NY Event: "Common Chords" concert featuring Salman Ahmad - 5/1 - 4:30 pm

“COMMON CHORDS” CONCERT AT QUEENS COLLEGE ON MAY 1
CELEBRATES CULTURAL SIMILARITIES BETWEEN MUSLIMS AND JEWS

--Mohammad Salman Hamdani, Queens College Graduate Who Died a Hero
on September 11, 2001, To Be Honored--

FLUSHING, NY, April 20, 2007—“Common Chords,” a celebration of Muslim and Jewish music, will be presented at Queens College on Tuesday, May 1 from 4:30 to 6:30 pm in LeFrak Concert Hall. Featuring Salman Ahmad of Junoon, South Asia’s most popular rock band, and Yale Strom, the world’s leading Klezmer artist, the concert is the final event in a semester-long series on bridging the cultural divide between Muslims and Jews. It is part of “The Middle East and America: Clash of Civilizations or Meeting of the Minds,” Queens College History Professor Mark Rosenblum’s nationally acclaimed project to promote understanding and informed discussion about the Middle East conflict on campus, in high schools, and in the larger community. This project is an initiative of the Michael Harrington Center at Queens College and the Taft Institute.

The evening will also include “Shared Traditions,” an on-screen photographic essay on the common aspects of Islam and Judaism. This will be presented by Gul Rukh Rahman and Ari Alexander, co-directors of the international online organization Children of Abraham. Begun in 2004 by Alexander, an American Jewish man, and Maria Ali-Adib, a Syrian Muslim woman, the organization strives for a deeper understanding between the two faiths through a photographic exploration of similarities in their rituals and customs.

Queens College alumnus Mohammad Salman Hamdani will also be honored at the Common Chords event. A Pakistani Muslim American who died saving lives on September 11, 2001, Hamdani was at first unfairly suspected of abetting the attack on the World Trade Center. His mother, Talat Hamdani, will be presented with an inscribed plaque commemorating her son’s heroism. A reception featuring Halal and Kosher cuisine will close the evening.

This event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Office of the President, the Michael Harrington Center and the Taft Institute. Funding is provided, in part, by the Ford Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative. For further information, call (718) 997-3070. For directions to Queens College, visit http://www.qc.cuny.edu/about/directions.php.

Brooklyn Qawwali Party - finally out with a CD

I thought it would take a lifetime, but alas! BQP is out with a CD consisting of four energetic and lively tunes. Perfect exercise or morning walk music, as well as for a night out with friends or just something in the background at work.

Buy it here!

Tribute to Pakistani music maestro Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - 1/18

Friends,

This event is not to be missed! Pass the word on...

Z

GlobeSonic Entertainment Presents
A Tribute to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Vishal Vaid | The Brooklyn Qawwali Party | GlobeSonic DJs | special guests
Thursday Jan 18 2007
Makor | 35 W 67th St | NYC
$15 advance | $18 doors | Free to APAP badge holders

http://www.globesonic.com/events/nusrattribute.html - link to youtube videos as well as info below

2007 will mark the 10-year anniversary since Pakistani qawwali legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan passed away. His influence made a mark on a wide range of artists, including Jeff Buckley, Eddie Vedder and Perry Farrell. His forward-reaching collaboration with Michael Brook (on two Real World releases, Mustt Mustt and Night Song) was the gateway for global audiences to experience this unique, harmonium- and tabla-driven devotional music. On Thursday, January 18th, GLOBESONIC PRESENTS A TRIBUTE TO NUSRAT will feature artists influenced by this legend. Vocalist VISHAL VAID will perform vibrant, gorgeous ghazals over modern musical soundscapes alongside his ensemble. Sharing the stage will be BROOKLYN QAWWALI PARTY, who has based their repertoire on the rich Nusrat catalog, interpreting his style into a funky big-band dance formation. GlobeSonic DJs and special guests will fill the air with the magic of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

From his birth in Faisalabad, Punjab in 1948 until his passing in 1997, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan took the devotional Sufi music of qawwali to reaches unknown in the Islamic world. He was part of a 700-year familial lineage of qawwals, but the first to break it from the folk tradition of weddings, funerals and public service and to mainstream audiences through collaborations with the likes of Peter Gabriel, Eddie Vedder and Michael Brook. In his time he recorded some 125 albums, two of the last produced by Rick Rubin. That low, guttural trademark voice is beloved by fans worldwide, for having brought the sacred poetry of Rumi, Hafiz and others to an entire planet.

“Nusrat stirred the soul of millions around the world with the power of his voice,” says GlobeSonic founder Fabian Alsultany. “His voice was consumed by millions, from New York, London and Paris, and beyond. He was everywhere in the early ‘90s, helping clean the grunge from the airwaves of the mainstream establishment. Today artists like the BQP, Karsh Kale, Niyaz and Vishal Vaid are all proof of Nusrat’s influence, of how an ambassador from another culture can influence young American kids on a MTV diet. The changing face of America is represented by this great figure. His music reminds us how the beautiful terrain of Pakistan, India and Iran – the profound richness of the Islamic world – radiated through his voice.”

THE PERFORMERS

Ghazal is a Persian song form literally meaning “to hold conversation with the divine,” and VISHAL VAID is undoubtedly on of the genre's young masters. Since his first live concert was at age three, Vishal has raised passion and fury in global audiences with ths sound of his unforgettable voice. Pliant in manay styles, from classical concerts sung in Urdu and Hindi to fusion experiments with Moroccan Gnawa and electronic renderings, his voice is the ecstatic infusion of diverse sounds. The man behind Karsh Kale's three records, he has performed alongside Bill Laswell, Hassan Hakmoun, Talvin Singh and Alex Kirschner. Spurred by the timeless qawwali sounds Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan exposed the West to, Vishal is poised to start his own re-evolution. “The ghazal is another art form I’m just waiting to reinvent," he says. "I feel it coming out of world instrumentation; be it an Arabic violin, an Italian cellist, a saxophone, what have you. These are all different concepts you have to be open to.”

The Brooklyn Qawwali Party is a 14-piece jazz/world music band from Brooklyn, NY. Inspired by recordings of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, this band was founded in 2004 as an experiment: What would happen if New York jazz musicians were to play and improvise around the melodies of this qawwali great? 14 musicians large (five horns, three percussionists, guitar, acoustic bass, harmonium and three designated clappers), their exuberant sound has been enthusiastically welcomed nationally. “We wish to serve the music of qawwali, to serve the memory of Nusrat and his qawwali Party, and to serve the world a music that will be joyous and perhaps spiritually uplifting,” BQP says, true to the intent of the Sufism that inspired qawwali music. “We wish to be a vessel for the unity of mankind, on a small scale or large.”