Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 02-04-2012 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Music
Rolling Stone Middle East: By Daniel J. Gerstle
We’re cutting through the black, dusty night searching for a rock party in a secret underground bunker in Kabul, Afghanistan. Crossing the intersection past a police checkpoint and heading down an empty street, we hear a low, throbbing growl emanate from the basement of an apartment building. The bass and drums softly pulsating in the shadows of a silent war zone are enough to drop blood pressure, hasten respiration, and spark the bitter taste of adrenaline.
Descending hidden stairs into smoky, red light we are swallowed by the thunder of amplified guitar in Hoodies, the city’s first hard-rock club. Inside, people are moshing to Afghan rock band White Page’s performance of System of a Down’s “Toxicity.” Someone slams me so hard I fly across the room into a couple of journos and split my shoe down the seam. Looking up before slamming back, I find the tufted beard of Qasem Foushanji, the tall singer, bassist, and modern artist who, along with his drummer brother Pedram, and guitarist friend, Qais Shaghasi, are quickly becoming leaders in Afghanistan’s first true counter-culture movement.
Qasem, with his long arms and top-heavy hair, has that way of looking both intimidating and boyish at the same time. His brother, Pedram, moshing beside him, is a cold steel intellectual with surgical wit, an Abe Lincoln beard, and knuckles taped from beating the shine off cymbals and snare. Shaghasi, standing on the edge of the crowd just drinking in the music, has the quiet stare of someone who’s trying to figure out how to win a girl back from a longtime enemy.
Performing together they are District Unknown, the country’s first heavy metal band and pioneers of “psychedelic metal.” They want nothing more than to produce the loudest, meanest music ever performed in Afghanistan. Tonight they are banging their heads with their good friends, the younger, newer rock band, White Page. Singer Raby Adib descends from the stage into the milieu to share vocals with Qasem, who grabs the mic, turns into a wolf, and lets out a jaded “Somewhere, between the sacred silence and sleep/Disorder, disorder, disorrrrrrder.”
For District Unknown, music has been a source of catharsis and meaning beyond anything else in their native war zone. In a city so traumatized and conservative that cemeteries have outgrown parks, where hash smoke fills alleyways and alcohol is forbidden, where hanging out with a girl can destroy her reputation, and where music was banned under the previous government, there is nothing more exhilarating than pounding that tension out in rehearsal, dreaming of performing at an underground club filled with a screaming, co-ed mob of metal heads.
But Kabul is surrounded by close-minded fathers, radicals, and rebels fighting to take the country back from moderates and re-install nationwide bans on music and counter-culture. Ultraconservative Taliban rebels and their allies have been blamed for September’s music store bombing in nearby Peshawar and 2010’s bombing of a pop concert in Herat. They want to keep not only rock musicians, but all musicians, free-thinking writers, abstract painters, punks, skaters, and street artists silenced or out of the country.
IT’S SEPTEMBER AND AROUND 50 of Kabul’s hard-rock musicians, metal heads, artists, and bloggers have gathered in Hoodies every night this week along with foreign journalists and aid workers to celebrate Sound Central, the first Afghan rock festival in 35 years and – since every event is announced secretly through texts, like a rave – the world’s first “stealth” music festival.
Sound Central and Hoodies are the brainchildren of Australian filmmaker and local rock Godfather Travis Beard. The club, with five surprise concerts this week alone, is quickly becoming a rallying point for those who wish to deny the war any power over their nights. With the crazies looming in the hills around the city having just attacked the NATO compound a week earlier, some half-expect the police or a suicide attacker to break into the club – and many would probably welcome a raid.
Qasem grins devilishly. I do my best to slam him back into the fray before getting an elbow in the eye from someone else. He laughs, then slams Pedram into yet another victim of the mosh. Tonight is District Unknown’s night to let go and support Adib and their other friends in White Page. Tomorrow District Unknown will take the stage themselves, performing publicly for the first time without wearing masks.
Months before the festival, an ultra-conservative student found District Unknown’s Facebook page and sent them a stern warning that they should stop making modern music. Accusers had constructed a flammable lie: that the band had been receiving funds from Westerners to tempt the city’s youth – and girls in particular – toward sin. Fearing more false rumors, if not an actual attack, Pedram and Qasem went for help to state security. They explained they were not only peaceful but pious, only to find that the government, too, had been watching the band. Not sure what else to do to protect themselves, the band took a page from their metal heroes, Slipknot, and decided to wear white masks on stage.
Within weeks of masking themselves, it became apparent that journalists and enemies alike already knew who they were. Together with fellow Afghan groups White Page and Face Off, blues-rock band Morcha, indie-rockers Kabul Dreams, expatriate music mentors, and leagues of local headbangers, artists, street taggers, and bloggers, District Unknown were beginning to see themselves as the frontline of Kabul’s counter-culture movement. With tomorrow’s Sound Central festival concert as their opening salvo, they aim to claim a beachhead for freedom of expression in one of the most conservative and violent cities in the world. So the time has come to take a stand: either stop performing, or take off their masks.
