At the heart of the project is a mutual respect for the specifics - for the days, places and practices that make up the fullness of a life. There is a deep sense of locality imbued in every stage of the work: the artists visited each other’s cities, participated in each other’s everyday cultures and, over time, taught each other the intricacies of their respective folk idioms.

Yet, behind all the curiosity and fervour of making an album, their shared creative process has been subject to the pressure and constraints imposed by inflexible systems that still regard all immigration of Global Majority musicians - even on temporary visits - with suspicion and hostility.

So Far We Have Come is a demonstration of what it means to pursue a collaborative idea across a grid of diplomatic bureaucracy born of colonial violence and racism, whilst maintaining a belief in the necessity of social and political change, so often only reachable through the world we imagine in art. Tamsin and Tarek are grateful for the financial and logistical support of EFDSS and Help Musicians in making this collaboration possible.