{"id":439,"date":"2024-04-17T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2024-04-17T12:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lesleyang.me\/?p=439"},"modified":"2024-04-18T22:36:41","modified_gmt":"2024-04-18T22:36:41","slug":"nyu-arab-festival-vibrantly-celebrates-middle-eastern-and-north-african-cultures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.lesleyang.me\/index.php\/2024\/04\/17\/nyu-arab-festival-vibrantly-celebrates-middle-eastern-and-north-african-cultures\/","title":{"rendered":"NYU Arab Festival vibrantly celebrates Middle Eastern and North African cultures"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Three<\/a><\/p>\n

On Monday, April 15, in the Kimmel Center for University Life’s Eisner and Lubin Auditorium, the Arab Students Association hosted the Arab Festival. The event was a spectacular display of the rich, vibrant cultures of the different countries in the Middle Eastern and North African region. Dozens of attendees were dancing, singing and clapping to the music and performances the whole evening.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNYU is such a big school overall and there is not a lot of representation for the Arab students, so having clubs like this and events like this is able to really bring us together,\u201d Stern senior and ASA president Sofia Elhusseini said. \u201cIt\u2019s a great opportunity for us to honor and share our cultures together and our heritage and our backgrounds.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Though the ASA was the primary organizer of the event, the organization also collaborated with other Arab clubs at the university such as The Egyptian Union and the Lebanese Club of NYU.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some students represented their cultures through traditional dress, such as the Amazigh traditional dress of Morocco, the Palestinian \u201cthobe\u201d and the traditional dress of Yemen, while others represented their countries through the different nations\u2019 flags.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy favorite part was the fashion runway,\u201d Stern junior Ouissam Brahmi said. \u201cI got to represent Alegria by wearing a traditional caftan and was able to enjoy Algerian music with the community.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The event also featured delicious dishes from various Arab countries such as chicken and beef shawarma, “ful medammas” and “koshary”, and “msemmen” flatbread with honey. The desserts included “makrout el louz,” “makrout laassel,” “dziriet” and “mkhebez”, Algerian cookies which Brahmi made from scratch.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to have these types of events because we need representation and we want to know there is a community dedicated to people with our backgrounds,\u201d Brahmi said. \u201cIt gives NYU an inclusive feel.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The dance group \u201cIn Dance We Trust\u201d from the <\/span>International House<\/span><\/a>, a nonprofit organization offering residential housing for international students, performed dabke. This dance style is a centuries old practice that has been performed throughout the Arab countries in the Levant region. The group consisted of students of Palestinian, Turkish, Guatemalan, Mexican, Chinese and Armenian origin, with many of the students learning the dance style for the first time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs we practiced and danced together it really created that sense of community,\u201d Ghadeer Hamati, a performer in the group said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The proceeding events included other cultural performances from NYU students, including “Zahrat al-Mada’en,” a song about Jerusalem. The event also featured a photo booth and a 360-degree camera for photo-ops as well as an evil eye bracelet making station.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While the event was mainly about cultural expression and the cross-cultural transmission of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries, students also spoke about the wars happening in Sudan, Gaza and Yemen, and the significance of raising awareness. For them it was an important time for everyone to come together to strengthen their fight and solidarity for their cultures.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt this current point in time, more than half of the cultures that we\u2019re probably showing the roots of right now are going through some form of genocide or issue in their country,\u201d CAS first-year Saif Ali said. \u201cEach of our cultures are unique \u2026 We are able to show that off with this festival and along with all the problems going on, we also want to advocate for them.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although NYU is a large, international institution, some students expressed that it can often be hard to find a strong representation or connection to Arab culture and heritage. The Arab festival is one of the places Arab students, and subsequently non-Arab students, can immerse themselves in their shared cultural heritage and tradition, or experience a culture different from their own.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>NYU is a pretty diverse school and oftentimes there\u2019s a lot of Arabs but we don\u2019t know each other,\u201d Gallatin first-year Ashrqat Saleh said. \u201cEvents like this help people come together and to meet other Arabs and get people to know each other.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

TaylorGrace Heller contributed reporting.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Contact Leila Anderson at culture@nyunews.com.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

This story NYU Arab Festival vibrantly celebrates Middle Eastern and North African cultures<\/a> appeared first on Washington Square News<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, April 15, in the Kimmel Center for University Life’s Eisner and Lubin Auditorium, the Arab Students Association hosted the Arab Festival. The event was a spectacular display of the rich, vibrant cultures of the different countries in the Middle Eastern and North African region. Dozens of attendees were dancing, singing and clapping to the music and performances the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lesleyang.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lesleyang.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lesleyang.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lesleyang.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lesleyang.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.lesleyang.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":442,"href":"http:\/\/www.lesleyang.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions\/442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lesleyang.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lesleyang.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lesleyang.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lesleyang.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}