Latest news with #Qais
Time of India
07-08-2025
- Sport
- Time of India
Thumping win for Ex-Student Men's Utd Club
Lucknow: Ex-Student Men's United Club thrashed Yuva Club 6-0 in the District Football League match at Chowk Stadium on Thursday. Parmeet (12th and 40th minutes) and Qais (24th and 71st minutes) scored a brace each for the winners, while Mukesh (59th minute) and Anas (65th minute) netted one goal apiece. Meanwhile, Mid Winter Club edged past Integral University 1-0 in a league match of the Satish Kumar Shukla Memorial District Football League at Dilkusha Ground on Thursday. Sudhanshu scored the lone goal of the match in the 15th minute. Swimming Krishna Yadav of Sports Hostel clinched a silver medal in the 50m butterfly (boys' Group II) event at the 51st Junior National Swimming Championship–2025 in Ahmedabad. Krishna clocked 00:26.83 seconds to win his third medal of the championship. Karate Lucknow emerged overall winners in the divisional under-14, under-17, and under-19 boys' and girls' school karate championship. Lucknow girls bagged 23 gold medals, while the boys clinched 12 golds. Stay updated with the latest local news from your city on Times of India (TOI). Check upcoming bank holidays , public holidays , and current gold rates and s ilver prices in your area.
Toronto Star
26-07-2025
- Toronto Star
Israeli gunfire and strikes kill at least 25 in Gaza as many of the dead sought aid
Maysara Adwan, left, mourns as she holds the body of her 11-year-old son, Qais, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school in Gaza that has been used as a shelter, during his burial at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Friday, July 25, 2025. Abdel Kareem Hana/AP Photo flag wire: true flag sponsored: false article_type: : sWebsitePrimaryPublication : publications/toronto_star bHasMigratedAvatar : false :
Toronto Star
26-07-2025
- Toronto Star
Israeli gunshots and strikes kill at least 25 in Gaza, some while seeking aid
Maysara Adwan, left, mourns as she holds the body of her 11-year-old son, Qais, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school in Gaza that has been used as a shelter, during his burial at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Friday, July 25, 2025. Abdel Kareem Hana/AP Photo flag wire: true flag sponsored: false article_type: : sWebsitePrimaryPublication : publications/toronto_star bHasMigratedAvatar : false :
The Hindu
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
An Afghan-American Muslim and an Indian-American Sikh collaborate to revive the rabab
The earliest-known bowed instrument, rabab, has joined forces with the trumpet, through an unusually refreshing alliance between musicians Qais Essar, an Afghan-American Muslim, and Sonny Singh, an Indian-American Sikh. Together, they are composing an album, Sangat, which harks back to the defining narratives of Bhakti and Sufi movements (two prominent socio-religious movements in Hinduism and Islam). Among its three compositions released so far, one is an iconic Sufi song, 'Lal meri pat', praising the 12th Century mystic Shabaaz Qalandar, and the other two are the renditions of Sikh hymns reimaged on the warm timbre of rabab and accented by the jazzy, raw harmonics of trumpet. The recently released, 'Pavan Guru', is the concluding shlok of Sikh prayer Japji Sahib. It was penned by the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, who conjures up the unifying cultural phenomenon of Sant Mat Bhakti that drew on both Hinduism and Islam. The third track is called 'Vich Sangat', a 16th Century Sikh devotional poem by the fourth Sikh guru, Guru Ram Das. 'The album will have a few instrumental tracks centred on improvisation and conversation between the rabab and trumpet. There will be two tracks in Farsi, one of which is Qais's original composition of a poem by Amir Khusrau, and the other one is a co-composition of a Farsi shabad by Guru Nanak,' says Sonny about Sangat's upcoming tracks. Identifying sangat He describes the album as a project that is not only a meeting of diverse musical and spiritual traditions, but also a reflection of art as a vehicle for connection, resistance and healing. 'In the Sikh community, we generally refer to the worshippers inside a Gurdwara as sangat (beloved community). In this project, we would like to define sangat as something broader, where our ethnic, national and religious identities are porous,' he shares. 'For Sikhs and Muslims, specifically, this began with the friendship between Guru Nanak and his musical companion Bhai Mardana who played the rabab and was a Muslim. You see this spirit of solidarity and oneness in the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of Sikhs, which includes the writings of not only Sikh gurus, but also of Sufi saints such as Sheikh Farid and radical bhakti poet-saints such as Ravidas, Kabir, and Namdev,' he adds. Sonny and Qais started working on Sangat in October 2024, some time after they were introduced to each other by a common friend, Sudanese-American singer-songwriter and ethnomusicologist, Alsarah. 'I was looking for a musician to accompany me on the six-week Revolutionary Love Tour with author-activist Valarie Kaur. The 40-city tour across the US, including a few gurdwaras in California, New York and Wisconsin, was part of my second album Sage Warrior that accompanied Valarie's eponymous book,' says Sonny. Driven by electric guitar, drums, dholki and trumpet, 'Pavan Guru' was featured on Sage Warrior too, but Qais's rabab on tours added a spiritual dimension to the hymn, reinterpreting its musical texture from Nanak and Mardana's travels around South Asia and the Middle East. 'We opened our concerts with 'Pavan Guru' and started our project with the recording of the hymn this February,' Sonny shares. Instruments of peace Recorded mostly in Qais's studio in Payson, Arizona, Sangat will be released in October this year through his indie label and production company Ghost Songs. With five albums and 12 EPs to his credit, Qais's merit in pursuing music through rabab commands attention. He confirms his family's commitment to art, poetry and music — stating that his grandfather played tambour — but, he assures: 'I am the first rabab player in my family'. On rabab, Qais has also composed film music for the BAFTA-nominated short film Yellow and Academy Award-nominated films Three Songs for Benazir and The Breadwinner. 