[MUSIC] (Lauren) Hello and welcome to State of the Arts, a show dedicated to discovering arts and culture in southern Arizona.

I'm your host, Lauren Roth, and today we're joining you from the Century Room at Hotel Congress.

This club, opened in 2022, is dedicated to jazz music and hosts live shows every night of the week.

April is Jazz Appreciation Month, and in this episode, we'll take you to Nogales, Arizona, where one of the pioneers of American jazz music, Charles Mingus, was born.

But before that, we'll explore the enchanting world of Nazafarin Lotfi's art club, Hamrah.

We'll also dive into the rich tapestry of Arab American Heritage Month by learning the touching story of a Syrian violinist family.

Nazafarin Lotfi's artistic journey finds its roots deeply embedded in her upbringing in post-revolutionary Iran.

Lotfi incorporates elements of architecture and landscape, as she paints a bigger picture of the importance of space and place-making in our lives.

[Middle Eastern music] (Nazafarin) Oppression, revolution, imagination are in me.

I inherited them.

It wasn't my choice.

I was born in post-revolutionary 1980s Iran during the Iran-Iraq war.

There's really no boundary between art and life to me.

I always think about being a child of a failed revolution and what that does to your imagination.

I don't identify as a political artist, but I very well understand my existence is political.

In Iran as an Iranian woman in the US, as an Iranian immigrant woman.

An Iranian friend of mine was always saying this, that we didn't choose politics.

Politics chose us.

The show I just did at Illinois State University was called A Garden to Build.

To me, when I was working on the Garden to Build, I was thinking about an imagined landscape where many borders are crossed and the garden was this symbol of hope, hope for the future.

And this is metaphorically, it's a symbol for paradise.

Also, the space of the garden is a space that fosters life and growth.

But also the work was referencing and pointing at oppressive systems and imposed boundaries that borders are one of those.

If living is a process of making home, then art is an attempt towards creating a sense of belonging.

I guess I'm more interested in creating the space I want to see and I want to reside in.

(Nazafarin in class) That's beautiful.

Did you write it yourself?

(Mais) in Arabic.

(Nazafarin) In Arabic and then you translate it.

Yeah.

I started working with refugee status youth two years ago.

My second mentee was introduced to me as an artist from Kabul, Afghanistan.

She asked me to help her to meet artists and to find a space to make art.

I thought, if I'm doing this for one person, I can invite other people in the refugee status community.

And that's how Hamrah Arts Club was born.

[Middle Eastern music] (Taranm) I met Nazafarin and realized that there wasn't resources about, like, art.

She knew this place, MOCA.

So we started coming here.

We talk about our paths.

How we see ourselves right now.

About our future.

It was very hard to find community, to share values.

So I'm glad that I found this art club.

(Nazafarin in class) How about if anyone is done, just let's go ahead and put it up on that wall.

(Nazafarin) Hamrah is more real.

Real people, real causes real problems.

We get together and we talk about a topic, or we talk about ourselves, how we are feeling.

We make art.

We use our imagination to communicate with each other and to make a space inside our bodies for ourselves.

(Farzana) My name is Farzana.

I'm from Afghanistan.

My father, he was work with the Americans and then they transferred us in here.

I'm glad to join this program because it was a very informative program.

Every week we discuss about how we draw.

I like to make some arts like nature.

(Fatima Parwin) My name is Fatima Parwin.

I find a lot of friends in here.

I like coming here because art is my love.

(Mahdia speaking Turkish) (Mais) Learning art.

So beautiful.

My name is Mais.

I'm from Syria.

I make art for women.

(Najia) My name is Najia.

I'm from Afghanistan.

I'm alone here, my family in Afghanistan.

I miss my family, my mother and my sister.

I make picture about my family.

(Fatima) My name is Fatima.

I'm from Afghanistan.

Art is emotion like how we feel.

And then being with friends, making art is, like, the most important and then most, like, enjoyable thing we did here.

(Taranm) My name is Taranm.

I'm from Afghanistan.

I lived there for about 12 years and then I came here 2020.

I usually paint a lot of faces and portraits of different cultures.

