Music

For four days during al-’Ashr al-Awaakhir (the final ten days of Ramadan and one of its most important phases), the Barbican presents its fourth annual Ramadan Nights festival of world music from an Islamic perspective. Blues, jazz and hip hop are represented alongside traditional folk music from Azerbaijan – providing the perfect cultural riposte to that most unshakeable and dangerous of notions, that of a single, homogenous Islam.

Opening this year with the festival’s first ever British-based headliner, the irrepressible Palestinian singer and storyteller Reem Kelani, Ramadan Nights continues with Mali’s latest Tuareg sensation Tartit, plus performances from Turkish ney flute virtuoso Kudsi Erguner and Iran’s first family of folk The Kamkars. But the real highlight has to be mugham (traditional poems accompanied by improvised music) legend Alim Qasimov, performing here with his daughter Fargana and intrepid string quartet Kronos. If you fancy sampling a few sounds before buying tickets, there are also a couple of free performances on Saturday, featuring, among others, Aki Nawaz, from hip hop trailblazers Fun-Da-Mental.

For those Muslims who consider music haraam (harmful or unlawful), the idea of holding a music festival during Ramadan might be considered absurd, to put it lightly. But as Kelani – who is about to release a musical tribute to Egyptian composer Sayyid Darwish – says, the sacred cannot be separated for the secular: ‘Anything that helps you assert your existence while keeping in touch with the divine and humanity is not haraam. If the message is harmful, then yes. But I sleep with a clear conscious.’