Summary
Background
Since 2022, Remix ⟷ Culture has been producing an annual residency program called “Tanfis.” The program is a series of multidisciplinary residencies facilitating collaborations between NY-based traditional musicians, storytellers, remix artists, and DJs each time focusing on a particular grouping of underrepresented and/or misrepresented communities. Tanfis I and Tanfis II programs centered Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, and other SWANA diaspora communities and included sold-out live premieres in New York as well as a multi-city benefit tour in California. Tanfis III and now Tanfis IV build on the successes and lessons learned from the previous residency programs, this time focused on NY-based artists who identify as Black and/or Indigenous to the ‘Americas’ — communities likewise facing systemic oppression, and historically under-served.
Tanfis IV
Tanfis IV will kick off in August 2025 in the Catskills Region, NY, where we will facilitate a 3-week residency with 5 artists-in-residence from African-American, Colombian, Mexican, Occaneechi-Saponi, Taino, and Jamaican communities. While sharing meals and learning to co-exist under the same roof, these traditional musicians, remix artists, storytellers, and dancers creatively explored their individual and collective responses to the following existential questions: “Where do we come from? What have we become? Who do we want to be?”
The culmination of this communal, collaborative process will be a unique immersive live experience that takes its inspiration as much from ancestral communal musical practices as from technological innovation – that will premiere in Hurleyville, NY. The entirely new live experience will take the audience on a “tanfis” journey through the seamless harmony of live acoustic music, remix, dance, storytelling, and video art.
Project Timeline:
March ‘25 - Open Call for Artists
May ‘25 - Selection of Artists and Planning
August ‘24 - Residency (Hurleyville, NY)
Details coming soon
August 22, 2025 - Live premiere at Hurleyville Performing Arts Centre
TBD - NYC Premiere and open-access, fair trade Digital Release
Why Tanfis?
This series is centered on the theme of tanfis, an Arabic word that loosely translates as "catharsis," but is also understood as the journey of the nafs (self/soul) from the holding of breath to a liberating exhalation. Black and Indigenous to the ‘Americas’ communities and their histories endure, and have endured, continuous suffering and violence throughout the history of the US.
Tanfis invites artists to utilize their communities traditional musics - and complementary arts of dance, storytelling, cuisine, comedy, etc - to flip the script on the suppression of their traditions, reclaiming their cultures through transcendent revelry, collaboration, and remix. In doing so, we create space to collectively exhale in preparation for the next collective breath.
Tanfis IV Live
Our Tanfis IV event is still in the works, but as our cohort of artists develop it, you can anticipate an event with a unique configuration that draws inspiration as much from ancestral communal musical practices as from technological innovation.
For a taste of elements that it may encompass, check out the video below of last year’s Tanfis III Brooklyn Premiere at the iconic Roulette Intermedium, with its cinematic video projection and world-class sound.
Meet the Artists in Residence
Join Us
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We are grateful to our institutional funders. Tanfis IV was funded, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts.