THE BROTHERS HAVE STARTED to call the new movement “ispandi,” after those street urchins crowding traffic grids in the city who cast spells of protection on strangers with the smoke of heated flower seeds. Qasem says they considered Ispandi as a band name before settling on District Unknown. Like the actual ispandi kids, who offer blessings to complete strangers while being treated like lepers, the counter-culture musicians and artists offer powerful messages of hope but are treated like unrepentant sinners.
“The smoke,” Qasem explains, “is said to take away bad things or danger, to bless a person or a thing. The ispandis are very innocent and so poor they have to work that way to provide money for home. Ispandis reflect a tragic side of Afghan society, which is vast. As a band name, it would sound kind of funny to many Afghan people, and very low class, but I am sure many of them would also like it because it shows sympathy towards those kids, towards that part of society.”
Qasem, as an abstract painter whose work – like his lyrics – is saturated in blacks and grays, or contrastingly in reds and yellows, believes music and art are intertwined, particularly in a people’s attempt to re-emerge after a prolonged national tragedy like Afghanistan’s latest war. He believes musicians and artists are compelled to find meaning in what’s happening around them, not simply escape it. This is the critical passion that sets District Unknown and their peers apart from Afghanistan’s other musicians and artists.
“Being unrealistic and feeling surrealistic in a country like Afghanistan,” Qasem tells me, “doesn’t help the flavor of music. One should not sing about going out for a coffee with a f***ing non-existent girlfriend. We’ve got blood and bodies, tragedy, and despair here. We have to stick to what is real, and seek a solution.”
DISTRICT UNKNOWN AND THE MOVEMENT they represent converged this past summer thanks to the cultural glue of Beard – the Australian punk – and his collection of Kabul rock friends. Beard, a photographer, biker, graffiti artist, rock guitarist, and filmmaker known to free-thinkers all over Central Asia, is quickly becoming Kabul’s Malcolm McLaren. He first raised the profile of the Afghan rock scene when he joined White City, a rock band made up of expatriate journalists and aid workers.
When White City – fronted by Ru Owen, a tall and sharp-witted singer-bassist, backed by Beard on guitar and Andronik Stefansson, a bright and gregarious drummer – began writing original progressive punk songs like “Perfect 10” and “Silver Hyena,” Beard found himself the idol of a number of Afghan rock fans, especially those who wanted to bring hard rock back to the country.
Beard began mentoring, and documenting the rise of, Kabul Dreams. Fronted by singer-guitarist Sulyman Qardosh, the band write safe songs with a California sound. Soon enough, they gained popularity and began planning a tour outside the country. For Beard, Kabul Dreams was just the beginning. He wanted to nurture the next step in that progression, Kabul’s tortured underbelly: heavy metal.
Ever since arriving from Iran, where the Foushanjis had sought refuge during the war, Pedram couldn’t wait to get his hands and feet bloodied pounding heavy metal on a drum kit. His brother Qasem, who had been painting abstract art, also loved metal. The two had grown up learning about the Afghan superstar, Ahmad Zahir, who wooed the entire region with a hybrid of pop-rock with classical Afghan vocal stylings and who was allegedly assassinated in 1979, although the government claimed he had died in a car crash. The brothers had been blasting Opeth, Metallica, and other metal bands on their headphones, and both knew there was something powerful about performing the music, not just listening to it. Qasem loved to quote lyrics from bands including their heroes, Slipknot, on his Facebook page, believing lines like “Who the f*** am I to criticize your twisted state of mind… /F*** this shit, I’m sick of it/You’re going down/This is a war,” fit the mood of young Afghans perfectly.
When the brothers saw White City perform, Pedram was quick to approach Beard to ask where they might be able to practice. The guitarist took one look at them and knew they’d work well with two brooding guitarists named Qais Shaghasi and Lemar Saifulla.
Saifulla had an impressive presence and had mastered the attitude of Anathema, Opeth, and Zahir. After a quick jam, Saifulla took vocals and rhythm guitar, Shaghasi took lead guitar, Qasem discovered bass, and Pedram was finally drumming with a raw, but serious, metal outfit. Beard mentored the group, bringing in his expat friend Archie Gallet to give pointers on bringing the right kinds of noise out of their instruments.
“They turned up at the door one day, all rock-starred up, long hair and black T-shirts, saying they were a metal band,” remembers Gallet. “But they didn’t know how to play and did not have a single instrument. They trashed our gear for a few months, and then went live.”
“We were illiterate in music but we started a band,” says Pedram about the early days of District Unknown. “We had our first gig at our home, a house party that my youngest uncle threw and then the journey of our band officially started.”
“The band helped me become what I am,” says Saifulla – who has since moved with his family to Turkey. “When Qais and I were learning instruments we intended to learn metal, specifically, so we were, with the Foushanji brothers, the first headbangers making metal at that time.” When Saifulla’s family moved to Turkey with him in tow, it was only natural for Qasem to step in and take his place as frontman. Although Qasem was still figuring out his vocal style, he was a natural-born ruler of the stage.
