Category Archives: Blog

Tomorrow at Columbia University

Columbia Law School
Date: Wednesday, October 15th
Time: 6:30 pm
Location: JG 101
Free and delicious NON-PIZZA DINNER will be provided.

My tai chi friends in Beirut introduced me to this video of a young girl, Zhang Yuting, performing a Chen Tai Chi competition form with several other children at the Seventh China Jiaozuo Sports International Taijiquan Exchange Competition. We can only dream of one day having form and focus as flawless as hers…

Protesting in Beirut (Photo: Emily O'Dell)

Mixed Feelings: Racism and ‘Othering’ in Lebanon from a Lebanese Perspective
American University of Beirut
Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs Building

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the last day to check out the “Mixed Feelings” photo exhibition at AUB which combines images and words to highlight the issue of racism in contemporary Lebanon…if you’re in Beirut, don’t miss it!

Touba chronicles the annual Grand Magaal pilgrimage of one million Sufi Muslims to the holy Senegalese city of Touba. One of the rare films still shot on celluloid film, its breath-takingly vivid cinematography by Scott Duncan and integrated soundtrack elevates it to the level of a humanist film poem. This dynamic and immersive observational film takes us inside the Mouride Brotherhood–one of West Africa’s most elusive organizations and one of the world’s largest Sufi communities. The pilgrims travel from all over the world to pay homage to the life and teachings of Cheikh Amadou Bamba. His non-violent resistance to the French colonial persecution of Muslims in the late 19th century inspired a national movement and doctrine. Until this day, freedom of religious expression through pacifism is still practiced by millions of his followers…

His philosophy enveloped everything. He said, ‘Pray to God as if you were going to die tomorrow, because if you think you are going to die tomorrow, you will pray a lot today.’  Then he said, ‘Work as if you were never going to die.’  That was his approach. That is the beginning of Mouridism.

— Cheikh Lo

The life and teachings of Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba (d. 1927), one of the greatest Sufi leaders in Senegalese history, have inspired songs by many of Senegal’s most celebrated musicians. Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, son of a Qadiri Sufi sheikh, was the leader of a pacifist spiritual struggle against French colonialism. He founded the Mouriddiya Sufi Order–along with the sacred city of Touba. Today, his memory is commemorated around the world–from Sufi-inspired songs in Senegal to parades in Harlem.

In the song above, Cheikh Lo–a legendary Senegalese musician who mixes mbalax, jazz, flamenco, salsa, Zairian/Congolese rhumba, and folk–praises Cheikh Amadou Bamba and his family. A follower of Cheikh Ibra Fall (a faithful companion to Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba), Cheikh Lo beautifully weaves together the spirit, teachings, and social ethics of the Mourides in his music.

Have a clear mind. Be pure in your heart.

— Youssou N’Dour

Youssou N’Dour, another global music legend from Senegal and early emissary of the mbalax style (a blend of Senegalese griot percussion, Wolof lyrics, and Afro-Cuban influences), has also drawn inspiration for his music from the life of Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba. D’Nour’s song “Mame Bamba”–from his album Wommat (The Guide)–recounts a miracle from Bamba’s life when he was enchained and forbidden by the French to pray on a ship transporting him to exile in Gabon. Determined to pray, he broke out of his chains and threw his prayer skin off the boat to pray on the surface of the water.

Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba also appears in the music of Baaba Maal, who performed earlier this week in the BBC video God Only Knows to raise money for the charity Children in Need. Baaba Maal was named an Oxfam’s Global Ambassador in 2012.

Orchestra Baobab, a Senegalese Afro-Cuban, Wolof, and Pachanga band, also has a song in their repertoire honoring Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba–but with a twist. The song “Bamba” riffs on the similarity in sound of the spiritual guide’s name and the dance craze made popular in the 1950s by American singer Ritchie Valens in his song “La Bamba.” The refrain and melody of “Bamba” echo Valen’s “La Bamba,” while the Sufi lyrics extol the virtues of this revered Sufi saint and the sacred city he established in Touba.

Happiness is there in Touba.
Peace is there in Touba.
Enlightenment is there in Touba.
Religion is there in Touba.
Touba increases enlightenment.
Let us go to Touba…

The base of all music in Senegal is traditional.

— Baaba Maal

The Last Winter, a Kurdish-language drama by Iranian director Salem Salavati, won the best feature and best director awards at this week’s Beirut International Film Festival. Rani Massalha’s Giraffada, inspired by a true story about cooperation between zoos in the Palestinian West Bank and Tel Aviv, won the jury prize for a feature.

Grace Lee Boggs

A revolution that is based on the people exercising their creativity in the midst of devastation is one of the great historical contributions of humankind.

— Grace Lee Boggs

Here’s a trailer for the award-winning documentary film about the life and work of activist Grace Lee Boggs–who recently entered hospice care. On her Facebook page in September, she posted: “I am coming to the end of a long journey — a journey that began over 70 years ago at the beginning of World War II.” Below is a summary of the documentary…

Grace Lee Boggs is a 98-year-old Chinese American woman in Detroit whose vision of revolution will surprise you. A writer, activist, and philosopher rooted for more than 70 years in the African American movement, she has devoted her life to an evolving revolution that encompasses the contradictions of America’s past and its potentially radical future. The documentary film, American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, plunges us into Boggs’s lifetime of vital thinking and action, traversing the major U.S. social movements of the last century; from labor to civil rights, to Black Power, feminism, the Asian American and environmental justice movements and beyond. Angela Davis, Bill Moyers, Bill Ayers, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Danny Glover, Boggs’s late husband James and a host of Detroit comrades across three generations help shape this uniquely American story. As she wrestles with a Detroit in ongoing transition, contradictions of violence and non-violence, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the 1967 rebellions, and non-linear notions of time and history, Boggs emerges with an approach that is radical in its simplicity and clarity: revolution is not an act of aggression or merely a protest. Revolution, Boggs says, is about something deeper within the human experience — the ability to transform oneself to transform the world.

Grace Lee Boggs

Khumariyaan
Asia Society
725 Park Ave. (at 70th St.)
Sunday, October 12 – 8:00 PM

With its transfixing sound, rich and deeply rooted in Pashtoon tradition, Khumariyaan has reawakened a popular music scene in Peshawar, Pakistan, the ancient crossroads through the Khyber Pass where cultures have long come together. The traditional Pashtoon rubab is the meeting point for this instrumental jam quartet, which also includes guitar, the djembe-like zerbaghali (clay or wooden goblet drum) and Pashtoon sitar (long-necked lute). Khumariyaan’s rolling pulse and richly layered sound invigorates a tradition and reimagines folk music for a contemporary audience. Can’t make it to the program? Tune in to AsiaSociety.org/Live at 8:00 pm New York time for a free live video webcast.

These days, it feels like everyone I know is leaving Lebanon–ex-pat and Lebanese friends alike. Whenever I ask why they’re leaving–the answer is always the same: “Lebanon is hopeless.” This week, Ziad Rahbani, one of Lebanon’s most talented playwrights and musicians (and son of legendary singer Fairouz) announced that he too will be leaving Lebanon. According to Rahbani, who is moving to Russia at the end of this month, there is little future for those living in Lebanon–a remarkable statement coming from a man who lived through Lebanon’s civil war and made a career out of satirizing Lebanese politics.