Presented in collaboration with Habibi Festival
As the co-creator of the popular Habibi Music Festival, saxophonist and composer Yacine Boularès' passion lies in the foregrounding of the innovations and experiences of artists from the southwest Asian and northern African diaspora. The Tunis Opera-commissioned Night in Tunisia, a feature-length recontextualization of the Dizzy Gillespie classic through the prism of modern and classical Tunisian song traditions, offers a full expression of Boularès' imagination and skill. Alongside rapper Mehdi WMD and singer Nessrine Jabeur, Boularès and his orchestra follow the complex threads connecting African, American, Asian, and European musical history. Night in Tunisia is a poetic odyssey fusing jazz, funk, hip hop, soul, mezwed, chaabi, and stambali into a utopian and truly global sound.