[speaking Persian] (Nazafarin) Making space is at the core of my practice.

With the sculptures, with the drawings, with everything I do.

And Hamrah is just another space.

It's physical.

It's social.

It's about people.

It's not ideas for space.

[light guitar music] So I made this body of sculpture, which was informed by my research on landscape.

I came up with this method to make molds from objects, then remove the object and the figure is gone.

What you see is the ground.

So you're looking at a surface, but it appears as a full body.

And that was like another way.

I was like working conceptually with figure ground and disrupting that relationship and making the ground become the figure.

But also at the same time, I was introducing this idea of horizontal, and what horizontal meant.

The statues that we have in museums are mostly vertical, heroic, monumental, and they're male bodies.

And what is horizontal is the reclining female body or the wounded or the deceased.

The structure that I create or work against or deconstruct to create something new.

That was a part of the piece in terms of the hierarchies.

Who is worth more?

And who is worth less?

What we care about and what we just don't care and take for granted.

Those are all very important in how I make work.

(Lauren) We're happy to be joined now by Nazafrin Lotfi and her student Mahdia Seyed Abed to talk more about the Hamrah Arts Club.

Thanks for joining me today.

Share a little bit about Hamrah.

(Nazafarin) At first, I didn't think about Hamrah Arts Club as an art project.

It was something I was called into doing because I know how hard it is to just move to a new country, you know, to start a new life.

And I was heartbroken about what happened to Afghanistan and to Afghans.

And also with Syrians, like what they went through, the displacement is painful.

And then coming here with no support, I felt pain.

So I wanted to do something that was meaningful, but also at my capacity because I'm not a social worker.

And that's why it became an arts club.

The more we got together, it just felt right.

(Lauren) Mahdia, I'm curious how you got involved in Hamrah.

(Mahdia) So my sister was in Hamrah Arts Club before I got in.

I went there and then I met Nazafrin and I loved the community there.

We were getting into a little like politics and, you know, we were talking about our feelings, especially for refugees like us, who really went through a lot as kids and really had to grow up fast.

I have learned to be an actual teenager.

Hamrah has helped me to become a better version of myself and learn how to become brave.

And honestly, I see a lot of new, you know, girls around my age are younger than me, also have like the same confidence as me even more and want to do actually something and change the world in a better way.

So I'm really excited to see what they can do in future.

And I'm really proud of being in Hamrah.

(Lauren) Thank you so much, Nazafrin and Mahdia, for sharing your experience and for talking to us a bit about the Hamrah Arts Club.

(Nazafarin) Thank you.

(Mahdia) You're welcome.

(Lauren) Fadi Iskandar and his family, alongside countless Syrian refugees, undertook a journey in search of a sanctuary.

Settling here in Tucson, Arizona, Fadi and his wife Tamara started rebuilding their lives with music, serving as a guiding light.

As a violinist in the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, this story is particularly dear to me.

(Narrator) Syria.

The conflict evolves into an all-out civil war.

Nearly five million flee their homes and seek refuge.

Neighboring nations grapple with the mass exodus, and countries around the globe consider their role in the refugee crisis.

Fadi Iskandar and Tamara Khachatryan met before the war at the Arabic Music Institute in Aleppo, Syria.

They were music teachers at the school.

Both grew up in families where music was important, and they learned to play a variety of instruments, including the violin.

My father bought for me a small keyboard when I was four years old.

Fadi was already teaching at the institute when 20-year-old Tamara joined the faculty.

After we find some interesting duets, we start to practice together.

And I start like this person very interesting for me, and very comfortable.

And after it turns more and more maybe love, yeah?

Yeah.

That love soon turned to engagement.

They married in Holy Cross Catholic Church in Aleppo.

They continued to teach music and violin, and played concerts together, traveling and performing.

For Fadi Iskandar and his family, everything has changed.

For civilians caught in the crossfire, life as they knew it is over.

All the people there, they miss the country.

Special for me, I am a musician, you know.

I need happy people to play for them.

[MIDDLE EASTERN MUSIC] The violin has been for me like a magic.

Without this, there is no any flavor for the life without music, or without sharing food with other people.