In District Unknown’s first recorded track, “My Nightmares,” sung by Saifulla and Qasem, the quartet reveal their hopeful yet bloody realism. “For us,” they sing in Dari. “For us, there’s no Arghawan [a purple flower, a symbol of youth, hope, and peace]/Not even in our dreams/Why? For us/Come oh brother/Plant the seed of Arghawan over my palms/War with each other/Away from each other/Why? At last, my hope will turn into mourning/Why?”
Beard was psyched to get in the studio with them, kick their asses, and see how loud they could push the amplifiers. One night, I catch Beard scolding them for considering bowing out on a radio interview. “F***ing get your instruments and get down there,” Beard told them. He has somehow moved beyond the mentor role, leapfrogged the role of manager, and instead become their strict uncle.
Gallet, like Beard, was a tough mentor, telling the band it wasn’t good enough just to be loud and to love what they were doing, insisting they improve as musicians. Regardless, he couldn’t help but fall in love with what they were becoming. “District Unknown has a very advanced image, message and attitude, and they are really into experimenting with some weird alternative music stuff,” he says. “It will take them a while to get there, but eventually they will blow everybody up.”
THE KABUL COUNTER-CULTURE MOVEMENT is only just beginning to spark, but it’s already attracting new blood. Beard and Gallet joined forces with Afghan impresario Humayun Zadran this year to produce incubation projects for Kabul’s newest rock musicians and street artists.
Beard, already playing with White City and a co-founder of the promising Skateistan project which teaches Afghan youth how to board a half-pipe, also led the formation of Combat Comms – an umbrella group for both crisis and music media. With the latter, he began filming the early days of Kabul’s rock scene, as well as the Kabul Knight’s motorbike club. He also nailed down funding for a project called Wallords where punk spray taggers including Beard and Qasem teach youth how to beautify Kabul’s alleys with spray-painted murals, cartoons, and tags. Unknown in Kabul, street art has actually been welcomed in many circles, not seen as vandalism at all.
Zadran – a huge Led Zeppelin fan – wanted to shape something new with Kabul’s emerging talent. Partnering with Gallet and Beard, Zadran and musician Robin Ryczek created Sound Studies to forge alliances between the rebellious rockers and some of the country’s classical musicians. Then, with support from Gallet, Zadran and Ryczek built The Floating Room, the country’s first studio devoted to hard rock and alternative music, where rockers had a home and rock/classical hybrids could be done right.
“I see it as a lab where they can come, record and learn,” says Gallet. “And we’ll release bootlegs, punk style. We have the buzz already, and when the kids come with a good track, we’ll make them f***in’ huge.”
Whether they want – or can afford – to be huge is another matter. Music is a risky business in Afghanistan. Hojat Hameed, the guitarist in White Page, says his involvement in the band has caused problems at home. “I spent six years in music school without telling my father,” he tells me. “He’s from a Pashtun tribe and his family is kind of conservative. They are totally against music. When my father found out – after six years – that I had been studying music, he was so upset that he asked me to not speak with him anymore. He nearly threw me out of the house.”
The radicals, Hameed explains, “are not against only rock music. They are against music in general. But I love being with music. Music is a major part of my life.”
With Kabul’s musicians, painters, and skaters finally meeting one another and collaborating on so many new projects, word began to spread. Soon, Afghan musicians and artists in the diaspora, as well as performers on the world stage, began to reach out. One of the first was Afghan-American rock singer, Fereshta, based in Los Angeles, whose family fled Afghanistan at the beginning of the war. She wanted to offer advice to the bands when she heard they were beginning to perform in public after three rockless decades.
“These bands have to do a lot of the work themselves,” Fereshta says. “On the bright side, the current Afghan rock scene – like the punk and thrash metal scenes of the Eighties – has its benefits, too, with sovereignty being one of them. Because there are no suits in the room telling you what to do, it becomes more about your art and your creative expression, not someone else’s bottom line.”
Post-punk performer Zohra Atash of the Brooklyn-based band, Religious to Damn, and Los Angeles-based psychadelic rocker, Ariana Delawari – two very different singers from the Afghan diaspora – had been crafting their concerts, music, and videos for several years before discovering not only the new Afghan counter-culture movement but also each other. Now, like Fereshta, they are trying to figure out how to ensure it will be safe enough to perform and produce as women alongside the almost exclusively male Kabul-based musicians and artists.
“At the risk of sounding arrogant,” Atash reflects. “I didn’t know there were any other Afghans in ‘rock’ bands besides me, let alone an entire scene. I think it’s fantastic. I would have been thrilled had I known any of the musicians out there played more than the standard wedding dance-party shit I call ‘Yamaha-wave.’”
Delawari, whose first album, Lion of Panjshir, was recorded in Afghanistan and mixed in the U.S. by filmmaker David Lynch, has just completed a feature documentary about how she returned to Afghanistan to reconnect with her family while making alternative music.
“I think that they should be bold and honest,” she says of Kabul’s young artists. “They should do it in numbers, so that it’s a movement. People sense fear. If you approach life fearlessly the monsters of society dissolve. If we open our hearts and jump without a net, all kinds of miracles can happen.”
