Ahla friends,
Abdul El-Sayed has won Michigan's Democratic Senate primary.
A socialist. An Egyptian American. An anti-establishment epidemiologist. A girl's dad. A V-neck T-shirt enthusiast.
Over $30 million was spent by AIPAC against him, and he still won.
I'm really enjoying watching millennials come of age politically.
Now, back to Mamdanistan.
Samar
THE SHORTLIST
The Ones Worth Your Time
WELLNESS
DREAM ROOM: Sound Meditation with Samer Ghadry
Friday, August 7 | 7:00–10:00 PM
Public Records, Williamsburg
Musician and practitioner Samer Ghadry takes over The Sound Room at Public Records for a midsummer meditation, gongs, voice, chimes, three hours of amplified stillness. Public Records built one of the best listening spaces in the city for exactly this. Samer has other events at other spots this week if you’re interested.
MUSIC
Samir LanGus at the Green Room
Friday, August 7 | 9:00 PM
The Green Room, Brooklyn
Samir learned Gnawa at age 8, directly from the Maalems, the tradition-keepers of the practice. Gnawa is the ritual trance and healing music of Morocco's Black communities, descended from enslaved people brought from Mali and Mauritania. In its highest form, an all-night ceremony called the lila.
PARTY
Haus of Joon: Persian-Rooted Rooftop + Pool Party
Sunday, August 9 | 5:00–10:00 PM
Somewhere Nowhere, 112 W 25th St, Midtown
Persian culture meets golden hour on an open-air rooftop and pool. DJs Ardeshir Azari, Zaynah B2B Sphmre, live violin from Jowviolin, and percussion. Tulum vibes, NYC streets.
CINEMA
Special Q&A Screenings of American Doctor
August 11–13 | 7:00 PM
Angelika Film Center, SoHo
A verité documentary following three American doctors, Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian, bound by friendship and a shared oath to save lives. A reminder of what solidarity actually looks like, not in theory but in a shift.
SHOW
SubwayTakes Live! with Kareem Rahma
Tuesday, August 11
Brooklyn Improv, Brooklyn Heights
I usually don’t include sold-out shows but this one has a waitlist so you might get lucky. This show has been listed on the website for weeks so make sure to check out the site to secure sought after performances.
THE FREE ONE
Free and Delightful
KIDS
Omar Offendum: LIONS AND LEGENDS: Folktales and Foodlore
August 6–8 | 5:00 PM
The Glade, Little Island, Chelsea
Omar Offendum joins podcasters Rebecca Sheir and Eric Shimelonis for the debut of their family/kids podcast, live and in person, with folktales about the origins of food from across the world. This is your kids intro to Offendum! 3 consecutive days.
EVENT HIGHLIGHT
Cool Initiative To Support
Some People Have A Magnetic Pull , Offendum Is One Of Them
Before there was a stage, there was a coffeehouse. And in that coffeehouse, there was a hakawati.
The hakawati is the traditional Arab storyteller, and the tradition is older than most things we call culture. He sat at the center of the room and the whole city leaned in. He performed epics in the vernacular, in the language of the street, not the academy, returning night after night to continue the story. The 18th-century hakawati Ahmad al-Saidawi reportedly stretched a single epic across 372 consecutive nights in an Aleppo café. The audience came back every time. They had to know what happened next.
Omar Offendum calls himself a Neo-Hakawati. And when you hear what he does, the title makes complete sense.
Offendum is Syrian-American, trained as an architect. Arabic is his first language. He came to hip-hop through Arabic classical poetry, recognizing something structural in both: the cadence, the storytelling, the weight of elements. His debut album SyrianamericanA (2010) drew on the poetry of Nizar Qabbani. His show Little Syria, which sold out venues across the country, reclaimed the lost Arab American neighborhood in Lower Manhattan that gave the world Kahlil Gibran and the first Arabic-language newspaper in America, and was demolished in 1940 to build a tunnel.
Neo-Hakawati Nights is where all of it lives together. Rap, spoken word, beats from his collaborator Thanks Joey (who I need to write about soon too) and live Arabic instrumentation from Palestinian multi-instrumentalist Zafer Tawil, who joins as special guest. Omar is a fantastic artist and a top-notch performer. It is 75 minutes at Joe's Pub this Sunday August 8th.
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