The third weekend of September, the Maastricht city center is completely dominated by Kunstenfestival Musica Sacra. The festival is always built around an annually changing theme that is central to the entire program. The festival theme for 2022 is Exodus.

Where people happily set out in droves to shopping festivities, sunny beaches or slopes, we sometimes speak of an exodus. That’s a frivolous use of the term, especially in light of the sad record – recently reported – of 100 million refugees worldwide. They are undergoing an exodus in the truest sense of the word: under appalling conditions forced to set out along unknown routes to uncertain destinations and with a slim chance of ever returning. One in seventy people are now displaced, on the run, distraught on their way to less bad and maybe a little better.

No one just leaves home and hearth for no reason: the price is too high, the risk too great. But hunger, poverty, war or oppression compel many people to take that step anyway. “They are taking the risk because there is no other viable option left.” (Stefan Hertmans).

Will they ever reach the land that will share its milk and honey with them? And if so, how much space will they be given, how much adjustment is required or demanded? Or will they be repelled as invaders or, barely tolerated, banished to the very fringes of society, “like a shattered pitcher, a pot that no one wants, cast into the land they know not?” (Jeremias)

Too many questions that the Biblical Exodus, that iconic story about flight and migration, does not answer, whether you read it as a historical account or as an allegorical liberation epic (Marleen Reynders). Musica Sacra is also unable to do this and does not intend to, but raises these and similar questions through the arts and the artists affected by this chronically topical problem.

Source : Musica Sacra Website