Grammy® Award-winning pianist/composer Arturo O’Farrill and the nonprofit Afro Latin Jazz Alliance (ALJA) along with current partner Little Island host the North American premiere of the acclaimed film. The Cuban Khaleeji Project from Friday, August 19 – Sunday, August 21, 2022 at “The Amph” on Little Island at Pier 55 in Hudson River Park. The Cuban Khaleeji Project was originally commissioned and presented by the NYU-Abu Dhabi Center for the Arts (2019) and will have its state premiere in NYC’s new public park: Little Island.
The Cuban Khaleeji Project it’s a rare experience for New Yorkers to witness the intersections of Afro-Cuban jazz and Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) music. O’Farrill leads listeners on an exploration of the Arabic, Moorish and North African roots of Afro-Latin and Afro-Cuban music and the maritime music of the Arabian Gulf. The Cuban Khaleeji Project is inspired by the work of author Ned Sublette, who traces the connection between Arabic and Afro-Cuban music as she travels across the Straits of Gibraltar and Andalucia, Spain. ABOUT The Cuban Khaleeji Project18-piece Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and special guests Ghazi Al-Mulaifi & Boom.Diwan, Ali Obaid, Yazz Ahmed and Malika Zarra will recreate the use of microtonal variations and improvisation in Middle Eastern song and similar practices in blues and afro folk songs as they explore the relationship between khaleeji and Cuban music.
“Cuba meets Khaleeji perfectly captures the idea that music is a migratory force,” he says Arturo O’Farrill. “The music we call jazz or Afro-Cuban jazz is informed by the Far East, the Middle East, South Asia and filtered through Mother Africa. When the captive peoples were brought to these shores against their will, they brought the language of the planet. They brought the truth that culture, especially music, is more powerful than geography, governance, nationalism, and even more powerful than hatred and oppression.”
“The Cuban Khaleeji Project was one of the most beautiful concerts we have presented at the NYU Abu Dhabi Center for the Arts, attended by the UAE Minister of Culture HE Noura al Kaabi and numerous dignitaries,” says Bill Bragin (Executive Artistic Director, Center of Arts at NYU. Abu Dhabi City). “Gulf music is little heard in the United States, and the opportunity to bring this project with its original artists to ALJO’s hometown of New York on the Little Island waterfront creates a tremendous opportunity to expand this cultural exchange and to provide Americans with a series of unique cultural performances of the highest caliber.”
Acclaimed guest artists include ethnomusicologist and musician Ghazi Al-Mulaifi, who leads Boom.Diwan, a group of seven skilled percussionists who draw from the rich repertoire of pearl diving songs and other traditional Kuwaiti styles. Emirati oudist and founder of the Takht Al Emarat group, Ali Obaid presents a musical dialogue rich with Emirati heritage and character. Having achieved international success, his music tells an authentic story of his hometown, Fujairah, United Arab Emirates.
British-Bahraini trumpeter and composer Yazz Ahmed blurs the lines between jazz, electronic sound design and the music of her mixed heritage in what has been described as “psychedelic Arabic jazz”. Moroccan vocalist Malika Zarra is a multicultural shape-shifter with a velvety, lilting mezzo-soprano voice who demonstrates the rare ability to communicate ideas/feelings both powerful and subtle in Berber, Moroccan Arabic, French and English.
ALJA curates a variety of special programs including The Cuban Khaleeji Project as part of their residency for Little Island’s “Island Music Week.” The Sunday, August 21 performance features new collaborations between O’Farrill and guest artists in smaller group formats with new music debuting on Little Island. This evening’s performance represents a new evolution of The Cuban Khaleeji Projectand represents the ongoing partnerships between these musicians to continue moving this music into the future.
Kuwaiti-American applied ethnomusicologist and music professor Ghazi Faisal Al-Mulaifi earned his PhD in philosophy from NYU (2015) and founded Boom Diwan, a collaborative jazz ensemble inspired by cosmopolitan Kuwaiti maritime music influenced by Indian Ocean trade . stretching from Zanzibar to Calicut.
The boom, the most important vessel in Kuwait, was used for pearl diving and commercial trade. This serves as a metaphor for the musical exploration that Boom.Diwan engages in. Diwan (music) is a place where traditional Kuwaiti maritime music ensembles preserve and convey traditional Kuwaiti music. This is also a metaphor for the exchange between Boom.Diwan and other musicians; regardless of genre, style or culture.
Ghazi, together with traditional Kuwaiti musicians, dialogues Kuwaiti bahri (sea) music with global jazz traditions in order to create a new Kuwaiti music that revives a musical tradition of dialogue and exchange.
Originally from the Emirate of Fujairah, Ali Obaid is the leader of Takht Al Emarat, the Fujairah Band of Arabic Music, the Fujairah Orchestra and the director of the Fujairah Academy of Fine Arts. His work has been at the forefront of the development of urban Arabic music in the UAE and that of bringing together Egyptian, Iraqi and Gulf music to develop a unique pan-Arab musical cosmopolitanism.
Obaid is the ambassador of Fujairah’s musical heritage, one of the most important educational institutions in the country that brings authentic and accurate representation and enriches the understanding of musical instruments such as the Oud.
British-Bahraini trumpeter Yazz Ahmed has led her ensembles in shows across the UK and Europe, and further afield in Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, USA and Canada. She has also wowed audiences at major festivals like WOMAD, Love Supreme, NYC Winter Jazz Fest & Pori Jazz.
Ahmed’s career includes high-profile collaborations with Radiohead, Lee Scratch Perry, Transglobal Underground, Arturo O’Farrill and Natacha Atlas, including a world tour with This New Puritans. Yazz was nominated for Downbeat’s Magazine Band Artist of the Year and featured in the Rising Star Trumpet category in the Downbeat Critics Poll 2020. And to close out 2020, she won the Jazz FM Award for UK Jazz Act of the Year , “Jazz FM Album of the Year” and the highly prestigious Ivor Novello Award for Innovation.
Award-winning mezzo-soprano vocalist Malika Zarra is a multicultural shape-shifter who effortlessly dances between seemingly unrelated languages and traditions, bringing them together while using them to enrich audiences. Zarra has a rare ability to communicate powerful and subtle feelings in Berber, Moroccan Arabic, French and English. After moving to New York City from first Morocco and then Paris, Zarra’s repertoire includes her native Berber, Gnawa (a percussive form of religious trance music), Chaabi (Arabic working-class blues), French pop and rhythm jazz.
Zarra has become an in-demand headliner at concert halls and festivals around the globe, and has recorded and/or performed with Makoto Ozone, John Zorn, Arturo O’Farrill, Aruan Ortiz, Tommy Campbell (Dizzy Gillespie), Will Calhoun (Living Color ), Lonnie Plaxico (Cassandra Wilson), and countless others.
