Performance
WHEN
February 16, 2017
7:30 PM
WHERE
East Plaza, NYU Abu Dhabi
WHO
The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi
Open to the Public
Aziz Sahmaoui brings together his musical passions — gnawa, rock, and jazz — in a globe-trotting collaboration with high-flying Senegalese experimentalists. Led by composer, poet and guembri player Samhaoui, a co-founding member of the influential Orchestre National de Barbes (ONB) and alumnus of Joe Zawinul’s Syndicate, University of Gnawa brings together gnawa roots, unstoppable choruses and emotional flights of improvisation, supporting richly layered poetic lyrics. Aziz’s bewitching voice, adept at alternating between the inflections of a bluesman, a muezzin, and a crooner, pulls us inexorably into his poetic universe where any bitterness of the day to day melts away into a jubilatory energy.
Noura Mint Seymali is the Islamic Republic of Mauritania’s defining artist on the international stage. Drawing deep on the timeless repertoire of the Moorish griot, a hereditary class of musical poet / historians, her band conjures. “a full blown sandstorm of hypnotic grooves, melding traditional Mauritanian instruments, like the ardine and tidinite, within an electrified psychedelic rock band.” – The Quietus (UK).
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