Yasmine Hamdan, the Lebanese singer who “is considered a trailblazer for the masterful way she’s modernized Arabic pop music by combining Arabic vocals with contemporary Western styles” (Utne Reader), returns for a North American tour this November:
- November 7 Chicago, IL Martyr’s
- November 9 Seattle, WA The Crocodile
- November 12 San Francisco, CA Great American Music Hall
- November 14 Los Angeles, CA El Rey Theatre
- November 16 New York, NY Le Poisson Rouge
- November 18 Montreal, QC L’Astral
"She certainly flies in the face of the image of the Middle East as a place of intolerance and repression, but as she says: “The Arab world is mediatised in a way that gives too much space to these people — puritans, extremists, whatever you want to call them. There are a lot more people like me than you might think."
The tour dates follow the March release of Hamdan’s Al Jamilat (translation: The Beautiful Ones), which The Guardian described as “A dreamy, lyrical foray into the shifting soundscapes of contemporary Arabic and Western music,” and led to a CNN profile: http://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2017/06/22/inside-the-middle-east-block-a-yasmine-hamdan.cnn.
Co-produced by Hamdan, Luke Smith (Foals, Depeche Mode, Lily Allen) and Leo Abrahams (Brian Eno, Carl Barat), Al Jamilat also features guest musicians Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) and Shahzad Ismaily (Laurie Anderson, Loud Reed, John Zorn).
Tickets for all dates are on-sale this Friday, July 21.