Asilah Oui Book Launch with Live Music with Samir LanGus & Nizar Dahmani

Courtesy of Asilah Foundation Forum. Collection of the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop.

Asilah Oui is accompanied by a catalog featuring a curatorial essay by Imani Congdon as well as contributions from Ernestine White-Mifetu, Sils Curator of African Art at the Brooklyn Museum; Hisham Aidi, political scientist, filmmaker, and Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University; Tarek Elhaik, anthropologist, curator, and Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis; Fatima-Ezzahra El Khammas on the festival posters published by Al Mouhit Association; a new oral history of Printmaking Workshop artists Richard Nelson and Michael Kelly Williams on their experiences of the Moussem moderated by Luis Cancel, former Head of Cultural Affairs for both New York City and the City of San Francisco, previously Director of The Bronx Museum of the Arts; personal essays by Mujah Maraini Melehi and Shafiah Benaissa; and a reprint of Master Printer and Asilah Print Atelier Director for nearly three decades, Mohammad Omer Khalil’s on Engraver’s Studio (1978) essay with a foreword by artists Jenna Hamed and Amina Ahmed. Other reprint and contributions first-hand from artists including Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Samia Halaby, May Muzaffar and Ethel Renia introducing Katherine Blood on Camille Billops.

Samir LanGus was raised in Ait Melloul, Morocco, within earshot of bustling markets, street performers, and the call to prayer. Gnawa found him at eight — Morocco’s ancient trance tradition, carried across the Sahara by enslaved people from present-day Mali and Mauritania and kept alive in all-night healing ceremonies called Lila. He learned it the only way it can be learned: at the feet of the Maalems, the master musicians who guard the music.

Nizar Dahmani is a Moroccan-American drummer and percussionist who began his musical journey at the age of 10 in Jemaat Shaim, Safi, Morocco. A self-taught musician, he blends traditional Moroccan rhythms, including Chaabi and Gnawa, with contemporary musical styles.