Tamaas means ‘contact’ in Arabic (and Farsi too, as it happens). That’s a neat summary of what we should expect from an arts centre – contact as communication and connection, but also contact as collision. Maybe we’ll get all three on 13 February from the Tamaas Festival from The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Bill Bragin, Executive Artistic Director at The Arts Center, says the festival is about more than just music – “it’s about creating a space for artists from around the world to come together and celebrate their cultures … Tamaas Festival is a celebration of artistic innovation, cross-cultural exchange, and the power of music to unite us all”. But whatever the ambitions, it is mostly about the music: different styles, to be sure, and laden with different influences and cultural overtones. But at base it’s just great music.
The Festival is basically two consecutive gigs, featuring a wildly eclectic mix of heady music from a multiplicity of musical traditions – a real demonstration of the variety that the world can offer, none of which remotely feels esoteric or exclusive.
It all kicks off in the open air at The East Plaza from 7pm to 10pm, with Afro-Cuban funk from Cimafunk and DIY electronica from the Congolese collective KOKOKO!; at 10pm, things move inside to the Black Box theatre for Egyptian electro shaabi from Abosahar and Maghrebi rap/EDM from Aïta Mon Amour.
The deal is that each concert is priced separately, at AED 105, but there’s a AED 150 combo ticket that gets you into both. And while you’re waiting you can check out the NYUAD Night Souk around the East Plaza – 40 stalls selling handmade soaps, candles, jewellery, artwork, and more, open from 4pm to 10pm.
Full info is here; get tickets here.
KOKOKO! The East Plaza, 7pm-8.30pm
KOKOKO! is an experimental electronic music collective based in Kinshasa. The group performs in a variety of different languages, including Kikongo, French, Swahili and Lingala (in Lingala their name suggests knocking on doors); their lyrics focus on political problems within their often troubled country.
KOKOKO! Is known for a raw, experimental, and often improvised sound, blending traditional Congolese rhythms with electronic music and found noises, sometimes created on homemade, unconventional instruments made from scrap – altogether emblematic of the vibrant, often chaotic energy of Kinshasa. “Quite unlike anything else you’ll hear” said one reviewer; expect energetic performances alongside the storming sonics.
Cimafunk The East Plaza, 8.45pm-10pm
Cimafunk, better known to his mum as Erik Iglesias Rodríguez, delivers an electrifying blend of Afro-Cuban rhythms and funk, a mix of traditional Cuban music – particularly son and rumba – infused with the funk and soul influences he absorbed growing up. He’s a real showman and always provides a high-energy performance.
Aïta Mon Amour The Black Box 10pm-11pm
Aïta Mon Amour is a project that reimagines Morocco’s rich Aïta music through a digital lens. Aïta is a traditional form of Moroccan folk music sung by the Chikhates, women guardians of a centuries-old tradition; it is a rural expression of the feminine voice, the musicians being male. Aïta, meaning ‘cry’ or ‘call’ in Moroccan dialect Arabic, embodies both the call of the warriors and the lament of love, and singer Widad Mjama has long been fascinated by it. Aïta Mon Amour – a duo made up of Mjama and the Tunisian multi-instrumentalist and producer Khalil Epi – takes this traditional music and blends it with electronica to build bridges between past and present, to deconstruct the perceptions that define the genre, and to make it resonate in the contemporary, digital age.
Abosahar The Black Box 11.15pm-midnight
Abosahar (sometimes Abo Sohar, occasionally ABOsohar) grew up with no formal music training. As result his music[making was an idiosyncratic DIY-interpreted form of shaabi, a genre of popular working-class music which evolved from Egyptian baladi that was already soaked in an unavoidable DIY ethic. Abosahar started making music on his computer, and used the computer’s keyboard as an instrument – “I have to be musically trained to play an actual keyboard, and I’m not” he told an interviewer a while ago. “I’m all about simplifying things, that’s what my trooby style is about.”
He’s come on since then, deploying hard hitting beats, idiosyncratic ways with synths and keyboards, introspective lyrics, quirky samples, hypnotic melodies. This the electro shaabi he calls ‘trobby’, an amalgamation of the words ‘true’ and ‘being’ – “my music is more than style, it is my life-story translated into sounds and melodies. My sadness, madness, my happiness”.
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