This event features contemporary and traditional musics of the MENA (Middle East North Africa) region AJOYO is the vision of multi-reed player Yacine Boulares, a mystic brew blending African tradition, jazz and soul. AJOYO chants in the name of Tony Allen, Oum Khalsoum, Charlie Parker and Donnie Hathaway. Originally from Tunisia, Yacine Boulares has played sax, composed and arranged music for Cameroonian musicians such as former Fela Kuti drummer Jojo Kuo, the late Martino Atangana, the Haitian Kompa legends Tabou Combo, and for Placido Domingo's Encanto Del Mar. The project originated in these encounters and influences, as Boulares assembled a band that reconciles his North African and Western heritages. AJOYO celebrates life, love and justice through music: music for the heart, the mind and the body, the kind that is soulful, sophisticated and that makes people want to dance. Esraa Warda is New York's emerging dance artist and educator specializing in Algerian and Moroccan traditional dance forms. A child of the Algerian diaspora, Warda is a cultural warrior advocating for the representation and preservation of North African, women-led dance traditions and the decolonization of euro-centricity, orientalism, and patriarchy in dance. Firas Zreik is a Palestinian Kanun player, composer, arranger snd educator based in New York City. He has worked, recorded and performed with international artists from the highest caliber, such as Roger Waters, Shankar Mahadevan, Shreya Ghoshal, Simon Shaheen, Bassam Saba, Amal Murkus, Fabrizio Cassol, Amir Al-Saffar, Aynur Dogan, Raghu Dixit, Marwan Khoury, Elias Karam, Abeer Nehme and many more. Hailed by Radio France Internationale as "a Tunisian man in NY, one of the most talented jazzmen of his generation," Yacine Boulares is French-Tunisian saxophonist, composer and curator. After graduating from the Paris National Conservatory, Boulares moves to New York on a Fulbright scholarship in 2009 to attend the New School for Jazz. New York City exposed him to a myriad of different music. Soon he started touring with Fela Kuti's ex-drummer Jojo Kuo and Haitian Kompa legends Tabou Combo. In their music, he found a deep echo to his Tunisian roots.
New York City, NY; NYC