City Academy Bristol Eid Event
What can we say!! It was perhaps the best event we have been to so far! We left London on Friday the 3rd of October at 8;45pm to get to Bristol via train and arrived approximately 10:30pm. Two brothers awaited our arrival and greeted us very warmly. We were escorted to a restaurant where we got to know each other and also had some munch to bite, after which we were escorted to a nearby hotel where we were to stay for the night. Alhamdulillah, the hotel was fantastic but what kept us awake was obviously you can imagine, is the excitement of the brothers who stayed up most the night sharing wonderful moments of life ‘lol’ and a little rehearsal here and there just to make sure we put up a good show for the morning.
Fajr came knocking on our door and it was quite tough getting the brothers to wake up, but we all woke up due to one of us threatening to pour cold water down the sleepy ones necks! We continued rehearsing for a short while and then went downstairs to get some complimentary buffet breakfast.
We soon got a call from our manager Sajid who left from Gloucester to come to Bristol, he arrived at the academy and met the brothers organising the event and drove directly to the hotel (he did mention the Tom Tom navigation system in his car giving him a hard time lol), we greeted each other and then drove to the academy – what took us by surprise was the fact that City Academy Bristol is a massive school with modern architect buildings. We did some sound tests and slowly the audiences started filling up, we had a massive room behind the stage where snacks were available to us and we took the full advantage of perfecting our voices and doing more rehearsals. At approximately 11:45 we hit the stage with a Qur’an recitation and then a small greeting of peace nasheed welcoming everyone, we introduced ourselves and performed the all-famous Subhanallah nasheed, then we performed the much-favourite Allahu Allah nasheed. Brother Ehsaan then told a very meaningful story which focused on the fear and hope of Allah which was truly thrilling to hear, especially to the parents/children who can take a lesson from it. We then showed a presentation on the OHP (over-head projector) with our nasheed Ask Him in the background and the audience really loved it. Ehsaan then performed an urdu nasheed in love of the Prophet (pbuh) and al Madina al Munawwarah. We then carried out a quiz and invited on stage with children from the audience and divided them into two groups of boys and girls, and from these two groups we had 2 winners to whom we gave out signed copy of our album Rhymes of Praise each and also some sweets, and to the ones who didn’t win, we gave them lots of sweets. We then performed a new version of Tala ‘al badru ‘alayna with Ehsaan leading it and the rest of the group doing live harmonies. Our duration on stage was approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes – probably the longest we did live on stage!
There were many other acts which were performed and Muslim Hands also done a charity appeal. There were also young children who performed some beautiful nasheeds and Qur’an recitations on the day. At the very end of the programme, all the singers got on stage and we encouraged the children from the audience to come and join us on stage and sing the Allahu Allah nasheed once more, Alhamdulillah there were lots of children that joined us and we all finished the event with a nasheed praising Allah – what a finale!