Atash admits that any form of counter-culture in a place as conservative as Afghanistan could be considered an act of rebellion, making it potentially risky.
“I would like to go to Afghanistan someday, in the distant future, to see my Grammy’s grave, to buy beautiful handmade goods, to eat delicious food … but to play there? I’m actually sort of stunned that I never once entertained the idea,” she says. “Not even once. It’s not a matter of not wanting to perform there. It’s more an issue of not being able to go back there. Not until there are some serious changes made. It’s upsetting to talk about. I think being able to play music is a basic human right they should fight for, tooth and nail.”
“IN SHOPS, HOTELS, VEHICLES and rickshaws cassettes and music are prohibited,” read a decree from the Taliban’s religious police during their rule from 1994 to 2001, according to Girardet and Walter’s Afghanistan: Essential Field Guide. “If any music cassette [is] found in a shop, the shopkeeper [will] be imprisoned and the shop locked.”
There are plenty who still believe this law should be in force. On the “Afghan Culture” Facebook group, the host posted a video from Sound Central, asking people what they thought. High fives included: “A very progressive step!” and “What a way to play music and show the conservatives and religious extremists that music is back and there’s nothing they can do about it.”
But even tech-savvy Afghan conservatives couldn’t help but bash the movement. “One heart cannot love music and Quran at the same time,” wrote one correspondent. Another wrote, “I’m shocked that you ‘Muslims’ are avoiding your imam for something worthless shame on you.” “I think that was a comedian show,” wrote a third, “not a concert ha ha ha ha ha.” And the kicker: “I will smash any instrument I see.”
There has never been a beatnik, punk, or hippy movement among Afghans, so the Foushanjis and their peers in the new counter-culture have no true precedents to learn from. The closest contemporary case is that of the Iraqi metal band, Acrassicauda, who recently connected with District Unknown online.
Acrassicauda – whose story went global via the VICE documentary, Heavy Metal in Baghdad – bravely shredded in their native city during the Iraq War. But after religious zealots bombed their practice space, the thrashers moved to the U.S.
Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick, who also offered words of hope to the Afghan artists during Sound Central, was just one global performer who helped ease Acrassicauda’s transition from the Iraq war zone to the U.S. rock circuit.
“I’d expected these guys to be weary, withdrawn and war-torn,” Skolnick says about Acrassicauda, in the context of the new bands risking their lives for music in Afghanistan. “But that couldn’t have been farther from the truth. They were warm, friendly and full of humor. I’d also thought it would take time to get them to warm up to us, being from America, a nation which had launched a full-scale invasion of their country, for reasons that they, and even we, couldn’t understand. But these guys held no prejudgements – unlike so many in the U.S. who’d be quick to condemn Iraqis as ‘terrorists’ – and went against all the stereotypes.”
When Pedram and Qasem finally get the chance to talk with Acrassicauda’s drummer Marwan Hussein by Skype at a Sound Central workshop, they lay out District Unknown’s mission statement. “What we’re writing about,” Pedram explains, “it’s fact. We use what happens here.” “Somebody needs to be on the frontline,” Qasem adds.
“Double horns for you,” Hussein replies. “I respect what you guys are doing, even with your faces hidden. You’re putting your lives and your families’ lives in danger, for music.”
Mohamed Jawad, an Afghan political blogger, recently wrote about the importance of the burgeoning music scene for his country’s future. “Rock and alternative music fans have realized that music is something for the soul and they are here to have fun in spite of the risks. We have had so much war in this country, rock music is something fun that you can open up to and be yourself. The audience of that music is afraid of the threats but [they] appear at the concerts because they want to have a good time no matter what.”
As for the musicians, Jawad continued, “They are people who said, ‘To hell with it. We will do what we want no matter what the conservatives say.’ They are aware of the danger, but they would rather face it than hide behind a curtain of lies.”
“Numb, shattered, hurt, cryıng, and opening up,” Saifulla recalls, about writing music amidst Kabul’s nerve-shredding tension. “It’s never-ending; that’s the truth. What we are screaming about can never end and it’s only getting worse day after day. It’s all burning and the fragments make us speak loud with rage.”
THAT NEXT NIGHT, the Hoodies underground rock bunker party opens with Beard on the mic. “We want this to be an alternative scene so get f***ed up on drugs and vomit in the corner, OK?” Cheers erupt.
Qasem enters the red light of the stage, without mask, and pulls on his five-string bass. Pedram hops onto the stool behind the drum kit. Shaghasi plugs in his guitar. And their friend Naseer joins in on keyboard. They blast the crowd with their opening song, “My Nightmares,” and then Qasem speaks his mind.
“We decided today not to wear our masks,” he says. “We just said, ‘F*** it. We are what we are.’ We’re not the only band like this. If anyone is going to say shit, just say it to my face.”
