This star-studded triple bill in Central Park features the first-ever Pakistani Grammy winner, an Indian film music superstar and Tunisia’s voice of the Arab Spring. Like many children of the diaspora, Arooj Aftab straddles the old world and the new, studied and trained in modern sounds but carrying the spirit and tradition of her ancestral home in her bones. The first-ever Pakistani artist to win a GRAMMY broke out with her 2021 album Vulture Prince, a stunning collection of minimal compositions drawing from jazz, folk, Hindustani classical, and Urdu ghazals. She’s since found kindred spirits in Vijay Iyer and Shahzas Ismaily, whose unplanned, improvised performance revealed a natural chemistry that coalesced on their collaborative LP Love in Exile. Sid Sriram is an Indian Carnatic musician, producer, and star of Indian film music, whose latest LP Sidharth is a collaborative effort with Def Jam producer Ryan Olson and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon that explores intersections of Carnatic music with his R&B and indie rock influences. The third headliner is EMEL (Emel Mathlouthi), the Tunisian/American, New York City-based artist, producer, and activist whose protest song “Kelmti Horra” (“My Word is Free”) became an anthem for the Tunisian Revolution and the Arab Spring. Her newest 100% woman-made album MRA (meaning ‘woman’ in Arabic) is a multi-genre and multilingual meld where African trap, batucada, Arabic reggaeton, hip hop, and drum n’ bass rub shoulders seamlessly with vibrant melodies and empowering lyrics that seek to amplify and strengthen the voices of women worldwide.