Jazz Singers Add Voices to Albania’s Green Protests

Singer Elina Duni. Photo: Facebook/Emmanuelle Nemoz

Albanian singers are helping to raise awareness of two hot environmental issues – the planned construction of hydropower plants on the Valbona river, one of Europe’s last wild rivers, and the adoption of law once again allowing waste imports.

Two well-known jazz singers living and working abroad, Elina Duni in Switzerland and Eda Zari in Germany, are organizing two free concerts dedicated to these environmental issues at the end of October back home in Albania.

The first will be on October 29 in Valbona, in the country’s mountains, where the message of the singers will be opposition to the planned building of dams on the river of that name.

They will be backing the months-long campaign of environmentalist, local inhabitants and other citizens against the hydropower plants, which greens say will have a devastating impact.

One day later, on October 30, another concert will be held in Tirana, where this time  opposition to the waste import law will be in focus.

In a Facebook post on October 2, Elina Duni said she dreamed of an Albania where patriotism also meant the preservation of its natural heritage.

“In Albanian folk music, nature is the main character. In every song, you have its spirit … We now have to unite to preserve the only soil that we have,” she wrote.

Andi Tepelena, one of the founders of the Alliance Against Waste Import, AKIP, an umbrella group of environmental organizations and individuals opposing the two government initiatives, told BIRN on Thursday that other artists will be joining the two concerts.

“This initiative is very special. For the first time we have artists initiating a ‘protest’ concert on their own initiative, while we as AKIP will support them with people and through raising money,” he said.

Tepelena said that more than 10,000 people have confirmed their participation in the two concerts while AKIP will also raise ther cash to cover the technical arrangements of the concerts.

“The women and the other artists that will follow them are creating a new cultural movement, so we are so happy to support them, believing that together we can save our country,” Tepelena said.