Liverpool Lights Up with Sensational Star Concerts for Liverpool Arab Arts Festival 6-16 July!

Between Thursday 6th and Sunday 16th July the UK’s longest-running annual Arab Arts Festival, Liverpool Arab Arts Festival (LAAF), will light up the city with a series of music concerts, theatrical performances, literature and visual art forms in a variety of locations. LAAF is celebrating 25 years since it was founded, back in 1998. The festival is a major annual event on Liverpool’s cultural calendar providing participatory events and projects throughout the year.

LAAF 2023 has made a perfect choice of venue for this year’s series of headline, yet intimate, world music concerts. The Liverpool Philharmonic Music Room is proudly connected to Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall - the seat of the renowned Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Headline World Music Concerts as part of Liverpool Arab Arts Festival 2023:

As a singer and songwriter, Aar Maanta has embraced a mix of styles including influences from rock and reggae jostling with traditional Arabic and Somali music. Despite graduating with a science degree, Aar Maanta pursued music. He began the Horn 2 Groove recording project which generated his 2009 debut album, Hiddo & Dhaqan. The album merged traditional Somali music with Western influences like house and reggae into a fusion described as Afro-hop. In 2010, the Paris-based radio station StarAfrica recognized Aar Maanta’s achievement in creating this new sound when it named him “A Somali Culture Shaper in London”.   

He released the 2014 EP, Somali Songs from the Diaspora to connect with Somalis around the world. Aar Maanta hopes to take his music to the wider community with the release of Ubadkaa Mudnaanta Leh and an additional album in the works to be released in 2023.  

Aar Maanta’s activism, work and creativity led him to become a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR), while leading one of the only active touring bands in the world that plays live Somali music. His work includes the recent UNHCR campaign about irregular youth migration in the Horn of Africa, Dangerous Crossings, for which his song “Tahriib” was reproduced and performed in collaboration with leading artists from Africa. 

www.aarmaanta.com             Facebook: @AarMaanta                    Twitter: @AarMaanta

Nxdia is an alternative-pop singer-songwriter from Manchester. Born in Egypt, and moving to the UK when she was eight, she writes and sings both in English and Arabic. Nxdia has a new take on pop music, blending vulnerable and introspective lyrics with modern production and effortless delivery.

The ‘Queen of the Qanun’ is an artist who crosses boundaries in music and culture. Born in Damascus, she came to the UK in 2012 and her performances at London’s Southbank, Womad, BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall and The Barbican have revealed why she was described as an ‘exceptional talent’. Maya pushes the boundaries of the Qanun, a 78 stringed plucked zither traditionally played by men, leaving many to describe her as a virtuoso.  

Maya’s intense and thoughtful music is rooted in the Arabic classical tradition but forges pathways into jazz, Western classical and Latin styles. It explores the emotional and healing qualities of music. For her, the act of playing music is the opposite of death and destruction; it is a life- and hope-affirming act and an antidote to what is happening, not only in Syria, but in the whole world. 

This performance in Liverpool will see Maya bring ‘Finding Home’ to the city for the first time since its release. Exploring the loss and grief in leaving Syria, the album depicts the discovery of  a place that gives a state of calm and how we can find a sense of home, even when we are far from the place of our birth.

mayayoussef.com                Facebook: @MayaYoussefmusic           Twitter: @Mayaqanun

The Ensemble of St Luke’s was formed in 1992 when a group of friends from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra got together informally to raise money for St Luke’s Church in Crosby. In 2014 they were the first chamber group to feature at the Liverpool International Music Festival. The Ensemble includes, Alexander Marks – violin, Elizabeth Lamberton – violin, Robert Shepley – viola, Gethyn Jones – cello.

www.arabartsfestival.com     Facebook: @arabartsfestival                Twitter: @arabicartsfest