Musical Nomads

A World Tour of Music in a Viennese Hood

The formation MUSICAL NOMADS steal people’s time. They intercept your ways in Vienna’s working-class areas of the 15th and 16th district – not far from bustling shopping malls and the blaring noise of intersections. Their goal: to pull passers-by away from both their everyday work and worries – and to challenge the doctrine ‘you have to work’. With their Viennese world music, MUSICAL NOMADS lure you to linger, dance, and simply be.

The anti-work conspiracy will be orchestrated – in blind consent – by accordion player Otto Lechner and his partner in crime and inventor of instruments Hans Tschiritsch. The two will be supported by Vienna-based musical nomads from all over the world, among them Kadero Rai, Jelena Poprzan, Eldis La Rosa, and Aisha Eisa.

‘Somehow, we are old-fashioned’, says Hans, who grew up in a time when teenagers wearing bell-bottoms demanded the liberation of humankind. Fortunately, bell-bottoms are history, but the dream of liberation has remained.

For their time-stealing attack, Otto and Hans have chosen spots in the outskirts of economy: Kardinal-Rauscher-Platz and Gürtel. Here, people work in market shops and at McDonald’s. Here, too, people who have dropped away from capitalism or been spat out by the system can be found loitering. And there are those merely taking their lunch break and a deep breath in the middle of the modern precariat. They all will be supported – musically and morally. Who will become an ally and join the ‘canticles of idleness’?

Otto Lechner is an accordion player and composer. Hans Tschiritsch is a musician and instrument inventor in Vienna.

Language: Participation possible without language skills!

Production: WIENWOCHE

(c) Chi Rich/ NoMaden im Speck

© Ana Paula Franco