Open House 2025
Join Afghan Cultural Society in Celebrating our New Community Center!
Posted: 10/02/2025
Friday October 10th 6:00 – 10:00 PM 305 Cedar Ave. S, Minneapolis
Afghan Cultural Society invites you to join us in celebrating our 3rd anniversary operating in Cedar Riverside and the debut of our permanent community center Chai Khāneh. We’ll be marking this special occasion with a series of performances on the No Borders sound stage that draw on the artistic and cultural traditions of South and Central Asia and the SWANA region.
We are grateful for the hard work our team has put in to continue fulfilling our mission and the support of our neighbors and partners during a period of precipitous social and political change. This past year has been marked by numerous challenges directly impacting our organization and the communities we serve. We will continue to affirm the right to life, dignity, and autonomy for all immigrants and refugees, and to offer up a space where our communities are respected and valued.
Evening Program:
6:00 PM to 7:00PM: Social Hour
7:00 PM to 7:30 PM: Music by Ritika and Shinjan
8:00 PM to 8:45 PM: Music by The Arab Band
8:45 PM to 9:00 PM: Lecture by Dr. Rashid Salim: Words, Woes, and Wonder: On Culture and Community
9:00 PM to 9:45 PM: Music by Siddique Ahmed & Hamid Habib Zadah with dance accompaniment by Samia Karimi
A weaving workshop facilitated by Shiraz Fazli will be provided for children for the duration of the evening.
This event is free and open to the public.
Volunteer
Help us make our 3rd anniversary a night to remember!Volunteer duties will include greeting guests, set up, clean up, and food service.
Contributors
Dr. Rashid Salim
Dr. Rashid Salim is a scholar and author specializing in Persian language and literature, as well as Islamic studies. He teaches and researches at the University of California, Berkeley. Further, he is the founder of Aleff Institute- the premier site of advanced instruction in Persian language and literature with a focus on the Kabuli dialect and mystical literature. His second book is currently under contract with Bloomsbury publishing.
The Arab Band
The purpose of The Arab Band is to celebrate and preserve the rich cultural heritage of Arab music within our community. We strive to promote cultural understanding and appreciation through the universal language of music. Our mission is to create a welcoming and inclusive environment where people of all backgrounds can come together to share their passion for Arab musical traditions.
Ritika and Shinjan
Ritika and Shinjan invite adventurous audiences into their genre-bending conversations with music in their first language – Bangla. As a duo, they are known and loved for drawing the listener into familiar, future, and faraway worlds as they connect our everyday with 200 year-old songs and poems written in specific geo-cultural contexts of pre- and post-partition India and Bangladesh.
Siddique Ahmed
is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and music producer. As the founding member of Afghanistan’s first rock band, Kabul Dreams, Siddique has proudly represented Afghanistan on the international stage, performing at prestigious festivals like SAARC Festival and SxSW. His musical expertise extends to collaborations with iconic Afghan artists such as Kabir Howaida and Ustad Mahwash, as well as emerging talent, for whom he has arranged and produced music.
Since moving to the US, Siddique has reconnected with his Afghan heritage, embracing the traditional instrument he has always felt deeply connected to—the Rubab. In his performances, he brings the rich melodies of Afghanistan’s diverse regions to life, infusing them with his unique interpretation while preserving their cultural essence.
Hamid Habib Zada
Hamid Habib Zada was born in 1997 in Herat, Afghanistan and began playing Tabla when he was nine years old; he learned from his brother, Raouf Fateh Ali Khan and, after two years of study at the Agha Khan Music School, studied at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul and then in Delhi, India, with tabla master Zuheb Ahmed Khan.
Hamid arrived in the U.S. in August of 2021. He has quickly become active in the Afghan music community in the Washington D.C. area and in the greater U.S. Hamid recently performed at Lincoln Center in New York City, He also performed at the Music Instrument Museum in Phoenix, AZ, and as part of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall in 2022. He was a featured soloist in two performances of Dinuk Wijeratne’s Tabla Concerto with the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra in November, 2022. In 2023, he performed in New York, Massachusetts, Alabama, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington D.C., and has collaborated with musicians from Iran, Morocco, India, England, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Colombia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, as well as with fellow Afghan musicians. He now lives in Alexandria VA.
Samia Karimi
Samia Karimi is an Afghan dance artist who was born in Kabul, Afghanistan with roots in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Samia began her dance journey 20 years ago and has training in Baledi, Uzbek, Tajik, Persian Classical – with a focus on Afghan dance. These dance forms influence her style, which is also infused with the classical music of her childhood. She has performed with and choreographed with Ballet Afsaneh in the San Francisco Bay Area for 10 years as well as Nava Dance Collective. Currently Samia is an independent dance teaching artist in Los Angeles and focusing on Afghan dance research and creating an LA-based Afghan dance company. Samia invites you to embrace dance as a portal to Afghan culture, a way to digest beautiful Afghan music, and an ultimate expression of freedom.
Shiraz Fazli
Shiraz Fazli blends textile scraps with painting and embroidery to create paintings, dolls, and tapestries that represent a perversion of Afghan motifs, language, and traditions. Fazli received a BA from Bard College in 2019 and is currently completing a MA from Brooklyn College. She has exhibited in national and international galleries such as Gallerie Eingenheim, ACUD Art House, and ReflectSpace Gallery. In 2023, she exhibited her tapestry I break apart at the Goethe Institute in Exile’s Afghanistan Festival, aligning her work with Afghan artists in diaspora. Her work is informed by the cultural history of Afghanistan and the wider region, including folklore, poetry, calligraphy, videos, music, and miniature paintings.
This Cultural Districts Arts Fund activation is funded, in part, by the City of Minneapolis Arts and Cultural Affairs Department.