A Song For You

A Song For You is a BIPOC vocal ensemble and interdisciplinary music collective based in Berlin that serves as a platform for underrepresented voices and narratives. The ensemble – founded in 2022 by Noah Slee and Dhanesh Jayaselan – now brings together more than 50 artists from around the world and moves fluidly between neo-soul, R&B, gospel, hip-hop, and contemporary choral music. As part of the summer festival ›Shifting Grounds – IN COMMON‹, A Song For You will perform its work ›In Circulation‹, which explores the cyclical nature of being.

Blending choir, movement, improvisation, poetry and live instrumentation, the work moves through themes of recurrence – the patterns we inherit, the habits we repeat, the wounds we carry and the possibility of breaking through them. The voice is the point of departure. It is not just treated as an instrument but as a memory. Something ancestral, intuitive, imperfect and alive. Improvisation becomes both remembrance and release – reconnecting with what already lives inside the body whilst purging what no longer needs to remain.

Moving between chaos and softness, breaking and becoming, resistance and flow, ›In Circulation‹ asks what it means to find centre again after emotional extremity. At its core, the performance is an offering toward freedom. After all, perhaps growth does not mean escaping the cycle, but rather returning to oneself differently each time.