Social, you know.

We love this.

Music and playing the violin is what brought them together before the fighting began.

Sometimes shooting, you know, dangerous situations, it makes your, you can't live anymore.

Their daughter Angelina was four at the time, and the sounds of war were hard to hide.

And sometimes you can't explain what's going on.

When she's trying to say, "What is that?

shooting or something?"

Because I don't like to make her stress.

So I think it's a birthday party, it's something like that, and she's like, "Weird.

I don't know if this is a birthday party that looks like that."

The battle for Aleppo began in July of 2012.

The threat to life and liberty was now too close to home.

But I afraid too much about Angelina, because her school was Christian.

They put a car with bombs and wrote, "Every mother will cry today."

And I decide, you know, the child, like this age, I don't feel she's safe there.

You can't leave one second with your family there anymore.

For this, I want to live with the country.

It's dangerous, too dangerous.

Fadi, Tamara, and Angelina fled Syria in late 2012.

They found their way to Tucson.

It's hard, because, you know, I have their house, work, friends, family, relatives, students.

Two years ago, they welcomed a second daughter into the world, Susana.

The little one, Susana, she's my Angel.

I want to play with her all the time.

Fadi and Tamara still play their violins together, like they did when they first met.

They've learned a new language and culture, and they say Tucson has welcomed them.

I'm so lucky, because I got here, good church, good people, good friends, my job, and good kids.

And my family, everybody is safe.

Now I feel my second place is here.

It's like kind of my second homeland.

Homeland, yes.

But they will always remember their life in Syria, and those they had to leave behind.

And there is one also good, very good woman in Aleppo, my mom.

I still remember her all the time.

She's great.

Let's stop...

I think she's happy because I am here.

I think it's very good for her.

She's more happy than I stay there.

Now safe in their new community, they look to the future and what it may hold.

I think everything in God's hands, because I believe too much to God, maybe one day every people understand because we are whole as human.

maybe one day every people understand because we are whole as human.

Maybe they can just stop.

Just stop.

I hope for safe and good future for my kids, and I hope the peace for all the world.

(Lauren) Charles Mingus is known as a virtuoso jazz bass player, a bandleader, and a composer.

Although Mingus' time in Nogales was brief, his southern Arizona roots are still a source of pride and celebration for the community.

His 100th birthday was celebrated with concerts in Phoenix, Tucson, and Nogales by the quintet Mingus Dynasty, before being finalized with the unveiling of the Charles Mingus Memorial in Nogales.

Charles Mingus remains one of the most influential figures in 20th century American music.

He was born in Nogales, Arizona, to a father who was a Buffalo soldier stationed at Camp Little in 1922.

He later became known as a virtuoso jazz bass player bandleader and composer.

Although Mingus' time in Nogales was brief.

His southern Arizona roots remain a sense of pride and celebration for the community.

We're all celebrating the centennial of Charles Mingus.

My part of it is a three city tour where I brought Charles McPherson in and a quintet drawn from Mingus Dynasty to play in Phoenix here in Tucson and in Nogales, where it's going to be ending up.

And they are going to have a festival there, as they have for many years.

And it will be dedicating a new Mingus Memorial.

Charles Mingus is the most famous and most important jazz musician to come out of Arizona.

Growing up, his music was some of the first jazz that really resonated with me because while it is intellectual, there's also a real spiritual element to it that just kind of grabs you I started playing saxophone at about 13, and then this is serendipity or whatever you want to call it.

I find out that one of the greatest jazz clubs in Detroit was two blocks down the street from my house, so I would go down and listen I'm.

I'm 15, 14, 15.

I can't get in the clubs, of course.

I remember Mingus being in that club, not working, but hanging out, and I saw him step out of the club and I knew who he was, and that was the first time I saw him.

But eventually I connected up with him.

I left Detroit at I was about 20 years old, and this was probably 1959, early sixties, and I went to New York to just throw my hat in the ring.

And fortunately I got hired by Mingus and that saved me When we played his music, if we were too pristine or too clean to him, that was too processed.

He didn't like that.

If we weren't, we were a little bit raggedy and sloppy.