And they play. Their latest song, “My Dying Bride,” which laments a NATO attack going awry during a wedding party, begins with Shaghasi pulling a long, low E-string bend. Then Pedram and Qasem come in together with a growing roar like a B-52 taking off. This is the dream come to life. Fans in the audience who have never been to a concert before are now seeing their friends and allies, surrounded by enemies, creating a new chapter in Afghanistan’s cultural history.
“You’re inspired by your surroundings and the people around you,” John Cale once told Rolling Stone, reflecting on the Velvet Underground’s role in America’s cultural history. “You may not even know them, but you’re inspired by the singularity of purpose. To break things down. To smash things.”
Speaking for District Unknown and the ispandi movement of Afghanistan, Lemar tells me, “Every act has its own place and every word has its own situation and time. In my opinion, all these brutal and enraged genres of the music world are the best weapon in my country. Smooth and blank, it hits you right where it hurts. And the pain will wake anyone from their deep winter sleep.”
District Unknown, and others, performed safely to small but fascinated crowds over three weeks of Sound Central, and the band have scheduled more shows at expat restaurants and friends’ houses for this winter. Their sound is evolving from slowed-down Slipknot metal to more of a “Paranoid”-era Black Sabbath rock.
Lester Bangs once wrote that Black Sabbath, in the face of mothers’ fears of evil intentions, were actually “the first Catholic rock band.” Sabbath’s deadly power, boiling up in songs like “War Pigs” and “Electric Funeral,” was a badass, macho kind of peacenik brotherhood. Young men full of balls and brawn, who might otherwise have grabbed a rifle and run into battle, were seduced by music about bombs and battles, which ultimately convinced them of the errors of war.
Sabbath’s metal, and the music of bands like Slipknot and System of a Down, is, in fact, a threat to the power of angry fathers. It gives young men in crisis the chance to be masculine and aggressive without having to be blindly obedient or violent.
District Unknown and their allies have survived, but are still threatened by, one of the longest and most brutal wars of our time. So it is fitting they have snatched up the banner of anti-war metal. The alternative is far more of a danger to society, despite what the authorities may say.
Tags: kabul, afghanistan, heavy metal, rock, white page, district unknown, fereshta, zohra atash, religious to damn, ariana delawari
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Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 01-31-2012 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Leaders/Stories
Hossein Alizadeh and Pejman Hadadi (Improvisations in classical Persian music): Feb. 3
In the Footsteps of Babur: Homayun Sakhi (Afghanistan/India): March 3
Ki Purbo Asmoro’s wayang kulit (Javanese shadow puppet theater): March 16
Pakistani pop and folk singer Arif Lohar (Pakistan): April 28
New York, NY – Asia Society is pleased to announce the spring 2012 season of “Creative Voices of Muslim Asia”– a multidisciplinary series that celebrates the vivid and diverse ways in which Muslims in Asia express their creative voices at the beginning of the 21st century. Launched in 2008, the series aims to put art at the center of bridging the cultural divide between Americans and Asian Muslims, one that has too often been misrepresented in the mainstream media. In doing so, it highlights the artistry of individuals while exploring the cultural richness of the Muslim world.
Though Islam arose in the Middle East, over half of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims presently live in Asia. Creative Voices’ spring 2012 season will feature the musical voices of Islam, as varied as the cultures of Asia, with artists coming from Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Indonesia. This season will also focus on innovation within tradition. Through improvisation and composition, the featured musicians and performers will demonstrate how one can enrich and expand the expressive power of a traditional musical form while respecting the taste and sensibility passed down from masters of the past.
Artists will include Hossein Alizadeh, one of the foremost figures in Persian contemporary classical music improvising with Pejman Hadadi (February 3); Homayun Sakhi, the outstanding Afghan rubâb player performing for the first time with sarod player Ken Zuckerman (March 3); Ki Purbo Asmoro, the revered puppeteer of wayang kulit (Javanese shadow-puppet theater) (March 16); and Arif Lohar, one of the world’s top five Pakistani folk and pop singers today (April 28).
Here’s a sample of the talent you can expect to see:
Tags: asia society, creative voices of muslim asia 2012
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Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 01-30-2012 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Fashion-Eastas, Fashion
The National: At just eight years old, Rachel Zoe began establishing a name for herself in fashion by styling her neighbour for school. Now 40, she is one of the most sought-after stylists in Hollywood, with her own fashion line launched last autumn to boot.
Success in America opened doors for the Rachel Zoe Collection across the world - the Middle East included.
“We have seen a lot of interest from the Middle Eastern buyers,” says Zoe. “They like the variety of lengths in the silhouettes, the layering options, the flowing fabrics and attention to detail.”
Zoe’s resort 2011 began selling in the UAE last year in Saks Fifth Avenue, Harvey Nichols and Symphony Boutique in Dubai. It is distributed in Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
It helps that her collection respects Middle Eastern traditions and yet comes with a sophisticated, modern DNA. The designer was already a fan of the unique fashion sense that can be seen across the region before putting her clothes in stores here.
