Pass Blog
PASS in NY: Innov Gnawa
Maalem Hassan Ben Jaafer
Innov Gnawa is a traditional Moroccan gnawa band based in New York City uniting music fans with their innovative, hypnotic and ecstatic take on North Africa’s trance-inducing folk tradition.
The full band is comprised of Maalem (Master) Hassan Ben Jaafer (Fez), Samir Langus (Agadir), Ahmed Jeriouda (Sale), Amino Belyamani (Casablanca), Said Sayed (Sale) and Nawfal Atiq (Rabat).
“You don’t need to speak Arabic to be moved by this music. It’s the music of the poor, the excluded who couldn’t afford to go to the big conservatories to study Andalusian poetry—their suffering is in rhythm.” – Samir Langus
“Their music is believed to heal people possessed by jinn, or spirits. The rise of this music, which began, in the nineteen-fifties, as a marginalized Sufi practice but has become arguably the most popular music emerging from the region today, is a question that nettles scholars and ordinary North Africans alike: How did Gnawa music become our national music? Of the myriad Sufi orders that use faith healing, and of the countless North African genres known for polyrhythmic syncopation, why has this one grabbed Western listeners?” – Hashim Aidi
Tune in to PASS at the Performa Hub in New York this week for an intimate Innov Gnawa performance. Live stream begins each day at 3pm (EST!).
PASS in NY: Hisham Aidi with Abdi Latif Ega and Rashidah Ismaili Abubakr
Hisham Aidi is the author of Rebel Music: Race, Empire and the New Muslim Youth Culture, a study of how music—primarily hip-hop, but also rock, reggae, Gnawa and Andalusian—has come to express a shared Muslim consciousness in face of War on Terror policies. He hosts a conversation with writers Somali-American writer Abdi Latif Ega and poet, playwright, essayist and short story writer, Rashidah Ismaili Abubakr. “[T]he richest cross-fertilization that you have between American music and Islam is in hip-hop, that begins …
Category: News, Pass Blog
Tags: Abdi Latif Ega, Hisham Abdi, PASS New York, Rashidah Ismaili Abubakr
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PASS in NY: Neo Muyanga
Cape Town-based composer and PASS co-founder Neo Muyanga is engaged in an ongoing, multi-focal exploration of protest music that spans from how protest songs played a key role in South Africa’s liberation to the role of liberation music in Egypt, Brazil and Uruguay. For PASS at the Performa Hub in New York, Neo will host discussions and performances to explore these themes with NYC based musicians. “This is ugly beautiful. One of the roles of music is to do …
PASS in NY: Brent Hayes Edwards
Writer and researcher, Brent Hayes Edwards presents “The Two Ages of Artist House: Ornette Coleman on Prince Street”. “In jazz history, the 1970s have habitually been overlooked or dismissed as a period when the music went into severe decline. But in fact there was a remarkable ferment of activity in the decade, especially in New York — much of it underground, in small clubs, musician-run “lofts,” and independent theaters — and jazz played a central role in the arts scene …
PASS in NY: Harmony Holiday
Poet and choreographer Harmony Holiday curates an archive devoted to poetry, poetics and music, woven together through mythscientific gestures. “Since the 1950s, jazz music and the literary imagination have been inextricably linked, producing transcendent recordings and written work and many hybrids of the two – a new sonics, an AntiqueFuturism – From Langston Hughes and Kenneth Rexroth and Duke Ellington to Joseph Jarman to Michael Harper to Mos Def.” For PASS at the Performa Hub in New York, Harmony will …
PASS in NY: Nontsikelelo Mutiti and guests
Working across disciplines to produce work that occupies the forms of fine art, design, and social practice, Zimbabwean-born artist and educator Nontsikelelo Mutiti curates an African Hair Braiding Salon that provides a framework to publish and present a range of works that are physical and performative in nature. Here, women of colour are brought into proximity with each other over the business of beauty. Collaborators include graphic design Julia Novitch, writer Tinashe Mushakavanhu and sculpture LaKela Brown. Mutiti also hosts: …
PASS pop-up at Performa 15 Hub in New York
Through next week, we’ll occupy the Performa 15 Hub in New York with the Chimurenga Library. This multi-tiered programming platform takes the form of a library-of-people, bringing together a broad spectrum of collaborators and literal bodies of knowledge in an improvised, pop-up library which also functions as radio studio and market. The Chimurenga Library engages trade as both the process of buying, selling, or exchanging goods or services and the practice of exchanging ideas, imaginaries, perceptions, and vocabularies. Over five days, from …
Category: News
Tags: Harmony Holiday, Neo Muyanga, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, PASS New York
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PASS landing at Performa 15 Hub, New York
From 11 to 15 November 2015, the Chimurenga Library hosted PASS with a live broadcasting programme of music, interviews, and events with Chimurenga collaborators in New York, including musicians, journalists, writers, curators, and filmmakers. The live broadcast studio functioned amidst an installation that brought together pop-up stores that experiment with trade, informal economies, aesthetics and body language, music and spoken word, mobility and infrastructure. Working with collaborators such as Brooklyn-based African Record Centre and Yoruba Book Center (established 1971); artist …
African Futures Music Concert & Party: Spoek Mathambo / Batuk/Keziah Jones/Just A Band/Gato Preto
Nigerian musician Keziah Jones, South African Spoek Mathambo, Kenya’s Just A Band and German duo Gato Preto will join for an evening of music and the closing party of African Futures. Each of them will be performing music that relates to the theme of African Futures. Listen to this concert on PASS. 31/10/2015. 21hoo-late Keziah Jones, Nigerian singer-songwriter and guitarist, who accompanied Lenny Kravitz on his world tour, will present music from his latest album Captain Rugged, which was accompanied …
Category: Articles, News, Pass Blog, Pass Radio
Tags: African Futures, Gato Preto, just a band, Keziah Jones, spoek mathambo
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African Futures Knowledge Production: Where do we go from here?
“Who generates knowledge about Africa? How do past, present and future collide in representations of the continent? And what are the different languages we use to speak about Africa’s political, technological and cultural tomorrow?” Listen to this talk on PASS. 31/10/2015. 10hoo-13h00 While the world embraces information as both resource and currency, Africa is busy working on telling its story and imagining that story’s future. Will this shift the way in which we think about information or data? Can fiction …
Category: Articles, News, Pass Blog, Pass Radio
Tags: Achille Mbembe, African Futures, Keziah Jones, Ntone Edjabe, Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi
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