Playlist: La Bel Haki By Adonis.

/Art by Tania Al Kayyali/

Adonis is a great poet, but it is also a name of a great (not so) little Lebanese band. Like it is captured by Now Lebanon, “the five boys from Adonis produce songs that are, at times, achingly gorgeous, charming, whimsical and enchantingly Lebanese.”

Time Out Beirut suggests: “If the rambling back alleys, low-slung electricity cables and small, dusty, bustling neighborhoods of Beirut had a soundtrack, this would be it.”

You can listen to one of their new songs, beautiful La Bel Haki, on You Tube.

♫

Previous Playlist:

Suhaiymah Manzoor Khan

PJ Harvey & Ramy Essam

Basel Rajoub

Crystalline (Omar Souleyman Remix)

Paintings By Boutros Al-Maari.

//all images © Boutros Al-Maari//

Boutros Al-Maari was born in Damascus in 1968. He has held several solo exhibitions in Paris and Damascus, and participated in a large number of group exhibitions in Damascus, Beirut, Alexandria, Hanover and Paris. Al-Maari currently lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.

Through his paintings he transmits a feeling of the contemporary and the traditional, all on the same canvas. In a way, his paintings are an exaggerated drawings of the typical characters from the Syrian daily life, with a twist of magic in them.

• • •

For more on Al-Maari and his work, and many other great Syrian artists – follow the page Syria.Art on Facebook.

Call For Papers: Towards An Arab Left Reader.

//illustration: iStock.com/Marvid//

Why is there as yet no reader or anthology of Arab leftist thought in English translation? If that question is of interest to you, read on.

The workshop will take place at the University of Cambridge, from 12- 14 April 2018. It will bring together an international group of scholars and translators from a wide range of disciplines to identify, discuss and translate a selection of documents that have played a pivotal role in the formation of socialist, anti-colonial and democratic thought in the Arab world.

The ultimate outcome of this gathering will be the publication of the first English-language Arab left reader, in which translated documents will be accompanied by essays that locate them within a larger historical, political and translational context. The collection aims to bring Arab leftist traditions into conversation with other non-Western and international political texts now available in English, as well as to function as a pedagogical tool and a resource for those interested in political thought in the Arab world.

The workshop will be comprised of six panels on the following themes:

1) Political Mobilization & Muslim Societies

2) Turath: Heritage and Cultural Decolonization

3) Literary Aesthetics and Politics

4) Nation, State and Liberation

5) Feminism and Gender Equality

6) Political Economy

Call for papers:

Proposals for texts on one of the above panel subjects (including party or anonymous tracts, collectively authored documents, etc) are invited for inclusion in the reader. After the workshop, participants who will contribute to the reader should be prepared to translate the entirety of their proposed text, and offer a short summation of its location in broader Arab leftist thought and political practice.

You should submit the following by October 15, 2017:

• 400 word abstract with the following: description of the text and its author, including bibliographic information (date of production, length, publisher (if any), etc; and political location of text (i.e. when and why was it written, intended audience, distribution method), as well as the relevance of the text to the topic of your chosen panel (please state clearly on which panel you wish to present)
• 1-2 paragraphs of proposed text in original Arabic and English translation.

Send the proposals to arableftreader@gmail.com.