Here and now, between the debris of things and nothingness, we live in the suburbs of eternity.
—Mahmoud Darwish
This November 1, Reethaus welcomes Walid Ben Selim for a special performance of Here and Now, a journey through twelve centuries of Sufi poetry, accompanied by Gloria Huyghe on the harp. Moving across Persia, Northern Africa and Andalusia, Ben Selim presents a selection of poems by the great mystic poets of Islam, variations on the theme of la ilaha illa’l-‘ishq — there is no deity save love.
Ben Selim brings a wide musical experience to the Sufi devotional literature. Trained in classical Arab music, he played a key part in the early Nayda scene in Casablanca before taking a detour through metal. Today, Ben Selim has found a creative path to follow in the Sufi yearning for transcendance. In Here and Now, he gnostically animates the words of Mansur Al-Hallaj, Abu Madyan Telemsani, Abu Nuwas and Ibn Zaydoun.
Alongside the Medieval Sufi poets, Ben Selim sings the verses of Mahmoud Darwish, who for Ben Selim is “the most powerful poet of the last century.” Growing up in Israel as a legal alien after his family home was razed during the Nakba of 1948, Darwish saw poetry as spiritual medicine. A child of exile and a critic of the occupation of Palestine, Darwish was also a peacemaker who described Hebrew as a “language of love.” Ben Selim voices the tradition of these poets both ecstatic and mournful, intoning their songs as prayers for love.