Just ahead of the latest summer heatwave, New York’s own Habibi Festival returned to the Lena Horne Bandshell at Prospect Park with another exhilarating lineup of artists from the Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region.
A DJ set from Yalla! Party Project warmed up the gathering crowd and then Rasha Nahas, a Palestinian artist from Haifa took charge. Nahas is a rocker, a strong electric guitarist fronting a classic power trio. This English-speaker heard no politics in Nahas’s brief remarks to the crowd, but the music spoke volumes. Her crying vocals and wailing guitar breaks evoked the anguish and resilience of Palestinian life in Israel during these troubled times.
Next came a more joyful set from Tunesian singer/songwriter Nour Harkati, a Habibi Festival regular. French-Tunisian saxophonist and composer Yacine Boularés, another festival stalwart, led Harkati’s backing band. With his deep-toned guembri in hand, Harkati lulled the crowd with his silky voice and buoyant grooves. There was dancing, singing along and a generally joyous atmosphere as Harkati left the stage just after sunset.
Then the band Boularés was leading switched gears to support the night’s closer, experimental electro-räi artist Sofiane Saidi. Saidi wowed globalFEST back in 2020, and made a solo appearance at the 2024 fall edition of Habibi Festival. This time, he joined forces with Boularés to present a full-band spectacle. Saidi is a powerful vocalist—more or less a requirement for any respectable räi singer—but he is equally committed to his electronic artistry, surrounded as he is by two banks of keyboards. At times, he and Boularés summoned rich sonic shrouds, building layer upon layer of sustained keyboard and saxophone sounds, luring the crowd into a kind of hypnosis.
Many in front knew the words to Saidi’s hits, and joined in when he encouraged them to sing. The set was planned to end at 9:45, but these jammers blew right past that mark with a long tech-driven dance number before turning over the show to the DJ’s closer. It was a night of peace and uplift, however fraught with the knowledge of unfolding tragedies in the SWANA region. Indeed, as the evening was winding down, plans for American bombs to fall in Iran were finalized.
In these trying times, kudos to Habibi Festival for bringing us the salvation of live music.
Festival photos by Banning Eyre.
