Press Release
Palestine Foundation Marks Third Anniversary with A Spring Concert Series
Los Angeles, California, 18 February 2020
For inquires, contact the organization’s president Lily Karam at (562) 243-0392 or
lily@palestinefoundation.org; palestinefoundation.org
The Southern California-based, Palestine Foundation, marks the third anniversary of its establishment as a non-profit organization with sustainable international projects that celebrate the Palestinian people and help them help themselves.
On this occasion, the Foundation is hosting the highly-acclaimed Palestinian signer Dalal Abu Amneh in a concert series throughout the state of California. The Los Angeles Area will host the Nur concert (14 March 2020) and Ya Sitti concert (22 March 2020) while San Diego (28 March 2020) and San Francisco (15 March 2020) will feature Ya Sitti.
Nur, or Light, is a special Sufi concert featuring a musical journey into the eternal and divine love and longing via the poems of Rumi, Rabe’a, Ibn Arabi, and al-Hallaj. Abu Amneh will be accompanied by the commissioned composer, Syrian-born cellist Kinan Abouafach and an international ensemble with a whirling dervish.
Ya Sitti, or Grandmother, features folk Palestinian and regional songs traditionally passed down by grandmothers, keepers of the heritage. Dalal will be joined by a group of Palestinian “guardians of the tradition” travelling with her for a festive show that has often kept her audience energetically engaged. The concert will also include songs in the tarab genre, classical artistic songs from the singers and composers of the golden age of Arab music. The show will feature the Turath Project, a Southern California ensemble for traditional music.
Besides her career in the arts, Dalal Abu Amneh is a trained neuroscientist with a doctorate from the Faculty of Medicine at Technion and is married to Anan AlAbbasi, a physician and a poet, and they have two children. She is dedicated to the cause of crafting a global Palestinian identity through music performed throughout the globe with extensive praise.
Often contrasted with her traditional arts, her musical exploration of Sufi poetry has been provocative and rare for a Muslim, Palestinian, woman, scientists, and traditionalist. She finds it empowering and liberating as well as an appropriate vehicle of commonality that shares the spiritual expression of the long history of the Middle East with the rest of the world, as distinct from the hyped clash of civilizations.