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 from the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region. Building on the success of the 2022 program, with its sold-out live premiere, we began work in July of 2023 on the next chapter in the Tanfis series, 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 are exploring 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 is a deeply meaningful one, as it touches the heart of the questions “who am I?” and “who are we?” These explorations have attained a heightened sense of urgency in the wake of the unfolding 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 - these artists have:
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
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
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
premiered the live experience on Dec 1st, 2023
present the live experience a second time on Jan 15th, 2024
Next Steps:
release all the digital content in the spring of 2024
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.
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. The above teaser video for the Jan 15, 2024 was created from footage of the Dec 1, 2023 premiere event.
We are currently working on producing a complete video of the January 15th live experience, which we will release on this page in the coming months.
In the meantime, below you will find several photos 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
Project Timeline
July ‘23 - Open Call for Artists
Aug ‘23 - Selection of Artists and Planning
Sep ‘23 - First residency (upstate NY)
co-designing creative vision
skills-sharing and artist development
selection, arrangement, and rehearsals of community-rooted songs
professional recording and film shoot of EP of community-rooted songs performed by resident artists
Oct ‘23 - Second residency (in NYC)
recording/filming/collecting interviews and storytelling content
creation of tatreez (embroidery) designs to support storytelling
creation of audio and video remixes of the community-rooted songs filmed at the upstate residency
Nov ‘23 - Third residency (upstate NY)
co-designing and rehearsing the 3-hr live experience
Dec 1, 2023 - Live premiere at Funoon.
Jan 15, 2024 - Second presentation of live experience at Roulette.
Mar ‘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.
photos by Conrad Clifton and Darwensi Clark
Join Us
We are incredibly grateful to our institutional funders. Tanfis is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC), and by the National Endowment for the Arts. Their financial support enables us to cover about half the cost of the Tanfis 2023 program.
If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor and acknowledged here and on other Tanfis-related content and communications, please review our sponsor brief and contact us here.
