKIF festival, and in the new century by the APosition festival.

APosition’s aesthetic and cultural roots are transparent even from its name. “Wrong” A instead of the right “O” in the beginning of the word is an instant allusion to the legendary Sun Ra Arkestra. And opposition – apart from general oppositional spirit of any radical art form – is a direct reference to rock-in-opposition, a unique artistic and political movement in European and American rock, where intellectual sophistication, compositional complexity and improvisational freedom were going hand in hand with unambiguous political and ideological position (opposition) towards the cultural establishment as well as the show business.


International Music Forum APositsia is an annual event taking place in St.Petersburg, Russia.

It is a festival that represents musical projects from all over the world associated with creativity or even experimental.

It consists of a 4 days of concerts, masterclasses and collaborations with local musicians.

In a last ten years following musicians took part in APositsia festivals: Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, Miya Masaoka, Marcus Stockhausen, Brian Godding, Burton Greene, Hamid Drake, William Parker, Phill Niblock, Famoudou Don Moye, David Moss, Jim Thirlwell, Charles Gayle, Rhys Chatham, Tim Hodgkinson, Shelley Hirsch, Peter Principle, Chris Corsano, Dror Feiler, Dok Gregory, King Ayisoba, Evelina Petrova, Peter Brotzmann, Keith Rowe and many others.