IF music is the true food of diversity, as a certain Elizabethan groover might have said, he would have loved the marvellous cosmopolitan sounds of the Grand Union Orchestra, who are playing at a concert to mark International Migrants’ Day in Bethnal Green’s Oxford House in their east London heartland on December 19 — a venue once the base of Tower Hamlets Movement Against Racism and Fascism during the anti-National Front activism of the 1970s.

The Grand Union are a musical microcosm of how we would want England to be, bonded together in one London borough, with fine musicians from England, Bangladesh and India, the Caribbean, Chile, Russia and Brazil, South Africa, China, Australia and Germany. They are a creative riposte to Farage and his minions, showing how music is a catalyst of unity beyond genre, beyond category bringing a diverse nation together in real time, in a real place that lives it every day.

Every successive Grand Union concert is a tribute to the internationalism of its creation, and to its instigator too, Tony Haynes (1941-2024), who founded the orchestra in 1984. As its powerhouse South African trumpeter, Claude Deppa, another of its pioneers, said: “Tony had an irreplaceable talent for imaginative music that allows every musician to tell a story. His influence and spirit remain strong, as we aim to continue his work and break new ground.”

The stories from our neighbours from everywhere will tell of their talents in this concert expressively called “Songs from Our Beautiful Island,” in a part of London where over the centuries, Huguenot and Flemish weavers, Jewish tailors, Irish dockers, Somali seamen and Bangladeshi garment workers all worked to live and make music.

Come and hear the sounds of their jazz narratives and now-times lives: you’ll love it!

Grand Union Orchestra will perform at Oxford House, Derbyshire Street, Bethnal Green, London E2 on December 18. 7.30pm. For more information see: grandunion.org.uk