“I love all the rich textures, bright colours and shine, lots of layering pieces,” she says. “It is just so sophisticated - it’s everything I stand for.” Over the years back in her home country, Zoe has been on the receiving end of some harsh criticism. Some said all her clients looked the same. Others whispered that she influenced them to lose weight drastically. She famously fell out with some of them, most notably with Nicole Richie. Through it all, Zoe stayed silent, putting out one stunning red carpet look after another.
“It’s something that has always come so naturally for me,” she says. “I would find myself subconsciously offering styling tips to people all the time.” Growing up in Short Hills, New Jersey, it was her parent’s interest in travel and collecting art that exposed Zoe to different cultures and eras from early on. “It helped me absorb variety – of what was going on in the world. You need that in fashion or you’d be boring. You need that in life, period.” And then there was the bible of fashion – American Vogue. “I like to argue I was born with one in hand,” she jokes. “But honestly, I have been reading fashion magazines ever since I can remember - probably before I could even read. I used to just flip through the pages and admire the pictures.”
At 15, she made her first significant fashion purchase; like a true-blue fashion lover, she did it in Paris. “I bought the monogrammed Louis Vuitton messenger bag,” she remembers. “I took all of my saved money, literally every penny, from my bank account.”
Although her parents were not pleased, the purchase laid the groundwork for an appreciation of quality and faith in her own judgement. In the years to come, Zoe would move to Hollywood and apply it all to her first client - Jennifer Garner. The likes of Cameron Diaz, Keira Knightley, Eva Mendes, Liv Tyler, Anne Hathaway, Kate Bekinsale, Kate Hudson and many more would follow.
“I am so fortunate to work with some of the most incredible women in Hollywood,” she says, skirting the issue when asked to name her favourite. “I love all my clients. We always have so much fun when we are together - they’re an extension of my family.”
In September 2008, Zoe cashed in on her own growing celebrity status with the debut of her reality television series, The Rachel Zoe Project. The series followed Zoe, her two fashion associates, Taylor Jacobson and Brad Goreski, as well as her husband and business partner, Rodger Berman, as they went about the art and business of dressing celebrities.
By the time the fourth season started last year, Goreski had left Zoe to work on his own. Goreski was accused of using the show and Zoe to build his profile and of taking clients with him as he left – and has since made a successful name for himself in the world of celebrity stylists. His own reality show, It’s a Brad Brad World, started in the US this month. On reports the pair have not spoken since the split, which was portrayed as amicable, Zoe says only “it doesn’t affect me at all”.
Last year Zoe gave birth to her first child, a boy named Skylar who is arguably the best dressed tot in Hollywood. Much as she’d love to spend every waking minute with him, Zoe still managed to launch her fashion line – the Rachel Zoe Collection – with the ultimate aim of developing it into a lifestyle brand.
“As a stylist, I really learnt to appreciate great tailoring,” she says. “I learnt what silhouettes flatter certain body types, what fabrics mix well with certain textures - I think I have always been subconsciously filing this information away for my own collection one day.”
Autumn/winter 2012 will mark the first anniversary of the fashion line. What has inspired her for the new collection? “I find inspiration everywhere I go – mainly Paris, London and New York. I am inspired by old films, music, books, actors and actresses.”
True to her unique mix-and-match vibe, fashion icons of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Brigitte Bardot and Bianca Jagger, along with modern influences such as Carine Roitfeld and Marc Jacobs, find resonance in her vision.
Many celebrities have tried to branch out into fashion. Apart from Victoria Beckham, not many have been taken seriously. What sets Zoe apart? “Passion. I am a huge believer that you must love what you do in order to be successful. Determination and commitment - it’s a very long process, nothing happens overnight. And of course a great team - I know I could never have done this alone,” she says.
“I think it’s ultimately really about the clothes. I just wanted to put out a collection that I was proud of.”
Tags: rachel zoe, middle east, uae, dubai
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Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 01-27-2012 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Music
Tags: afghan girl, adele, someone like you
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Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 01-24-2012 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Film/TV, Leaders/Stories
Hollywood star Liam Neeson is considering giving up his Catholic belief and becoming a Muslim.
The Sun UK: The actor, 59, admitted Islamic prayer “got into his spirit” while filming in Turkish city Istanbul.
He said: “The Call to Prayer happens five times a day and for the first week it drives you crazy, and then it just gets into your spirit and it’s the most beautiful, beautiful thing.
“There are 4,000 mosques in the city. Some are just stunning and it really makes me think about becoming a Muslim.”
Liam was raised in Northern Ireland as a devout Catholic and altar boy and was named after the local priest.
But the star — whose wife Natasha Richardson died aged 45 in a skiing accident in 2009 — has spoken about challenges to his faith.
He said: “I was reared a Catholic but I think every day we ask ourselves, not consciously, what are we doing on this planet? What’s it all about?
“I’m constantly reading books on God or the absence of God and atheism.”
Liam was criticised in 2010 after claiming Narnia lion Aslan — voiced by him in the movies — is not based on Christ as CS Lewis had claimed but in fact all spiritual leaders including Mohammed.
His latest film The Grey, about an oil drilling team who crash in freezing Alaska, is released in the UK on Friday.
