Falsa

Sufi Music | Invoking Meditation, Conversation & Transcendence | As Featured on NPR and Acclaimed Performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and More.

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Based in New York City, Falsa is rooted in 14th century Sufi music (Indian classical mysticism similar to Rumi's elevating poetry) with contemporary arrangements transcending genre-specificity and cultural preconceptions, in collaboration with a diverse array of improvisational world musicians.

A Falsa experience can range from Minimalist Meditative to Raga Jazz Fusion to high energy World Improvisation that gets you moving, to a more explosive Ritual-Communitas oriented one featuring dancers and immersive visuals. But ultimately, Falsa is about normalizing the transcendent experience.

It originally emerged as a collaboration between long-term friends and has since evolved into an exploration of what's possible when people are moved collectively by the pursuit of the intangible aspects of a communal gathering. There's a mystical culinary connection here: Falsa gets its name from a tropical berry native to India and Pakistan. And Sufi music is about a state of separation that longs for union. There was a decade in Umer's (vocalist, Falsa) life that he couldn’t return home to Pakistan from the US due to Kafkaesque immigration bureaucracies. When he finally returned and had the fruit again, it "broke through all the intellectualization and numbness I realized I had cultivated to cope, and in the process of giving myself over to the majesty of feeling I realized that home is something you cannot take with you, you have to return to it"

In our music, we want to revere and dignify the most magical aspects of experience that are gifts and not acquisitions, like reclaiming a half-remembered dream. Our music is not about means to ends, but about meaning and transcendence, about healing a wounded alienation we feel in our very highly mechanized, and in the ways that matter, poorly connected society, one performance at a time.

BOOKINGS/CONTACT: FALSA@FALSAMUSIC.COM

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Shades of Blue: Falsa's Chicago Debut at South Asia Institute!

  • South Asia Institute Chicago 1925 South Michigan Avenue Chicago, IL, 60616 United States (map)

Saturday, November 11, 2023

2:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M.

FREE w/ RSVP HERE

South Asia Institute, 1925 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60616

The Shades of Blue, all building open house programs are featured in conjunction with the South Asia Institute’s current “Indigo: The Blue Gold” art exhibition by Shelly Jyoti which is focused on and is themed around the history associated with the blue dye derived from the indigo plant that has touched many communities across the world. Through this series of free performances and events, the South Asia Institute (SAI) looks to help highlight, educate, and celebrate the roots and journeys of Chicago blues music and jazz music, world music and South Asian performing arts and share the parallel stories of the color blue dye and Indigo plant’s own journey.

Join us for an adventurous day filled with songs, music, dance, poetry and film!

For our final edition, we have following artists performances & film screening:

2:00 PM: From Here (2020, 89 min. Germany, USA) Directed by Christina Antonakos-Wallace. From Here is a hopeful story of Tania, Sonny, Miman, and Akim - artists and activists based in Berlin and New York whose lives and futures hang in the balance of immigration and integration debates. (Film Screening)

4:00 PM: Vareesha Khan (Poetry)

4:30 PM: Falsa (Sufi Chamber Music)

5:30 : Timothy "Soloman" Bowser (Contemporary Dance)

6:00: Sonny Singh Band (Punjabi Folk Pop, Jazz, Music)

All Shades of Blues events are FREE and open to all.

*The Shades of Blues series is supported by a grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.

Earlier Event: November 9
Brooklyn Conservatory of Music House Party 2023 – SOLD OUT!
Later Event: November 18
FALSA - Sufi Music at Barbès Brooklyn