Call to Prayer: Creative Liturgy in Transcultural Islamic Practice

Join us for a rare discussion of the Islamic call to prayer and the creative liturgy of Islamic practice featuring Yunus Khaerisman, a muezzin based in Washington D.C., Jessika Kenney, vocal faculty from the California Institute of the Arts, and Anne Rasmussen, professor of music at the College of William and Mary.

Full live broadcast of the evening call (Maghrib) or Azan on WRIR

Musicians: Yunus Khaerisman and Jessika Kenney

Yunus Khaerisman is an outspoken, energetic juggernaut of the Muslim community. A native-born Indonesian who spent his adolescent years in the streets of Texas, Brother Yunus has taken it upon himself to be the bridge servicing the gaps of whatever community he has found himself immersed in. Brother Yunus was classically trained in Islamic studies at the Madrasah of East Java where he first began his journey into the memorization and understanding of the Quran. He then served the Islamic Society of Greater Houston (ISGH) as a youth mentor, Quran teacher, and Jummah Khateeb within ISGH’s circuit of masajids. He also served as an acting Imam for the Houston Indonesian community during Masjid Istiqlal Houston’s inception. Brother Yunus is currently a Team Leader of CenterDC, An ADAMS (all-Dulles American Muslim society) khateeb , Quran mentor at IMAAM center And regularly gives much needed Islamic mentorship with various youth leader around DMV.   Having studied under high-caliber scholars such as Sh. Isa Parada (IslamInSpanish), Sh. Abdullah Oduro (Bayyinah), Sh. Abdul Nasir Jangda (Qalam Institute), and Imam Suhaib Webb (CenterDC), Brother Yunus strives to continuously be a means of education. Inspired by these role models, Brother Yunus dedicates his work to the need to bridge the gap between Islamic literacy and applicable relevancy.

Vocalist and Composer Jessika Kenney began independently studying and participating in Indonesian music in the 90’s. Her teachers included the late Nyi Supadmi and the late Ibu Euis Komariah. She also has studied Iranian radifs and classical poetry with Ostad Hossein Omoumi since 2004, and continues to perform with him in many contexts, such as the tribute to great Jewish-Iranian musician Morteza Khan Neydavud at Royce Hall in Los Angeles in 2008, and at the “World In Trance” Festival at Roulette in Brooklyn in 2018. Her own compositions and improvisations include “Atria” for gamelan and a ghazal of Attar, as well as “Aestuarium”, an experimental liturgy on a psalm of lamentation written and performed with her husband the violist/composer Eyvind Kang. Jessika has also worked closely with scholar/translators Fatemeh Keshavarz and Red Pine. Currently she is developing “Headless Translations” for solo voice and electronics. Kenney teaches Voice and Composition at  CalArts and lives in Pasadena, CA.