Category Archives: Blog

Every day, I encounter countless Syrian refugees begging on the streets of Beirut. With Lebanon feeling the strain from the conflict in Syria, the Syrian refugee crisis seems to grow more dire each week. In addition to lacking financial and social resources, many Syrian refugees in Lebanon face political and race-based violence. Some of my own students from Syria have been personally attacked and had their property vandalized. To counter this trend, the Campaign in Support of Syrians Facing Racism (الحملة الداعمة للسوريين بوجه العنصريّة) was launched on March 21st on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The campaign was formed “in rejection of all violence towards Syrians [in Lebanon], racist political rhetoric, and the associated media hype.”

Today in Beirut, my vet taught me several veterinary terms in Arabic–along with the phrase used for “runt of the litter.”

Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.
We have fallen into the place
where everything is music…

— Rumi

Tonight in Cambridge, Sirojiddin Juraev (my friend and dutar teacher from Tajikistan) will be performing at Harvard at 7 pm in John Knowles Paine Hall. Sirojiddin is a master of shashmaqam–a Central Asian musical genre whose lyrics are derived from the Persian poetry of Sufis like Rumi and Hafiz.

I first started studying dutar with Sirojiddin at the National Conservatory of Music in Dushanbe, when I was living in Tajikistan and polishing my Persian. He’s a phenomenal teacher, and the most virtuosic dutar player in Central Asia. This spring, Sirojiddin has been the Artist-in-Residence in the Department of Music at Harvard. If you’re in the area, don’t miss tonight’s free concert and help spread the word–he’s really as good as it gets.

I passed by this stretch of wall murals today on my way to whirl with Sufis in Beirut…

Here is the (just released) video for the song “Nuclear Dragon” from the new album Pleasure Island by The Mast. The album, a sultry mix of Sufi-inspired lyrics and electro-pop/post-dubstep dance rhythms, was influenced by Massive Attack, Bonobo, Purity Ring, and Mount Kimbie.

In the coming weeks, this Brooklyn-based duo–vocalist Haale & beatsmith/percussionist Matt Kilmer–will be playing a number of shows in New York and Boston.

3/28 GLASSLANDS, Brooklyn, NY
4/04 PULSE Festival THE RUBIN MUSEUM, NYC
6/09 LINCOLN CENTER’S ATRIUM, NYC
6/27 BOWERY BALLROOM, NYC
6/28 SINCLAIR, BOSTON, MA

If I were you I would not find fault with the sea at low tide.
It is a good ship and our Captain is able; it is only your stomach that is in disorder…

— Khalil Gibran

Yesterday in Lebanon, more Syrian rockets fell near the eastern city of Baalbek. When my family and I last traveled to Baalbek, we had the ruins to ourselves–since rockets had fallen near the site just a few days before. Even the guards were surprised that we had come. Though I love taking my students on field-trips to all of Lebanon’s major archaeological sites, this semester we’ll have to leave the awe-inspiring ruins of Baalbek off the list…

Today in Beirut, my students and I discussed the centrality of negative theology in Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed. Now, if only we could take a field-trip to Cordoba and Fez to follow in the footsteps of Maimonides and Ibn Rushd…

The idea is best expressed in the book of Psalms, “Silence is praise to Thee.”  It is a very expressive remark on this subject; for whatever we utter with the intention of extolling and of praising Him, contains something that cannot be applied to God, and includes derogatory expressions; it is therefore more becoming to be silent, and to be content with intellectual reflection, as has been recommended by men of the highest culture,
in the words “Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.” 

— Maimonides

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen, – the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives, – I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursèd thieves.”

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, “He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.”

Thus I became a madman.

— Khalil Gibran