Always on
This project successfully funded on 11th October 2025, you can still support them with a donation.
Musical Journeys 25: responding to emerging needs!
Lancaster, Lancashire, United Kingdom
Aim
changing the gender balance of music in Olinda; supporting Indigenous festivities in the upper Xingu; and reforesting the Boca de Mata.
Update December 2025:
After October's amazing international cabaret, I’m now back in Brazil - and I'm finding things that can benefit from a small amount of support **right now**.
I arrived in mid-November with my friend Janet on a ship from Italy. We spent a week learning to weave agbes (beaded cabacas made from gourds), grown in the Boca da Mata — an area of Atlantic Forest being brought back to life by artist, capoeirista, percussionist, teacher and agriculturalist Guga Santos, and his wife and partner, dancer and teacher Ruth Asidi. This work takes place in Paudalho, about an hour from Recife, capital of the north-eastern state of Pernambuco.
(And all of this began with a chance meeting with Ruth in Lancaster last June, when I was putting up posters for the Musical Journeys ’25 cabaret!)
Since then, Janet has returned to the UK, and I’ve stayed on in Recife, learning more about Afro-Brazilian music and performance - forms deeply connected to resistance and ancestral traditions.
An invitation from a friend led me to a practice night in neighbouring Olinda, home of Brazil’s third-largest carnival. There, professional musician and teacher Luiza Roberta de Lima (@Lua.lima.trombone on Instagram) has been bringing together a women’s Frevo band in her own time, to help redress the gender imbalance in Frevo music.
One woman couldn’t afford a trumpet - but she kept coming to rehearsals anyway, learning fingering and holding hope for the moment her circumstances might change. Within three days I was able to raise the £150 needed to buy a decent trumpet locally, so Liliana is now on her way to playing with the band at Carnival 2026. But more instruments are needed if this initiative is to grow.
Alongside this, I’ve just received an appeal from Mayak, the Waurá craftsperson who carved the tamanduá (anteater) that has pride of place in my living room back in Lancaster, asking for support for Christmas festivities in his community in the Upper Xingu, in Mato Grosso.
So - let’s do a quick holiday fundraiser. if everyone who contributed to MJ25 the cabaret can put in between £5 and £20, between us we should be able to support all three of these projects. Even a couple of pounds would make a difference - there's lots of us!
Thank you so much - I look forward to sending you updates.
Fiona, Recife, December 2025
(see below for what we did during the summer and autumn of '25!)
🎶 Musical Journeys 25: The 'Fiona's Travels' edition
A transcontinental celebration of music and dance online around the world and with a special event in Halton, Lancaster, UK.
- the event went ahead without a hitch - and you can see the full event recording here. If you like this project, please consider still donating - all income will go to continue to support live performance across the Americas. (Podcasts, broadcasts, project support...)
200 people joined us live and online for an unforgettable international musical cabaret, bringing together extraordinary artists from across the Americas - and helping to support the Amazon Rainforest and its people. This was “Musical Journeys '25: The 'Fiona's Travels' edition”, a one-of-a-kind night of music, dance and tropical joy that came out of a 14-month musical adventure that lasted from November 2023 to January 2025 (and which I'm still resonating from every day six months later).
We had performances from:
- Mary Beth Carty, Nova Scotia Canadian Traditional Folk Singer of the Year 2024
- Carmen Guérard, one-row accordion virtuoso from Montreal, with singer/guitarist/jig doll operator Monique Jutras
- Cacuriá Balaio das Rosas, Afro-Brazilian dance group from São Luís, Brazil,
- Gilles Losier and the Famille Leblanc - virtuoso 89 year old pianist and violin player, along with a fabulous father/daughters multi-instrumental musical family - guardians of the New Brunswick Acadian tradition, (logistics still being worked on for this !!)
- Yene Velt - Montreal based trad Klezmer ensemble with fiddles and Tsimbl - today we have a duo of tsimbl and fiddle
Plus live on stage in Lancaster: local Capoeira Angola group Ogum, members of Lancaster's Samba group Batala Lancaster, - together with gourmet Brazilian food and Brazilian art and Brazilian music from Artur Soar.
