Alsarah & The Nubatones Visiting Artist Residency

	Saturday, September 10, 6:30 PM Social Hour, 7:30 PM Concert · Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E 60th St. Chicago, IL Alsarah & the Nubatones / J.A.S.S. Quartet » Part of IMAN CommUNITY Café: World Music Fest & the 18th Annual World Music Festival Chicago. Free and open to the public. Tickets available at the door, first come, first serve.	Learn More
	Sunday, September 11, 12:00 PM · Old Town School of Folk Music, 4545 N. Lincoln Ave. International Youth Jam with Jason McInnes & special guests Alsarah & The Nubatones » Special guests Alsarah & The Nubatones will be hosting a Sunday noon jam with the sounds of Nubian grooves and East-African Retro-Pop!	Free! Reserve Here
	Monday, September 12, 6:30 PM · Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln Ave., Room B4 Nubian Rhythms and East-African Retro-Pop Workshop » Join Alsarah & The Nubatones for a unique participatory workshop on Nubian rhythms and East-African Retro-Pop.	Free! Reserve Here
	Tuesday, September 13, 7:30 PM dialogue, 8:45 PM performance · KLEO Center, 119 E. Garfield Blvd. L.Y.R.I.C Mentoring Chicago Weekly Open Mic » A conversation with Alsarah and Phenom, co-founder of L.Y.R.I.C., followed by the phenomenal young artists that grace the open mic each week and an abbreviated performance by Alsarah & The Nubatones.	Learn More

About Alsarah & The Nubatones

Singer and ethnomusicologist Alsarah was born and raised in Khartoum, the capital city of the Sudan, until her family fled their homeland for Yemen, escaping an increasingly stifling and unstable regime. But violence and a short civil war eventually visited the family there too, so in 1994 she moved the New York to build a new life. As with so many expats she turned to the music she grew up with to fill a void left by her exile, and Alsarah began to seriously study the Nubian culture—the region along the Nile River between Sudan and Egypt. When Egypt began to build the Aswan High Dam in the 60's, the people of the area were displaced without compensation, endangering and dispersing an incredibly rich culture. Over the years certain artists such as Hamza El Din and Ali Hassan Kuban crucially kept those traditions alive, but Alsarah has set about presenting Nubian music in a more contemporary vein while retaining key sonic elements, such as the prominent use of loping rhythms on the frame drum and the indelible twang of the oud. Over dinner one night she and percussionist Rami El Aaser began talking about old music from Nubia, pulling out records and reading articles—activity that led them to invite oudist Haig Manoukian and bassist Mawuena Kodjovi to form the Nubatones. As the band developed Alsarah traveled and performed widely; in 2013 she performed at the first Somalian music festival in two decades. The group dropped its impressive debut album Slit (Wonderwheel) in 2014, a collection that serves up a dazzling variety of East African music melded with contemporary elements like hip-hop beats and snaking synthesizer riffs: Alsarah calls it “East African retro-pop,” with source material stretching from Ethiopia to Zanzibar. In a recent review in the New York Times, Jon Pareles wrote, “Her songs looked toward the sparseness of Arabic music, accompanying her voice — gentle at first, then revealing a steely core — with oud, percussion, electric bass and a backup singer. Like the other performers, her lyrics held messages of social conscience; one song, she explained, criticized governments that did not protect human dignity.” Learn more at alsarah.com.

special thanks to our sponsors