Tags: liam neeson, muslim, islam
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Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 01-16-2012 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Fashion-Eastas, Fashion
Beauty and the East TV’s Best Dressed winners from the 2012 Golden Globe Awards are:
OUR BEST DRESSED WINNER: ANGELINA JOLIE
LEONARDO DICAPRIO
JESSICA ALBA
MATTHEW MORRISON
NICOLE KIDMAN 
DIANE LANE
HEIDI KLUM
Tags: 2012 golden globes fashion, best dressed, angelina jolie, leonardo dicaprio, jessica alba, matthew morrison, nicole kidman, diane lane, heidi klum
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Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 01-16-2012 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Film/TV
TEHRAN TIMES—The acclaimed Iranian film “Nader and Simin, a Separation” was named best foreign language film at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday.
“My people, I think, are truly a peace-loving people,” director Ashgar Farhadi told world audiences in his acceptance speech, Reuters reported on Monday. Angelina Jolie’s “In the Land of Blood and Honey” and “The Flowers of War” from China, “The Kid with a Bike” from Belgium, “The Skin I Live in” from Spain were competitors of the film at the Golden Globe Awards.
“A Separation” is one of the foreign-language entries for this year’s Academy Awards. Films and stars that are declared Golden Globe winners often go on to compete for Oscars this year. Thus, “A Separation” is expected to be one of nominees at the world’s top movie prizes given out on February 26.
Meanwhile, the ensemble female cast of the film, Leila Hatami, Sareh Bayat and Sarina Farhadi, won the best actress award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival on Monday. The film also won a Golden Bear for the best film at the Berlin Film Festival and its cast ensemble received best actor and actress Silver Bears at the event last year.
The Golden Globe Awards are given out by 90 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Silent-era film “The Artist” and family drama “The Descendants” were the top film picks at the Golden Globe Awards. “The Descendants”, by writer/director Alexander Payne, won two Golden Globe trophies, including the top honor of best dramatic movie and another for George Clooney as best dramatic actor.
“The Artist”, directed by Michel Hazanavicius, picked up three awards including best musical or comedy and best actor in a musical or comedy for its star, French actor Jean Dujardin. Meryl Streep won best actress award for “The Iron Lady”.
Tags: separation, iranian film, golden globes 2012
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Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 01-13-2012 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Leaders/Stories
Salon: Tim Tebow’s profession of faith has thrust the mixture of sport and religion into the national spotlight in a way that few can remember.
Students have been suspended for “Tebowing” — dropping to one knee to pray, even if you’re the only one doing it — in a school hallway in New York. Rick Perry claimed that he would be the Tim Tebow of the Iowa caucuses. “Saturday Night Live” lampooned Tebow’s fan-boy love for Jesus. In response, Pat Robertson has claimed that the skit demonstrates “anti-Christian bigotry.” His supporters even called for a boycott of HBO after a Bill Maher tweet made fun of Tebow and his relationship to Jesus after his Denver Broncos lost to the Buffalo Bills.
After an overtime upset of the Pittsburgh Steelers last weekend, Tebow’s Broncos play the top-seeded New England Patriots on Saturday. For at least one more media cycle, there will appear to be no way to separate Tim Tebow – the person, the quarterback, the Christian – from his religion.
But back in September, the cultural critic Toure asked a fascinating question in ESPN the Magazine. In a piece called “What if Michael Vick were white?,” Toure argued with those who said the quarterback would not have received a two-year sentence for dogfighting if he was white. Would he have been involved with dogfighting? Would an entourage have led him to the same mistakes? Would he have had a stronger paternal relationship?
So I ask, what if Tim Tebow were Muslim? How would our society react if during every interview, Tebow said “Insha’Allah” or “Allāhu Akbar” rather than thank his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ? Or instead of falling to one knee and praying, Tebow pulled out a prayer rug and faced Mecca? A recent study by the Pew Research Center suggests it would not be well received. While American Muslims in general tend be satisfied with their lives and communities in the United States, 55 percent report that being Muslim in the U.S. has become more difficult since Sept. 11. Twenty-eight percent report that people have viewed them with suspicion and 22 percent report having been called offensive names. The TLC show “All-American Muslim” has lost advertisers who were pressured by groups claiming that the show was Islamic propaganda. Yet Pat Robertson claims that the United States is a breeding ground for anti-Christian bigotry.
I don’t have answers to these questions. We can’t know the answers until we are faced with a prominent Muslim athlete who is willing to be so visible with his faith. In a country that consistently prides itself on freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom of religion – we can hope that Muslim athletes who are visible with their faith would find themselves just as revered as Tebow is for his.
But professional Muslim athletes are hard to find. Ahmad Rashād. Rashaan Salaam. Kareem Abdul-Jabaar. Hakeem Olajuwon. Rasheed Wallace. Most of these athletes are retired and went about their religious lives quietly. But it is to that list of retired professionals that we must look to find someone as outspoken about their faith as Tim Tebow – Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and Muhammad Ali, for example.