🎯 Why I’m Crowdfunding
In 2024, I travelled through Brazil, Peru, the USA, and Canada, with a melodeon and a concertina in my luggage, looking for music, stories, and connections. I played forró in Bahia and Montreal, danced Cacuriá in São Luís, learned Cape Breton tunes from an 88-year-old fiddler in New Brunswick, joined a Quebecois accordion class in Montreal, played Irish, Quebecois, Klezmer, Swedish and Cajun music in Canada and the USA, and shared tunes in kitchens and on street corners across the Americas.
But one of the deeper reasons I went to Brazil was to follow the legacy of Dom Phillips, the British journalist murdered in the Amazon in 2022 alongside Indigenous defender Bruno Pereira while researching a book. His sister, Sian Phillips, had been my choir leader for ten years here in Lancaster, and hearing her affirm that his family would never let his voice be silenced, led me to want to help in some way. I organised an exhibition and a festival about the Amazon in Lancaster back in 2022, and 3 years on, I helped organise the Lancaster launch of Dom's posthumously published book How to Save the Amazon: A Journalist's Deadly Quest for Answers. Sian spoke movingly about her brother’s death - and about the hope and joy that have emerged from the tragedy through the creation of this book.
At the event we also heard from Indigenous leader Beto Marubo, Guardian global environment editor Jonathan Watts, and Dom’s widow Alessandra Sampaio, founder of the Dom Phillips Institute, which continues Dom’s legacy of amplifying the voices of the Amazon and the knowledge of its Indigenous peoples.
So this event is part musical cabaret, part homage, and part call to action.
During the pandemic, I learned how to bring people together online through music. I ran four “Musical Journeys” events and raised over £7000 to support performers and local Lancaster causes. This time, I want to use those skills to give international and local artists a fair payment, and support three Amazon-based causes with at least a quarter of everything we raise:
The Dom Phillips Institute - a living alliance between Amazonian youth, ancestral knowledge and transformative education
A rap collective, "AltasBatalha” empowering young people in Altamira, Pará
"A música e a poesia como ferramenta educacional na sala de aula" (Music and poetry as an educational tool in the classroom) taking musical instruments out to remote Indigenous villages near Tefe, Amazonas, and running music and spoken word classes with children and their parents.
And to do all this without the stress of relying on ticket sales at the door, I need your help upfront through this crowdfunder.
🌍 Online & In Person
The in-person event at Halton Mill was immersive, and vibrant - with great sound from the performers being beamed in from the Americas, plus live Brazil-style local Capoeira and Samba performers, and an international gourmet experience. And we had people - and performers - joining us from all over the world!
🙏 Why Your Support Matters
This crowdfunder lets us plan with confidence, secure brilliant sound and tech, pay every artist fairly, and reserve funds to support both our performers and crucial projects like the Dom Phillips Institute, running training programmes for young Indigenous leaders and raising awareness across Brazil about the importance of protecting the Amazon. It’s an opportunity to come together in celebration, music, and solidarity - honouring the cultures that have shaped this journey and the urgent cause we stand behind.
Please give what you can. Update July 2025 - we're still taking funds right up till the day of the concert - a quarter of everything you give here will go to the Amazon causes, and the rest will go to support the show. The more you give, the more goes to the Amazon projects. There's also a 'trybooking' ticketing site running alongside the crowdfunder site - both sites are taking £ for the same cause and selling the same tickets so don't get confused!
UPDATEOctober 2025 - we paid all the performers, sound engineer,tech people, foodies, hall hire, etc, etc, etc.... and were able to send a total of £995shared between our three Amazon projects! Any future funds received will go to cover a few last minute event expenses, and then will go towards future editions of my 'traditional music and fascinating conversations' podcast, 'Fiona's Travels'.
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PLEASE share this with anyone who loves music, connection, and justice.
With heartfelt thanks from me, from the performers - and from the Amazon
Fiona
ps here's a video from Alessandra Sampaio, Dom Phillips' widow, supporting the crowdfunder and telling us more about the Dom Phillips Institute
https://youtu.be/imGengPu4dE
And here are some of the kids learning guitar as part of our musical instrument project
pps please note the Crowdfunder tip is optional, you can edit the 'custom amount' link below the total to be anything you like from zero upwards. They take a percentage from me so don't feel guilty!
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made