Pass Radio
Innov Gnawa Live
PASS Pop-up NYC plays out with Innov Gnawa, a traditional Moroccan gnawa band based in New York City who unite music fans with their innovative, hypnotic and ecstatic take on North Africa’s trance-inducing folk tradition.
This is Hashim Aidi on gnawa: ”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?”
Hisham Aidi with Abdi Ega & Rashidah Ismaili Abubakr
Hisham Aidi hosts a conversation with writers Somali-American writer Abdi Latif Ega and poet, playwright, essayist and short story writer, Rashidah Ismaili Abubakr. Aida is the author of Rebel Music: Race, Empire and the New Muslim Youth Culture (Pantheon 2014), 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 “[T]he richest cross-fertilization that you have between American music and Islam is in …
Category: Pass Blog, Pass Radio
Tags: Abdi Latif Ega, Hisham Abdi, Rashidah Ismaili Abubakr
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‘We charge genocide’ marathon reading
Freedwomen’s Bureau (Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts) presents a marathon reading of We Charge Genocide, the historic petition to the United Nations for relief from a crime of the United States government against the negro people (1951). Rhodes-Pitts is the author of the critically-acclaimed Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America. She is working on a trilogy about African-Americans and utopia and recently launched BLACKNUSS: books and other relics, a new bookstore in Harlem.
Adrift, a soundtrack for migration: DJ Ushka & Lamin Fofana
Africa is a Country present “Adrift: A soundtrack for migration,” the second of three panels, curated by AIAC managing editor, Africa is a Radio host, and music section editor, Boima Tucker. Current and former member of the Brooklyn DJ collective Dutty Artz, DJ Ushka (Thanu Yakupitiyage) and Lamin Fofana, talk about Fofana’s recent EP as a jump-off point to discuss migration — from what the Western media has dubbed a European “migrant crisis” stemming from Africa and Syria — to …
Nontsikelelo Mutiti: Women in new media & technology
Nontsikelelo Mutiti‘s African Hair Braiding Salon at the Chimurenga Library in NYC provides a framework to publish and present a range of works that are physical and performative in nature. She gets the weekend programme started with a conversation on women in new media and technology with Torkwase Dyson, Salome Asega, Yulan Grant and Kimberly Drew (Black Contemporary Art).
Traveling the PASS Spaceways
PASS Pop-up has occupied 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.
Category: Pass Blog, Pass Radio
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Coco Fusco – Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba
Coco Fusco brings Dangerous Moves to the PASS Pop-up Studio. The Cuban-American artist and writer draws on her new book, Dangerous Moves, to discuss performance and politics in Cuba, with a focus on Cuban hip hop. “I think all art all over the world can be understood in relation to politics, not just in Cuba. My focus is on artists who address political phenomena. Making art for me is really about work and serious thinking about what happens in the …
Giovanni Russonello on South African jazz
CapitalBop.com editor and JazzTimes contributor, Giovanni Russonello talks on currents in South African Jazz, and plays the tunes. “It was created as a redemptive force by a racially, economically marginalized community of people, and it has always had a remarkable emotional nuance to it – James Baldwin called jazz “double-edged,” and he says it has an “ironic tenacity” to it. He’s right: It’s music that thrives on both the toughness of struggle and the joy of transcendence. ” – Giovanni …
Nontsikelelo Mutiti & Tinashe Mushakavanhu: The Hairdresser of Harare
PASS Pop-up NYC resident, Nontsikelelo Mutiti steps out of her onsite braiding salon to join writer Tinashe Mushakavanhu in a reading of The Hairdresser of Harare. Zimbabwean-born artist and educator Mutiti’s African Hair Braiding Salon at the Chimurenga Library in the PERFORMA 15 Hub 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. Tinashe Mushakavanhu …
Neo Muyanga – a Revolting Mass
Composer and musician and a co-curator of the Pan African Space Station Neo Muyanga is back with more Revolting Tunes that engage the axis of black music and the aesthetics of protest. The performance lecture is part of Muyanga’s ongoing, multi-focal exploration of protest music. The project 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. He hosts discussions and performances to explore these themes …