"I Dreamed An Island": Exploring Crossroads between the Mediterranean, North Africa & Beyond - SOAS 

Piers Faccini’s latest album, 'I Dreamed An Island', is the personal quest of a British songwriter living in southern France - a voyage towards an imagined haven through the storms of fear and intolerance brewing around the world. Singing mostly in English but also in French, Italian dialects and Arabic, Faccini’s music is an impassioned celebration of cultural diversity and pluralism. Searching for a bygone 'golden era', when coexistence and religious tolerance prevailed, Faccini found a model for this utopian haven in 12th Century Sicily. At the crossroads of Western, Arabic and Byzantine influence, the island briefly flourished as the most enlightened and advanced society in medieval Europe. Raised in a trilingual family environment in the 70s and 80s in France, Italy and the UK, Faccini’s music also reflects his own background. For this concert, he will be joined by Malik Ziad, an Algerian musician who sings and plays guembri lute as well as Algerian mandole.