When I am not dancing, I am playing music, and I have been a performing member of Aswat for many years now. Our upcoming concerts are very special. Join us on January 13 in San Mateo &/or January 20 in Oakland for what promises to be a beautiful experience. Under the leadership of director Issa Golitzen-Farajajee we will be playing a vast, varied, and unfortunately vanishing body of music known as shughul, which is the name used in Turkish Sufi music for any hymn with Arabic lyrics.

From our event page:
"The program for this concert focuses on a body of Turkish Sufi sacred music called Shughul which has its roots in the Arab world, mostly from Aleppo and Baghdad.

This body of music, researched heavily by the director, has been harvested from the remains of an ancient treasure trove. It comes to us through three fragmented sources – amateur recordings made in the 1960s and 1970s, manuscripts containing the lyrics of hundreds of songs, and sheet music written down in the 1940s and 1950s by researchers, providing notation of the songs last performed in this rich tradition."

Oakland Tickets: https://atioakland.brownpapertickets.com/
San Mateo Tickets: https://aleppotoistanbul.brownpapertickets.com/