Sama'an Ashrawi

last spring me and @hah_vee_air_ met up for some bbq and got to talkin and realized we had something in common: we both felt that houston deserved to have its own live performance series, like a tiny desk or live on kexp. he was sayin how his crew @topspinstudios could make it happen. so then we said, alright, who might be a good artist for one of the initial tapings? i knew there'd be no one better than @aaronstephensmusic . so i called up aaron while javi assembled his crew and after aaron crushed it at the taping, we did one of the most houston things you can do: we went out for nigerian food to celebrate. house of sound is the name of the series. it looks and sounds incredible, wouldn't you agree ? who do you want to see play the next set ?

Baba turns 77 today ! As fate would have it we were a few days away from flying to Washington DC when my cousin @neemyfbaby texted me about an award-winning restaurant in DC called La’ Shukran. She said a friend of hers visited and was amazed to see a page in the wine menu dedicated to Al-Bara’em. So I reached out to the restaurant, where reservations don’t come easy, and told them that the lead singer of the band in their menu was going to be in town and asked if there was any possible way for us to get a table. I was very grateful when they said they’d accommodate us, and of course I said nothing to my parents, only that they should leave their Friday dinner plans open. What you see here is Baba’s 100% candid and genuine reaction, finding the entrance in a back alley near Union Market, walking up and in, and his elated surprise when @bashmursh walked him through the menu and pointed to a certain page featuring a certain band. What’s even cooler is that within the menu, which is beautiful I might add, @al_bara3em are paired up with some all-time great artists: Prince, The Kinks, Wu Tang Clan, Johnny Cash. This is the standard of cool I’ve always held them up to, but with full knowledge of my heavy bias. It’s been such a long journey getting Baba and his siblings and bandmates to accept that they did something historic half a century ago, so moments like this, in places as prestigious as this, are what really drive it home. Shukran to Basheer and Alex and the whole @lashukrandc staff, me and my family will cherish this moment forever. Last slide: Baba and Mama in the vanity room in @tumabasa ’s office.

Thundercat broke down the moment he & Flying Lotus showed "Get Dis Money" by Slum Village to jazz giant Herbie Hancock. The 1999 J Dilla produced track off of Slum Village's breakthrough album "Fantastic Vol. 2" contains a sample of Herbie Hancock's 1978 vocoder jazz-funk jam "Come Running To Me". Swipe to listen. Interview via: @sam3an #JDilla #Thundercat #HerbieHancock #POWMagazine

Flowers for Michael Watts 💐 something you have to know about houston is that we’ve lost so many of our legends, and truly it feels like none of them have gotten to know old age. each time it happens it rips off the scab again and our city bleeds anew. i was supposed to be born on june 6, but i was taking forever to arrive and so my mother finally pushed me out just after midnight on the 7th. you can’t imagine what it was like to come of age when Houston was having its rap renaissance, when you couldn’t turn on your tv without seeing an artist from our city. it almost felt like we weren’t supposed to be there, a feeling i related to. the first concert i ever went to on my own was a MySpace Secret Show featuring Paul Wall, Lil Keke, & DJ Michael Watts. i didn’t know much about the world then but i knew Paul and Keke were affiliated with Watts’ label, Swishahouse, an indie that dominated the mid-2000s with artists like Paul, Chamillionaire, Slim Thug, & Mike Jones, whose freestyles i had memorized before i ever knew what they looked like. i brought my digital camera along for the ride and now i’m so glad i did. four years later i was an intern at THE Swishahouse, thanks to @spoiledlatina . i had no idea that it was an actual place, like a house for real. every day when Watts or G Dash would walk in, i had to pinch myself because i couldn’t believe i was being welcomed into their space. Dash would buy us lunch and Watts even sat down with me for one of my very early interviews, you can see and hear how nervous i was to be talking with one of my heroes. i saw Watts quite recently, at Bun’s album release party a few months ago, only this time i was the one DJing. i don’t look anything like i did in my college days, so when Watts walked over to the booth and dapped me up, i had to refresh his memory. i showed him the interview we did all those years ago and i told him he changed my life, that the love he showed me meant the world to me then and that it still does now. he smiled and dapped me up again and then i asked him, although i already knew the answer, “what day were you born?” he said, “june 7th,” and i smiled and said, “me too.” rest in peace, legend 🕊️

i only ever dreamed of nights like this when i was a teenager, clinging to the very few songs that mentioned palestine as if the songs themselves were my friends. it meant so much that those few artists back then acknowledged our existence because there were forces telling us to our face that we actually did not exist, so i never thought that i would see 6,000+ people fill a theater to watch two dozen of the biggest artists sing not just for palestine but for sudan as well. it started out like i wish all days could: with music & a cafe con miel made by @thanksjoey and a conversation about belief. how it’s only through belief, through people believing in us, that we can get to that next level. i arrived with a big hug for @onvacation because i simply wouldn’t have been there without him, but after john left i was all alone and wondering who i was going to hang out with when @maggierogers appeared truly out of thin air. we struck up conversation and in the middle of it @mustafathepoet came and told maggie she’d be welcome to sit on the couches that bordered the stage if she’d like. i asked her if it would be alright if i sat with her and in the warmest tone you can imagine she said, “sure! come on!” so i followed her as she walked onto the stage and we plopped down next to @safiamafia , right in the middle under the spotlight. and then @ravynlenae came and joined us. and then @clairo came and sat just a few seats over. and then @aalisub found us too. and between songs we found out how very much we had in common. i’ve been thinking a lot lately about how i miss the feeling of deep belonging and how i want to feel it again. i don’t want you to get the impression that all of these people are my close personal friends, but it does take acts of inclusion like what maggie did to make a person feel like they belong. i try to do this as much as i can in settings where i have some social capital, but in this case i was the new kid, so-to-speak. so thanks to maggie and to john and to ravyn for making me feel like i belong, if only for a night. and more importantly for supporting the cause. maybe spreading that feeling of belonging is part of how we’ll all get free.

