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Summary

The Work

In the fall of 2022, Remix ⟷ Culture launched the Tanfis project - a series of multidisciplinary residencies facilitating collaborations between NY-based traditional musicians, storytellers, remix artists, and DJs each time focusing on a particular grouping of underrepresented and/or misrepresented communities. Building on the success of the Tanfis I program, with its sold-out live premiere, we began work in July of 2023 on Tanfis II, this time with an incredible selection of 14 NY-based artists from the Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese, and Iraqi diaspora communities, many of whom had not met prior to this program. Together, they explored ways to honor, celebrate, and amplify their community-rooted music and stories, and at the same time reimagine them. For each artist - as an individual, and as part of a collective - this exploration was a deeply meaningful one, as it touched the heart of the questions “who am I?” and “who are we?” These explorations attained a heightened sense of urgency in the wake of the escalating ethnic cleansing, dehumanization, and erasure of Palestinian lives and culture. Over the course of several months - through a combination of in-person residencies in upstate NY and NYC and remote / independent work - the project unfolded as follows:

July ‘23 - Open Call for Artists

Aug ‘23 - Selection of Artists and Planning

Sep ‘23 - First residency (upstate NY)

  • collectively defined the themes, music, stories, and approaches that best serve the project

  • selected and created original arrangements of community-rooted songs

  • recorded and filmed beautiful performances of the community-rooted songs

Oct ‘23 - Second residency (in NYC)

  • collected, recorded, and filmed interviews and storytelling content

  • edited and remixed the recordings and films of music and stories

  • created custom digitized tatreez (traditional Palestinian embroidery) patterns

Nov ‘23 - Third residency (upstate NY)

  • co-designed a 3-hr live experience weaving in all of the creative explorations of the residency (in the form of acoustic music, electronic remixes, video projections, storytelling) into an immersive tanfis journey

Dec 1, 2023 - Live premiere at Funoon.

Jan 15, 2024 - Second presentation of live experience at Roulette.

May ‘24 - Digital release of all content produced as part of this program. Open invitation for new remixes to be created by remix artists worldwide, in accordance with our open-access and fair trade model.

Oct ‘24 - We took the Tanfis II live experience on tour in California.

Next Steps

  • Continue to invite music producers / remix artists around the world to join our open access fair trade remix community by downloading our free (Creative Commons) Tanfis II sample packs (Zalazil and Freedom Dabka Group), and sending us your remix via email at hi@remix-culture.org

  • Continue to partner with music presenters (nationwide and worldwide) to bring Tanfis II live to audiences near and far

Why Tanfis?

This series is centered on the theme of tanfis, which usually translates as "catharsis," but in the Arabic context is understood as the journey of the nafs (self/soul) from a place of stuckness to liberation, from the holding of breath to an exhalation. The situation for many people living in the SWANA region, and those of SWANA descent in the US, is imbued by a longing for tanfis, particularly for Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and Iraqis, whose communities have and continue to suffer from violent occupations, civil wars, displacement, and the erasure of their cultures, histories, homes, communities, and humanity.

Within the SWANA cultures, we find that traditional musics - and complementary arts of dance, storytelling, embroidery, cuisine, comedy, etc - are technologies designed to bring about tanfis for the individual, and to stitch together the fraying social fabric. And while many contexts for traditional music have disappeared, we see the need to create new spaces in which it can flourish, evolve, and be remixed by means of the contemporary traditions of electronic music and video art.

Music Releases

 

Zalazil

All-star ensemble of NY-based musicians from Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon created during the Tanfis II residency

Freedom Dabka Group

High energy drums, vocals, and bagpipes from this Palestinian collective based in Staten Island

Tanfis II Live

On Dec 1, 2023, we premiered the fruits of this collaboration for an audience of 300+ at a new space in Brooklyn called Funoon. Then, on January 15, 2024 we presented a new and improved version of this Tanfis II live experience at the iconic Roulette Intermedium, with its cinematic video projection and world-class sound. At each event, over the course of 3 hours, we took the audience on a "tanfis" (catharsis) journey, seamlessly harmonizing acoustic traditional music and electronic audio and video remixes, deep listening and dance, storytelling and trance, embroidery and video art. The response from attendees was overwhelmingly positive and deeply appreciative for our important offering in this time of increased oppression and dehumanization of the communities served by this project. Above is a full-length video from the January 15th live experience.

Below is a 5-min highlights video from the Tanfis II Live premiere at Funoon in Brooklyn, NY.

 
 

Below are two photo galleries that captured the collective presence palpable at the Dec 1, 2023 and Jan 15, 2024 events.

Jan 15, 2024 - Roulette Intermedium (Brooklyn, NY)

photos by Darwensi Clark

Dec 1, 2023 - Funoon (Brooklyn, NY)

photos by Darwensi Clark

 Meet the Artists

Artist Bios

What The Artists Wished To Express

Nahed Elrayes’s “Why I Love Gaza” series on Instagram

Lina Barkawi Tatreez Artist (Palestinian Embroidery)

 

Testimonials

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“Another magical Tanfis night with the brilliant souls of @remixculture. Palestinian culture is indescribably beautiful: heartbroken, funny, furious, wise, reverent, defiant, endlessly ingenious. If you don’t know, now you know.”
— Daniel Maté, activist and composer
“The story I want to tell is just how beautiful every single person in this room is and how each and every one of you has inspired me so much and brought me back to some sort of resemblance of life and that is such a beautiful gift. I want to express how grateful I am that we’re able to cross paths.”
— Eden Zane, participating artist
“This was easily the best musical event I’ve been to, and I’ve been to a lot. I felt like we went on a journey of storytelling, empathy, and music as a community. I felt so connected to the performers and everyone in the audience.”
— Tanfis Attendee
“A highlight of my time in NYC for the APAP conference.”
— Tanfis and APAP Attendee
“With all that is happening in the Arab [world], particularly [with the] Palestinian community, the Tanfis events gave me the opportunity to join community and feel supported (breathe and heal a little) – AND I invited people who are outside the community to learn and understand more. It worked on a personal level for me, as well as professionally and in advocacy with people I brought from work (partners, donors, activists, and friends.)”
— Tanfis Attendee, Daleel Thawra (international human rights organization)

Join Us

We hope you were moved by the work we’ve presented here. There are several ways you can join us!

  1. If you are a music producer / remix artist, we’d love for you to join our open access fair trade remix community by downloading our free (Creative Commons) Tanfis II sample packs (Zalazil and Freedom Dabka Group), and sending us your remix via email at remixes@remix-culture.org

  2. If you’re moved by our work and would like to support our mission, consider making a donation today. If you’d like to become a sponsor, please contact us here.

We are grateful to our institutional funders. Tanfis II was funded, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). Their financial support enabled us to cover in part costs of the Tanfis II program.

 
 
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