In 1990, Chris Jackson was drafted by the Denver Nuggets out of Louisiana State University. In 1991, Jackson converted to Islam. In 1993, he changed his name to Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. In 1996, Abdul-Rauf refused to stand for the national anthem at an NBA game. A religious storm followed.
Everyone had an opinion, from fans to sports writers to radio hosts. Sports Illustrated reported that some people suggested Abdul-Rauf be deported. Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf was born in Mississippi, however, and deportation from Colorado to Mississippi is rare. Two Denver-area radio hosts even walked into a mosque with a stereo playing the Star Spangled Banner. One was wearing a turban. And a Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf T-shirt. While broadcasting live, on air.
Abdul-Rauf claimed in a 2010 interview with HoopsHype.com that “[a]fter the national anthem fiasco, nobody really wanted to touch me.” He played only three more seasons in the NBA before going overseas to play professionally. In that same interview, he discusses how his home in Mississippi was burned down just a few months prior to Sept. 11. He eventually left the state.
So Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf stood up (or in this case, sat down) for his religious beliefs. He made his religion a visible aspect of his life and a visible aspect of his professional basketball career. Just like Tim Tebow. The difference of course being that Tim Tebow was satirized on “Saturday Night Live.” Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf had his home burned down and felt blacklisted from the NBA.
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf pales in comparison to the outspoken nature of Cassius Clay. In 1964, Cassius Clay announced his membership in the Nation of Islam, and changed his name to Muhammad Ali. In 1966, Ali spoke out against the draft and became a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War based on his religious beliefs. In 1967, Ali was convicted of draft evasion.
But even before his conviction, Ali was causing controversy. Sports Illustrated dubbed Ali the most hated athlete in the world in April 1966. In the same article, Ali’s faith was referred to as being a part of his “fanatically religious side.” Instead of being something to admire, his faith was inconceivable fanaticism. No Christian leader supported Ali’s display of Islamic faith in the same way that Muslim leaders have supported Tebow’s display of Christian faith. Just like Tebow, though, Ali – the person, the boxer, the Muslim – could not be separated from his religion. This was never clearer than in his conscientious objection to the war in Vietnam.
By now, even casual boxing fans are familiar with Ali’s quote “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong … No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.” That one quote made Ali a social activist. And his social activism was based on his faith. Ali claimed that Islam prohibited war unless called for by Allah. That one belief made Ali’s religion a wider social issue. What followed was public outcry. Ali was stripped of his championship belt, had his boxing license suspended, and was convicted of draft evasion. The Supreme Court ultimately overturned it. But for four years, Ali, arguably the greatest boxer of all time, did not fight.
So Muhammad Ali stood up (or in this case, sat out) for his religious beliefs. He made his religion a visible aspect of his life and a visible aspect of his professional boxing career. Just like Tim Tebow 40 years later. Just like Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf 30 years later. Ali was an outspoken proponent of his religion, Islam, but was vilified for his outspoken religious beliefs. His Islamic beliefs.
Again I ask, what if Tim Tebow were Muslim? He’s not. So maybe it doesn’t matter. There is no way to separate the man and the religion. Some people praise him for it, others recoil. When this happens, avid defenders of Tebow invoke freedom of religion. But as Tebowmania makes its way into politics, sports, religion and the everyday life of the mainstream United States, it is important to think about how we approach religion in this country. How we approach religious freedom in this country. Do we accept freedom of religion, any religion? Or do we accept freedom of Christianity?
Tags: tim tebow, muslim, christianity
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Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 01-12-2012 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Music
Afghan-American singer/songwriter Zohra’s new song “Lovely Day” was just released to rave reviews. The sound is very 80’s and upbeat. New album will be out soon!
You can listen to the track here: http://soundcloud.com/brooklynvegan/religious-to-damn-lovely-day
Tags: zohra atash, religious to damn, lovely day, new release
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Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 12-30-2011 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Leaders/Stories
EW: With her famous high-pitched voice, ridiculously large bow, and assertion that “Islamic law has infiltrated your community, your country, and your life,” Victoria Jackson seems like she’s joking with her latest episode of PolitiChicks. In fact, the set-up even looks like one of the comedienne’s former Saturday Night Live sketches. But it’s decidedly unfunny how serious Jackson is. The SNL vet, who has spent the past few months speaking out against homosexuals and slamming protesters at Occupy Wall Street, claims on her web series that she attended a congressional hearing in Washington D.C., that proved that “the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated our highest positions in our government.”
That includes, of course, the president, said Jackson, who believes his policies have aligned with Muslim interests. Other assertions made by Jackson during the webisode: “Islam is not a religion of peace,” the media insists on defending Muslims and attacking the extreme religious right, and cries of Islamophobia will only lead to more unfair hate crime prosecution. After the jump, watch the video, in which Jackson insists that “You gotta get educated here, people,” after double-checking Hillary Clinton’s title as Secretary of State
Tags: victoria jackson, obama, muslim brotherhood, islamophobia
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Are you a Muslim/Middle-Eastern/South Asian actor, musician, singer, comedian, designer, film-maker, journalist/host, or have a special story? Show us what you got!