'Rabab allows me to transport my thoughts and feelings to the world. In my years of practise, I have pioneered many techniques and ways of playing the rabab, specifically 'gayaki' (playing in a vocal way), and western concepts of harmony, such as chords. The mixture of the contemporary style firmly rooted in tradition gives the music ancestral power in the modern world,' he says. Rabab is the national instrument of Afghanistan, the country from where Qais's parents migrated to the US in 1982. The instrument, though not banned, is under threat from Taliban's ban on music. So, does Qais see the act of taking up rabab as that of defiance or reverence to its rich cultural history? 'Playing rabab is an act of defiance and defence of cultural history. We protect that which we revere,' he replies. His words bring to mind 'Free Palestine' inked on Qais's rabab in the video of 'Pavan Guru'. While Qais is reviving rabab with intentional fervour, Sonny, with his trumpet, is pushing the boundaries of conventions that dictate the way kirtan (hymn-singing) is performed. He has the uncanny knack of playing devotional songs and ballads of rebellion with virtuosic ease and intensity. For instance, in his first album, Chardi Kala, he sang hymns like 'Aisee Preet', 'Mitar Pyare Nu' and 'Koi Bol Ram' alongside fiery, anthemic compositions like 'Ghadar Machao'. Cultural paradox On what prompted him to collaborate with Sonny for Sangat, Qais says, 'Music has always been a tool for healing, justice, and unity. This project is my offering to that sacred stream.' He adds, 'Guru Nanak and Bhai Mardana knew then what we know now, that music is the powerful way to deliver a message to your heart.' Interestingly, the conversations on the rabab gathered steam in 2022 when the Akal Takht Jathedar requested the replacement of the harmonium with traditional string instruments such as the dilruba, rabab, and sarangi in kirtan at the Golden Temple. The idea was to revive the tradition of using string instruments in Sikh religious music. 'For centuries, starting with Bhai Mardana in the 1500s, Muslim rababis were a crucial part of the Sikh kirtan tradition. Many master musicians playing at the Golden Temple were Muslims. It is a travesty that they were pushed out. That process began in the early 1900s, and Partition (1947) sealed the deal. In the context of British colonialism, many of our communities became more rigid about their religious identities. The beauty of the oneness or the idea of 'Ik Oankar' (mool mantra) that is central to Sikhism began to be chipped away,' says Sonny. 'When Muslim rababis were expelled, much of the knowledge of the raags of the Guru Granth Sahib as well as the expertise on original instruments, like the rabab, were also lost.' By the time you read this article, Qais and Sonny would have played their first live shows as Sangat in the Bay Area, California. Sonny hopes that this music becomes 'a space for reflection, action for justice and liberation for all.' His words bring to mind 'Free Palestine' inked on Qais's rabab in the video of 'Pavan Guru'. As for Sangat, it continues to pave the way for experimental music, a symphony of a cultural paradox where the rabab and trumpet, old and new, Sikh and Muslim, Afghani and Indian, Guru Nanak and Bhai Mardana and Bhakti and Sufi movements — everything is connected to the sacred chord of humanism.
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
In Syria's devastated Jobar, cemetery comes alive for Eid
Only the cemetery in Damascus's devastated suburb of Jobar showed signs of life on Friday as residents returned to visit and pray for Eid al-Adha, the first since Bashar al-Assad's fall. Jawdat al-Qais fought back tears as he knelt at the tomb of his father, who died less than a month ago. "His wish was to be buried in Jobar -- and Jobar was liberated and he was buried here," said Qais, 57. "We carried out his wish, thank God," he said, adding that "many people haven't been able to be buried in their hometowns." Once home to around 350,000 people, Jobar was turned into a wasteland due to heavy fighting from the start of Syria's civil war, which erupted in 2011 with Assad's brutal repression of anti-government protests. In 2018, an accord between Assad's government and opposition factions allowed fighters and their families to evacuate. After being forced out, Jobar's residents have returned for Eid al-Adha, the biggest holiday in Islam, during which it is customary to pay respects to the dead. Among the utter ruin of the once rebel-held district, the call to prayer rose from damaged mosque's minaret as dozens of faithful gathered both inside and out. - Population 'zero' - In the deathly silence, devastated buildings line barely passable roads in Jobar, which is also home to a historic synagogue. At the cemetery, which was also damaged, residents -- including former fighters in wheelchairs or using crutches -- came together after years of separation, some drinking coffee or eating dates. "The irony of Jobar is that the cemetery is the only thing bringing us life, bringing us together," Qais said. Some visitors struggled to find their loved ones' tombs among the overturned headstones. A few etched names or drew rudimentary signs to help identify them on the next visit. "I found my mother's tomb intact and I wept," said Jihad Abulmajd, 53. He said he has visited her grave regularly since Assad's December 8 ouster. "We find peace here, with our ancestors and relatives," he told AFP. The day after Assad was toppled, Hamza Idris, 64, and his family returned to Jobar from Idlib in the country's northwest, where they fled in 2018. He said a definitive return to the ghost town, whose infrastructure has been destroyed, was impossible. "Jobar's population... is zero," he said after praying in front of the mosque. "Even the cemetery wasn't spared the bombs," said Idris, who lost three children during the war and was unable to visit their graves until Assad's ouster. "The town is no longer habitable. It needs to be entirely rebuilt," he said. mam/jos/at/lg/jsa
