Listening While Muslim
Listening While Muslim is a series of thematic listening parties created in 2018 by Asad Ali Jafri and Abdul-Rehman Malik. LWM is a sonic soul journey that crosses continents, languages and genres and explores music at the intersection of faith, culture and politics.
Searching for the Sounds
of a Just Future
Yale Institute of Sacred Music
Music is a way of understanding our past and chronicling our present. At its most subversive, music calls us to imagine new futures. Transforming and transporting us, music can vanquish tyrants and evokes the beloved community. Abdul-Rehman Malik and Asad Ali Jafri take us on a sonic soul journey that crosses continents, languages and genres, exploring how music at the intersection of faith, culture and politics can enable us to imagine the world anew.
To celebrate and honor Malcolm X’s Birthday on May 19th, 2021, we decided to make a special live mix using our Listening While Muslim approach.
"Malcolm has had a deep impact on my life since I was 10 years old, and making this mix now, 30 years later, had a really deep emotional impact on me. Our elders taught us that those who die or are killed while on the path are not truly dead. Keeping that in mind, we say, long live Malcom….el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz Zindabad!"
–DJ Ase Wonder (aka Man-O-Wax)
Curated by Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer, Umi’s Archive is truly an act of love. Drawing on the remarkable life of her mother, Amina Amatul Haqq, Dr. Su’ad has given us access to the vibrant, transformational and radical contours of Islam as shaped, nurtured and lived by African-American Muslims and the communities that surrounded them.
Listening While Muslim joined Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer to celebrate by listening to the music which was the soundtrack of Umi’s life and the communities to which she dedicated her life.