New Year’s Resolutions of a 15-year-old Texas kid. A photo of the kid himself. Bonus: that kid’s journal entry at age 7. My Resolutions for 2006: • I want to be the best friend I can be • Make A's & Bs • Be a better brother & son • Find the love of my life • Write more poetry & books; get them published • Get a job at Best Buy • Sit down with my Dad & have him tell me his life story, the write a biography of him • Change someone’s life forever (in a good way)

Become a dedicated student of your passions. Treat study like homework and watch your knowledge grow. Episode out now. #TheChaseJarvis #TheWave #CourtneyRoberts #HipHop #RnB #MusicCountdown #NewMusic #SamaanAshrawi

We’re excited to announce our feature film project The Blooms (Al Baraem) from writer/director @sam3an has received the @afac.fund Cinema Grant. This is a thrilling Palestinian story set during the rise of rock n roll in Jerusalem in the 1960s. Thank you AFAC for supporting our project! 🙏🏼We can’t wait to bring this film to the screen.

🇵🇸THE WORD IS OUT… Baba Was a Rolling Stone, Sama’an Ashrawi’s debut novel is coming in June 2026 and we cant wait for you to read it… In a debut of wild, sprawling, endless scope, Sama’an Ashrawi’s Baba Was a Rolling Stone tells the seemingly implausibly linked stories of Palestine’s nascent 60’s rock’n’roll culture, of his father’s place within that with his pioneering family band Al-Bara’em (in English: The Blooms), as well as the writer’s own odyssey through the living history of American music. Told in the voice of ‘the writer’, who alongside his father attempts to track down a member of The Blooms, the revolutionary band his father fronted in his native Palestine, now missing somewhere in America, Ashrawi’s tale takes the form of a series of road trips that act as the catalyst for discoveries and recoveries of diasporic family histories and the great traditions of American music. From the early blues through to New York hip-hop, hardcore punk, indie, classic funk and bleeding into stand-up, visual art, graffiti and fashion——Baba Was a Rolling Stone joins the infinite dots of American culture in a wholly new, wholly original way, and in apparently effortless, elegant prose, brings us a world of migrant America as influential as it is invisible. This is not just a book for our age, but truly a book for the ages——a book that contains all of Whitman’s American multitudes——and so, of course, that contains the whole world’s. #babawasarollingstone @sam3an #freepalesti̇ne @al_bara3em

tonight ! i have the honor of providing the sounds for Bun & Cory’s Way Mo Trill album release at Off The Record. make your night way way way mo trill and meet us there. don’t forget to rsvp !

My friend @sam3an has been piecing together the story of @al_bara3em , the rock ’n’ roll band his father, uncles, aunts, and their friends started in Jerusalem in the mid-1960s. Through photos, posters, and notes sent by former bassist François Farah, the band’s world has come alive again. Among the treasures are handwritten lyrics to “Hurrietna” (Our Freedom), written in Arabic and English as his uncle Samir dictated them, now being revived with the local band Zaytounat. Samaan is working to preserve Al-Bara’em’s legacy through a film, a book, a documentary, and a vinyl release so their story can live on while those who created it are still here to see it ✨ Make sure you give them a listen!!

Al-Bara’em were a goated Palestinian psych rock band from the 60s. They were really famous over there! They packed arenas. From @arabnews (2020): “I was immediately fascinated with the image of my father fronting a band,” admits Sama’an Ashrawi, a young podcaster and director from Texas. “But I never thought there would be any recordings, and I wouldn’t find out for several years that there was original music.” His father Ibrahim and all but one of his aunts and uncles were founding members of Al-Bara’em (The Blooms), a cover-band-turned-psychedelic-rock-group that played to packed venues across Palestine during the 60s and 70s. A fact he was relatively unaware of for most of his life. “I think that dancing to The Monkees just wasn’t cutting it any more. As Nina Simone once said, ‘an artist’s duty is to reflect the times. Their lyrics were absolutely political. But rather than chanting slogans, they preferred the imagery that poems conjured,” says Ashrawi. “Just like Cream, Al-Bara’em understood the importance of the guitar solo and had epic movements in their songs. In other words, the songs aren’t just verse-chorus-verse-chorus, there’s a higher concept to their music that is just absolutely fascinating to me. The difference between Cream and Al-Bara’em is, Al-Bara’em’s music was a window into their reality rather than an escape from it.” “We are hoping to raise enough money to hire young musicians to record their music, under the supervision of my uncles, and release those recordings as an album. I’m so grateful, mashallah, that all the members of the band are still alive, and that’s what makes it even more urgent to get the full story of the band out as soon as possible.” SOURCE: @arabnews ✍🏽 Iain Akerman 🎨 @shirien.creates #albaraem #theblooms