Poetic Vision Tour to emphasize Muslim-American culture
Courtesy Photo / picasaweb.com The Poetic Visions Tour features spiritually inspired folk rock music and hip hop poetry performed by prominent Muslim musicians to instruct and inspire, as part of the Migrations of Islam project, which aims to examine Muslin-American popular culture through a series of performances by Muslim artists
Nov 10, 2011
A national touring group of prominent Muslim poets and musicians will come to Grand Valley State University for an evening of performances emphasizing Muslim-American culture as part of the Poetic Vision Tour.
The tour, which will come to GVSU Friday at 7 p.m., is free and open to the public. The event will be held in the Kirkhof Center in Room 2263.
The Poetic Vision Tour was coordinated by the Muslim Studies Program and the Asian Studies Center at Michigan State University and funded by a grant from the Social Science Research Council.
It is part of the Migrations of Islam Project and was organized in conjunction with the 2012 Year of Interfaith Understanding, which seeks to promote peace and understanding among different faiths in Grand Rapids.
Brian Bowe, visiting professor of journalism at GVSU, co-authored the grant with Michigan State English professor Salah D. Hassan.
“The purpose of the project is to examine Muslim-American cultural production,” Bowe said. “One of our big goals is to look at all of the diverse ways that Muslims in America use the arts to talk about themselves, their communities and their lives.”
The Fall 2011 tour includes Muslim artists Raef, Ms. Latifah, Saad Omar, Gaith Adhami and Marcus Richardson.
“There’s a tendency in American mass media to portray Muslims in very monolithic terms,” Bowe said. “But there’s a great deal of diversity among Muslims, both worldwide and within the U.S.”
The artists will perform original works and cover songs. Audience members are free to follow along via lyric books that will be provided and to engage the artists in discussion after the performances.
“Four years ago, I was studying music and art in Istanbul, Turkey, when I stumbled across the music of Bob Dylan,” said Saad Omar, tour founder and musician. “Dylan said that a true artist creates a world for himself and his audience to live inside. I was inspired by this and founded the Poetic Vision Tour, a world for my music and my audience.”
Omar said the goal of the tour is to create a forum for lyric- and spiritually-infused music and poetry.
“Although the majority of artists on the tour are Muslim, the tour features artists from various religious and ideological backgrounds,” Omar said.
In four years, the Poetic Vision Tour has grown to include 70 shows annually all across the U.S. Artists associated with the tour include established Grammy-winning and platinum-selling artists, as well as new talents. East Lansing-based Arabic fusion group Wisaal will open the show.
To learn more about the tour, visit www.poeticvisiontour.com.
