Sudanese singer Alsarah is known for her powerful voice and eclectic mix of what she calls “East African retro pop.” She and her Brooklyn-based band The Nubatones are in Honolulu for a week-long residency at Shangri La. HPR’s Ku?uwehi Hiraishi has more.
Singer, songwriter, and ethnomusicologist Alsarah was born in Sudan to politically active parents. After a coup, her family was forced to flee to Yemen. Then when civil war broke out, they fled to the United States. Many of her songs are reflections of identity and survival.
“Well you know as a Sudanese person, we grapple with our own…with our own identity issues, in terms of how we want, you know how we’re trying to represent and how that’s presented a real crisis for my people and my community. We’ve been basically in one civil war after another since our independence from colonization because we try to colonize our minds with this concept of what we’re supposed to be like, right?” says Alsarah, “So leaving that and becoming an immigrant in another space, and really looking at your identity from an outside perspective gives you the tools to be able to look at all places from like a big bird eye view.”
Alsarah now calls Brooklyn home. She and her band The Nubatones will be the first interisland Artist in Residence for the Shangri La Center for Islamic Art, Culture and Design. The band will perform and meet with groups on O?ahu, Maui, and Hawai?i Island over the next week.
“We’re trying to redefine as many different narratives as we can,” says Asad Ali Jafri is the Curator of Programs at Shangri La, “I think these ideas of borders, and migrations and music and stories are something we can all relate to and this is why I think it’s important to have them here right now and for us all to have kind of have these conversations at the same time.”
This is Alsarah’s first visit to Hawai’i. Jafri teamed up with the local non-profit organization The P?polo Project to host a kanikapila with local musicians and community members in P?lolo.
“We’ve been very fortunate to have Alsarah and her band here because um this also gives us another window into the rest of the world,” says Akiemi Glenn, Executive Director of The P?polo Project, “For a lot of black people a lot of our history is a history of movement and being connected in that movement, having roots as we move and being able to share our art and culture with people around the world. What do we do in Hawai?i that makes us feel like we’re connected? Especially this time of year. We kani ka pila (informal jam session).”
“It was the most spectacular, progressive gathering of people willing to explore the colonization of their mind and then willing to break through that to take on new concepts and embrace all the stories of blackness throughout the seas,” says Alsarah, “Oh my god.”
Alsarah & The Nubatones perform tonight at the Blue Note Hawai?i at 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. They will also be perofrming on Maui this Thursday, December 13, 2018, at 7:30 p.m. at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center; and on Hawai?i Island on Friday, December 14, 2018, at 7:00 p.m. at the Kahilu Theatre in Waimea. For tickets and more information, visit ShangriLaHawaii.org
