New York’s second annual Habibi Festival kicked off on October 11, with a five-day run ending October 15th. Joe’s Pub in NYC hosts the festival.
Hayat spoke with co-founders Yacine Boulares and Meera Dugal about bringing the festival together, crossing borders, and more.
Dugal, a producer, worked with Boulares before connecting him with a residency at Joe’s Pub. After attending a flamenco festival there, Boulares saw a gap in the musical world.
“There’s nothing equivalent for artists from the Arab world, there’s nothing that represents this world in a comparable way,” he recalls.
Now, Boulares, Dugal, and Joe’s Pub director Alex Knowlton are putting on the second annual Habibi Festival to fill this gap.
Bringing global roots to NYC
“During the festival they were seeing representation that they hadn’t seen before.”
The festival bases out of Joe’s Pub, but has recently begun branching out to other stages and collaborations. “It’s amazing to see the huge appetite New Yorkers have for this music.”
In addition to offering a platform for these artists, the Habibi Festival brings together diverse crowds of young and old, from all corners of the world.
“We’re just as excited about what’s happening on stage as we are about the friends being made in the crowd,” Dugal says. “…The excitement in the room when everyone is dancing to someone they’d never heard, or someone they knew from when they lived [in another country]…that compounds and adds to each other.”
“We want to present the local diaspora, but we also want to bring people from the Middle East and these regions,” Boulares adds. “It’s very hard to tour in the US, especially from these areas—it’s difficult to get VISAs.” The festival helps these artists showcase their work on new ground.
What you’ll hear at the Habibi Festival
In its first year, travel restrictions limited the festival to primarily New York-based artists. But this year, the festival has grown to include an even broader line-up.
From Moroccan Chaabi music to Mauritanian psychedelic rock to Boulares’ own Tunisian supergroup, over half a dozen acts will perform over the four nights of the festival.
Check out some of these artists here:
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The festival will also be the New York premiere of Boulares’ own adaptation of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Night in Tunisia”:
Night in Tunisia la nouvelle création musicale
This supergroup features Nessrine Jabeur and Mehdi WMD on vocals and Boulares on saxophones. It features both modern and traditional instruments, and similarly wide range of musical influences.
“It’s kind of a bridge between these worlds that I’ve lived in,” Boulares notes.
Boulares grew up in Paris, “with Tunisia in the background. My way of coping with the identity void that I experienced as the son of an immigrant was through music.”
Get involved
Check out the Habibi Festival at Joe’s Pub in The Public Theater, NYC, New York.
To see all of the artists showcased at the festival, visit the website.