He didn't like that either.

One day he used the term organized chaos.

So now I'm 21 years old.

I know what chaos means.

I know what organization means.

I'm not quite sure what organized chaos means.

But, I, I soon understood what he meant.

So you know, he could be volatile.

There were parts of him that was angry but he also was empathetic.

And he could he could be tender and very loving at the same time.

For all of us to have the conviction of what we believe in and then have the nerve to try to bring that about Mingus was kind of like that.

He knew about how the world works and he was concerned.

And whatever he had issues with, he had the courage to say it.

Period.

Good morning and welcome, all of you.

Thank you so much for being here with us today.

To dedicate the Mingus Memorial Park.

Well, my late wife, Yvonne Ervin is pretty much responsible for anything having to do with Mingus or even Jazz in Arizona.

In some ways.

when Yvonne moved back to Arizona, marched into the mayor's office and said, We've got to have some civic pride here for Mingus.

He was born in this town son of a Buffalo soldier right across the street there at Camp Little.

And the mayor said, OK, let's let's do that.

And he gave us that plot of land and and that.

And they started to construct it.

Whereas Charles Mingus, a world renowned musician, composer, poet and civil rights activist, was born in Nogales, this being the centennial of his birth.

And.

Whereas, Charles Mingus was born in Camp Little, where his father was posted, serving with an all black regiment of the U.S. Army known as the Buffalo Soldiers.

I guess what's great about, you know, my grandfather is that he just supported my dad's desire to do music.

And I started playing cello.

He was definitely among the classical career path.

But when you're black, that only goes so far.

And then his buddies are like, Well, you should play bass.

And that's kind of how it started.

It's just really a pleasure to see this happen.

To have this, it means a lot.

It means a lot to me.

And then you start sort of looking at the history and, you know, the Buffalo Soldiers and it seems to be very Mingusonian and you know, I like it just kind of fits, you know, just kind of fits into our family vibe.

Charles Mingus was born in my homeland.

I thought, how could I pay homage to someone so grand when put under the spotlight He would outstand a legend in a lifetime, not just a jazz band.

That's what Charles Mingus really is, he's a concoction of all these things.

I mean, what comes out is just so real.

And part of that is me thinking about Charles Mingus because he was born here and he didn't spend that much time here, but he's still impacting us.

And all these kids were brought up knowing that that Nogales was important in that Charles Mingus was a great composer.

And the band directors there were very, very happy to have all this activity around it.

And it's been it's been a tremendous inspiration and it's been terrific for Nogales' civic pride and for the educational opportunities and everybody should have access to express themselves in any way they want.

And I think that's what his legacy is.

You know, talk about the legacy.

It would be, you know, to be true to yourself and your passions.

And your art and, you know, and try to pursue the things that are important to you.

(Lauren) We're happy to be joined now by Shana Oseran, the visionary behind the unique allure of the Century Room.

Thanks for joining me, Shana.

I'd love for you to share a little bit about how the Century Room came to be, what motivated and inspired its creation.

Well, my husband and I bought the building in 1985, and we kind of got backed into adaptive reuse and historic preservation.

Congress in 5th is a power corner, and how can you not have something in here that really gives us a sense of place?

And it was, well, I was going to do a music venue in here.

There are so many events happening all the time here at the Century Room.

I'm curious if you could speak to a little bit about the appeal of jazz music and how you're able to fill this place so regularly.

It's really kind of been a miracle, and I think it's a, we do have music every night, and we try to perform, but people never expected a jazz club to be successful in our community.

But I think what happened is that it's really nascent.

All of this music comes, it kind of hits a chord, and people realize, oh my God, big band on Mondays?

Where would you go to see Big Band on Mondays?

And the Grammy Award winners coming in?

That's that side.

The other side is that the musicians came, and they said this is the first place they feel respected by the audience.

The musicians and the audience and the ability to be able to connect that way is really what's given it its success.

Thank you so much for joining me in speaking about the Century Room.

Congratulations on its success, Shana.

It was a pleasure.

Thanks so much for joining us on State of the Artz I'm Lauren Roth, concertmaster of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, and we'll see you again next time.