Clear your Saturday schedule because Orii is taking over the Barbican, and it’s set to be a night you’ll talk about long after the music stops.
Part of the performing arts centre’s Anyone Can Dance series – a new initiative hosting late night parties that celebrate international sounds shaped by grassroots UK collectives – it’s a night centered around coming together. Having previously run events with Eastern Margins, a group focused on spotlighting alternative Asian culture, and South American dance music label Love in the Endz, Orii’s iteration will be in a few months time by parties put on by Daytimers and Beirut Groove Collective.
Taking its name from the Yoruba word Orí, meaning “head”, Orii is dedicated to amplifying underrepresented creatives across London and building a vibrant community of young POC and LGBTQIA+ talent. Hosting Jam Sessions every Monday in Hackney Wick, Orii brings people together in a bid to forge relationships, carve out creative opportunities and create a space for enjoyment and self-affirmation.
Beyond that, Orii continues to grow its community through various events including their weekly open mic and Orii Present, a series of performances and jam sessions hosted at Southbank Centre. They also recently launched limited edition merch and, on September 5, will perform at cross-genre day festival Jazz On Wick.
Ahead of the event, we caught up with ORII producers Limi and DJ Programma. As Orii’s co-builder, Limi mentioned that when connecting with audience, she cares about the authenticity and engagement, rather then just posting online. Limi and DJ Programma started to connecting with Orii after Covid, both wanting to bring the music and the community back together after pandemic. Now, they keep powering the creative community and strengthening the hub. Here, we get to know the collective’s journey, and what not to miss on the dance floor.
1. What are you most excited about for your anyone can dance event at the Barbican?
DJ Programma: Experiencing the sound of an all black lineup. It’s not something you see very often in electronic music in london.
Limi: We are most excited about showcasing the full range and expanse of Black genres and club sounds within one show. Mixing mediums between electronic and live performance, DJs and instrumentation, featuring everything from dancers to spoken word.
2. What’s one track that always gets people on the dance floor?
L: Halo feat. Maiya – Glory (Atjazz 2022 Rework)!!
DJP: Donae’o – Party Hard
3. What’s your favourite thing about the Orii community?
L: The sense of family and togetherness in any room across London, usually there’s someone from Orii there, and in that way Orii fosters community for creatives outside of our own events, bringing creatives together, fostering collaboration, and existing as a safe creative space for artists to grow, connect and develop their practice.
DJP: The breadth of talent is craaaaazy, I’m forever pleasantly shocked at how skilled all the house and community musicians are. And they keep getting better!
4. What’s your fondest memory from the dance floor?
L: Orii Club X DaMetalMessiah takeover at We Out Here. The entire day was a fusion and hybridity of electronic sounds, live performance, and UK Club culture, featuring Ikonika, El-B, Izco, and Orii residents, Chedda Bred, DJ Programma, Limi, Neue Grafik, Big Dreco, Jaz Lee, Auka and more.
DJP: We discussed for a long time about working with a sound system and recently we collaborated Felt Sound System to put on Orii Dub, a night focused on Dubstep. The walls were shaking, our bodies rattling and the night went down in Colour Factory history.
5. What’s your favourite spot in London for a pre-show drink?
L: Gotta shout out our family at Jumbi – delicious cocktails, food, and Caribbean-owned and run.
DJP: A friends house with the aux cable – tune swapping and inventing cocktails with whatever is in the cupboard.
6. Who are three upcoming artists everyone should know about right now?
L and DJP: We know so many! It’s hard to narrow it down to just 3…Hillarynx, Mar!k, and Grifton Forbes-Amos!
7. What is one thing about Yoruba culture you want everyone to know?
L and DJP: In Yoruba culture, Orí (literally meaning “head”) is a highly sacred metaphysical concept. It represents your spiritual consciousness, inner self, and personal destiny. The Yoruba believe your Orí is a divine guide, like a guardian angel, that you chose before birth.
We’ve taken inspiration from the original word and meaning, in creating ORII as force for radical connection, acceptance and togetherness. We seek to connect anyone and everyone who attends our events into one shared soul, raising our collective vibration and raising our frequencies – providing a sense of home, community and creative freedom for people to carry with them in their daily lives.
8. Do you have any pre-show rituals?
L: We try to find a moment to come together and be before each show – this doesn’t always happen given the busyness of everyone’s lives, but we all recognise how important it is to be present with each other, show up authentically and communicate kindly and candidly with each other. This allows us to connect fully on stage and provide that same experience of connection to our audience.
DJP: A few deep breaths, lighting Palo Santo and channeling the giants whose shoulders we have built our craft on. It’s really important to get into a zone and turn on artist mode.
9. How did you curate who was going to show at your anyone can dance event?
L and DJP: For this show, we did a significant amount of research around Pan-Africanism, seeking to reflect the core themes and traits of the exhibition itself, and explore Orii’s own connection to the Pan-Africanist movement. We are showcasing Black Diaspora music from across the globe, through a Black British lens, and so we have selected artists to represent an array of black music tied into UK Club culture. As this is an Orii Club show, we’ve also curated within these themes and narrative, the live/electronic hybridity of MCs, instrumentalists fused with DJs, live sets, and dancers from different styles. We’re also honoured to have King Original Sound System rooting the party in Black British music culture both sonically, technologically, and visually. We’re really proud of this curation and hope to both reflect the works and themes of the exhibition, whilst contributing our own narrative in relation to it.
10. Why are event series like this so important?
L and DJP: It’s so important for grassroots communities to be in dialogue with institutions. Culture is formed at the grass roots level, and the support of institutions for culture-makers and the next gen of talent is essential for evolution.
Having the infrastructural support of somewhere like the Barbican, allows us to bring to life concepts, visions and narratives we wouldn’t be able to on our own, and so in this way this event series really both supports the continued development of grass roots culture, and embeds grassroots communities within the institution itself.
Photography courtesy of Orii and the Barbican.
