Leila Abdul-Rauf (San Francisco) and Zekkereya (Detroit) are multi-instrumentalist composers who combine brass, electronics, and other sound sources to create immersive, ambient works that bridge seen and unseen worlds. Zekkereya’s performance will weave threads of sound from across the Islamic world into a melodic sound bath, proposing a testament to muslim unity. With voice, trumpet and synthesizer, Leila will create a cinematic atmosphere for introspection, accessing what is often unconscious and obscured by the human condition. This intimate concert offers space and time for imagining, as the new year slides into place. Tickets.
Date: February 10, 2024, Doors Open at 7 PM
Location: Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, 3645 Lancaster Ave Philadelphia, PA 19104
Tickets: $10 General Admission, $5 Students
Zekkereya is a trombonist, composer, and visual artist currently based in Detroit Michigan. They have been a member of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra for over a decade. They have worked with artists such as Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid, Jaimie Branch, Amir El Saffar, George Lewis, Wendell Harrison, Yvette Janinie Jackson, Tyshawn Sorey, and more. As a visual artist, they trained in traditional 2D animation techniques at CalArts and have screened their animations internationally.
Leila Abdul-Rauf is a composer and multi-instrumentalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a main songwriter, guitarist, vocalist, lyricist and co-founder of extreme metal band Vastum and electronic ambient trio Ionophore. As an ambient solo artist using voice, trumpet and synthesizer as primary instruments, Leila has released four full-length albums under her name, and has collaborated with countless others. She performed at Hopscotch Music Festival in 2016, the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival reception in 2018, Northwest Terror Fest in 2022, and has toured nationally and internationally. Leila is also an academic at heart, having received a Master's degree in Audiology and Speech Sciences from Purdue University in 2001, with a focus on psycholinguistics and child language research. Combining electronics, acoustic instruments, voice and field recordings, Leila’s songs are not so much composed as captured from dreams. Evoking haunting and desolate places, a private world is exposed, where time and space are distilled down to what remains of distant memories and hidden emotions, melded into a symphony of ethereal melancholy.
Leyya Mona Tawil is an artist, curator, and cultural activist. She is the founder and director of Arab.AMP - a platform for experimental music, live art, and ideas from the SWANA diaspora and our allied communities. Her performance and social practice works have toured throughout Europe, the Arab region, and the states. Tawil is on the curatorial team of Live In America (Arkansas), the Arab American National Museum (Dearborn), Southern Exposure Gallery (SF), Daring Dances (Ann Arbor) and was the 2020 ISSUE Project Room Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow for her NOMADIC SIGNALS series which continues today. She is also the director of TAC Temescal Art Center in Oakland, California. @arab.AMP