Just before midnight on Friday, June, there was a short line outside Elsewhere, a music venue and nightclub in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Saphe Shamoun, one of the DJs playing that night, approached the two women in line cheeky.
“Are you here for Raylit?” He asked. They nodded, and Mr. Chamon turned them further up the block towards another entrance, and a much longer line.
RaylitOr in Arabic, “Night” is a New York and Montreal-based party that spotlights Middle Eastern and North African music and its diaspora.
I’ve been resident elsewhere since October, but this night was special. The event was so popular that it wasn’t for the first time in a small room at the venue, but in a cave hall that was about to attract more than 800 people. Dance under a show of sparkling disco balls and hypnotic lights.
About the bill: Performance by Anyany’sLebanese drag queen, Arabic-emphasized DJ set pop, hip hop, fork When Electronic music..
Ten years ago, it was virtually unheard of for a major New York club to hold regular Middle East-themed parties. But now Raylit is part of Brooklyn’s thriving scene, centered around Middle Eastern and North African music.
Events vary in style, but all events celebrate a culture that promoters say has been overlooked in the West. And they provide many New Yorkers with a sense of comfort in a bustling city where they can feel isolated, especially after a pandemic of more than two years.
“It’s very beautiful to see the community get together,” he said. Felica, A hip-hop artist who moved from Egypt to New York in 2018 and is a regular at Raylit and other parties. “The sound reminds me of my house.”
Nostalgia is the main attraction for some party attendees. Still, by challenging the concept of stereotypes in Middle Eastern culture, or by advocating for inclusiveness and progressive ideals, each event looks to the future.
Syrian Shamon said Raylit, for example, created a shared space for Arabs to retain these values. A candidate to set up a party in 2018 on Wake Island, a Montreal-based music duo consisting of DJ and PhD Philip Manasseh and Nadim Magzal.
Ironically, they didn’t accept the sound until they left their home country of Lebanon.
“It wasn’t cool for me to grow up and play Arabic music,” Maghzal said.
“It wasn’t really cool,” Manasseh added.
And after moving to Montreal in the early 2000s, Manasseh said they were willing to leave their culture, fear discrimination and feel a sense of duty to assimilate.
But now they are using Raylit as an exit to rediscover their roots. In September, another show at Elsewhere and a tour of Montreal, Detroit, and Washington, DC will be held to celebrate the party’s fourth anniversary.
Discote TehranDance parties and performance projects that convey Iran’s international music culture in the 1970s were also born from the experience of immigrants. Organizers Arya Ghavamian and Mani Nilchiani said it took years to get it on track.
Almost 10 years ago, Iranian filmmaker Gabamian, who emigrated to the United States a few years ago, approached the organization to hold a party to celebrate Nowruz, a holiday celebrating the beginning of the Persian New Year. Several countries in Central and West Asia. “It was’no’,” Gabamian said.
A few years later, he began hosting a gathering in his apartment, where he cooked Persian food and invited musicians to perform. By early 2018, his apartment was unable to accommodate the crowd, so he and Nilchiani hosted the long-held Nowruz celebration, the first public disco Tehran event.
The party has expanded and evolved since then, and now it’s included Movie project And the community Outreach initiatives.. Last month, Bushwick’s nightclub and restaurant, Sultan Room, celebrated its 4th anniversary with a variety of playlists and performances. Arsara and NubatonEast African retro pop band, and EpilogioPuerto Rico’s indie funk band.
“It may not be related to each other on a particular day, but they are about a collection of different cultures together,” said Gabamian, Discote Tehran.
And this project is the third European tour, giving the organizers the feeling that we have a place wherever we are in the world. The next New York event will be August 13th at the Knockdown Center in Queens.
Yarra!Party project Also born of an intimate gathering of apartments, we held our first public event in the spring of 2018 (“Yalla” means “let’s go” or “comeon” in Arabic). North African music.
Yarra for years! Expanded to art group and community building exercises.I’m starting Professional directory To help people find a job and it’s market We support small businesses run by women, people of color and queers.
The party reflects the cultural diversity of New York. At the May show in the Sultan Room Eritrea Henna Artist I drew a complex pattern on the palm of a man while the party participants were dancing R & B When Lebanese pop.. Yarra! We also strengthened programming during Pride Month, with four events at the Queens, Brooklyn, and Bronx venues.
A word of Yarra! A similar event continued around. It was the early days of Yarra! Here’s where Laylit’s Maghzal first spun Arabic music.A year later, the name Drag Queen Anna Masreya — Her name means “I am an Egyptian woman” in Arabic — organized a Middle Eastern and North African cabaret called Nefertitties, a play named after the Queen of Ancient Egypt.
Anna celebrated the show’s third anniversary in May with an event in Littlefield, Gowanus, and visited Washington, DC in late June for a cabaret.For her Grand entrance At the anniversary show, she was taken to a makeshift sedan chair covered with a gold mesh sheet, which was later removed to reveal a gold crown modeled after the Nefertiti crown.
On stage, Anna talked about her experience that homosexuality is primarily taboo and is a publicly known LGBTQ person in the Middle East that can lead to persecution in some countries. “Sometimes I’m scared,” Anna said.
Featuring drag performance by night Riffy royaltyEgyptian-American, and Meh Mooni, Iranian American. Set by Felukah. And the belly dance contest set in the Egyptian song, which is a staple of Arab political parties: “Shik Shak Shok.. “
The next week, the song will be played again on the roof of the Sultan Room. HazaWith a dance party Radio program It started in 2019 and has put the spotlight on artists from the Middle East and African diaspora.
One of the founders, an Egyptian-American DJ and creative writing consultant playing under the name Myyuh, grew up in a predominantly white town in Connecticut. She said she was embarrassed when her mother blew Arabic music at her home.
But in Haza, she turned to it for comfort. And while her fellow Arabs cheered at the celebration under the Bushwick sky, they blew it up on a pulsating dance floor. (Haza returns to the Sultan Room for the next show on July 29th.)
“We are creating a completely different experience with these songs,” Myyuh said.
Her co-founder, Egyptian DJ and audio engineer playing under the name Carmen Sandiego, likened this experience to a hug.
“That’s all you know and love,” she said. “And it’s not just you. The person next to you is singing the same thing because they understand why this makes so much sense.”
For Laylit’s Shamoun, that experience is especially important for those who fled the Middle East during wars, riots and refugee crises.
“We have been deprived of the present and future of the Arab world,” he said.
When he’s behind the deck at the show, he often finds recent immigrants and wants the songs he plays to bring them home even for just a few minutes.
Some of the promoters seem to be competing — in fact, most of them are cooperating with each other, as the event is a hot topic.
Ana Masreya appeared at the Laylit party earlier this month, cheering from the crowd while Myyuh joined the DJ lineup.
Manasseh believes the scene came from a stronger “verify yourself on the dance floor” movement that took hold when Donald J. Trump took office.
Rock suddenly popped out, with dance and electronic music, creating a space where colorful people and LGBTQ people could see and hear.
Raylit seems to be rooted in a distant culture, but Manasseh believes its existence is in a single city.
“This was all inspired by New York and made possible,” he said.
