WELCOME TO ASLAN MEDIA MUSIC!

Out of the Closet, Into the iPod: Three Tracks Addressing GLBT Equality in the Middle East and Islam

President Barack Obama seems to have a thing for firsts: first African-American president, first president not born in the continental U.S., first sitting president to make the talk show rounds, first president to host a Passover Seder in the White House, first president to use email in the office, first president to embrace social media, first president to serve home-brewed White House ale, and now, the first American president to endorse same-sex marriage. Sometimes, it takes a classic outsider to lead those of us on the inside.

Last week was a historic one for gay rights in America. Amidst the indignation that erupted after North Carolina became the 30th state in the U.S. to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman and Colorado’s GOP state lawmakers successfully filibustered their way out of the assembly voting on a civil unions law, President Obama officially came out of the closet, so to speak, announcing on ABC News his belief and support for same-sex marriages as a fundamental civil right.

Jazz Mirrors Iran, Part V: Strictly for Persians

1940s Paris wasn’t exactly the place to go for political art. Defeated, suppressed, outright censored under Nazi occupation, much of it went either underground or extinct. Countless art collections were seized and stolen by Hitler’s forces; intellectuals, musicians and other “creatives” found themselves banned from working. Artists who were Fascist or anti-Semitic welcomed Germany’s unopposed invasion, others resorted to denial, exile or silence, and most forced themselves to learn how to accommodate to extreme censorship under a ruthless dictatorship. In an attempt to understand their newfound occupation, many of these artists reluctantly let go of the idea of resistance.

Islam Awakening: An Exclusive Interview with Irfan Makki, Maher Zain and Mesut Kurtis (VIDEO)

There are few things more deeply spiritual, personal and versatile than music. Uniting people in ways that words cannot, it has the ability to inspire and entertain listeners, while also sending a message of peace and hope in the world.

And when music embodies the richness and diversity of Eastern and Western cultures, its possibilities to create dialogue and understandings are endless. This is the goal of London-based Awakening Records, an Islamic media company that records, produces and distributes music from internationally-acclaimed Muslim artists who sing to uplift audiences and create social change.

In light of Awakening's April 14th Send a Little Hope concert, Aslan Media Content Manager and UK Coordinator Eman Jueid had the opportunity to speak to three of its top-selling artists — Irfan Makki, Maher Zain and Mesut Kurtis — about their latest albums, how they got involved with music and the messages they send out to their fans worldwide.

Switching to a Minor Key: Four Music Videos Honoring Lowkey’s Career

Lowkey is no entertainer. I say that with the utmost respect. In a morass of drugs, pimps, and fancy cars, he stands out as one of the few critically acclaimed rappers who hasn't sold out to corporate interests and the idea of money over message. The closest he'll get to bling is his criticism of it, along with masterfully woven commentary about imperialism, oppression and the racism behind your dope gold chain.

I think we can also agree that Lowkey is anything but what his name implies. How can he be? Known as much for his politics as he is for his music, his lyrics not only call out hypocrisies within domineering Middle East regimes, but also question the role that foreign relations between the region and Western governments play in politics, especially Arab-American relations. You can't take that load on unassumingly and expect to be heard. It takes an amplified voice to pierce through the artifices of bureaucracies. And that's just what UK's top underground hip hop artist does: at the cost of becoming controversial, he puts out tracks that create dialogue and impel action. Lowkey is an instigator. Doesn't matter what you say; if you're talking about the song, he's done his job.

Jazz Mirrors Iran, Part IV: An American in Tehran

Lloyd Miller is no typical fan boy. If there’s one thing to know about him, it’s that he doesn’t like mainstream music, likely most of the stuff on your iPod. Groupie he is not, calling most of today’s new hits “jumpy ugly obnoxious rock junk that has permeated the whole world like leprosy destroying everyone’s musical tastes and minds.” You could write him off as an aging music snob, but then you’d be missing out on one of the edgiest pioneers in building the musical bridge between East and West.

It’s a bridge that for centuries silenced African-American artists and communities, who developed jazz as the art form to revise the human condition and to remove the barriers between “us” and “them” in a democratic language that knew no boundaries. Jazz, as the art that fights against various types of segregation, could be a myth itself. But the myth of jazz as something for all human beings, regardless of race, nationality, gender and age is so strong that it can still feed our desire to explore and to change.

Monday Mixtape: Choreographer Parijat Desai

Music hardly exists in a vacuum. Like an interconnected web, each tune, each track released to the world both came from somewhere and leads to something else. At Aslan Media, we recognize that very few albums come to us without influence, and it’s those artists that it’s those artists that walked the road before who helped shape the styles and expressions of the music artists we profile in this website today.

To show that music, in its purest form, is an expression that knows no physical, cultural, societal or economic boundaries, Aslan Media’s new monthly series called Monday Mixtape, profiles the tunes enjoyed by artists featured on this site. They share with us the tracks that inspire and influence who and where they are as music artists. The genres covered by these playlists are limitless, as are the artists they include, which can include those from countries outside the Middle East that carry universal messages found in every region of the world.

New York-based contemporary dance choreographer Parijat Desai (previously profiled by Aslan Media) is no stranger to music’s ability to move, both physically and melodically. “I feel like I’m working on three levels,” she says, “the music, the movement and dramatically. It kind of happens all at once.” Each of her dances comes out of a “two-prong conception,” she explains. “One is that I have really been motivated by music and love of a certain kind of music, then along with that, I develop a theme, or a theme comes to mind in relationship with that music… all of that leads to, how can I use the contemporary framework and the vocabularies at my disposal to respond to or evoke any aspects of these music?” From there she creates dances that her company mostly performs to live music, sometimes improvisational. “Once we set the structure [with the musicians],” she explains, “they’re the ones who are essentially composing live.”