Composer, performer and philosopher Ostad Afraaz Mulji will perform in a concert presented by Toronto’s Small World Music on August 23. It’s an apt presenter for a composer/musician who wants to unite people and create community through music.
Originally from Tanzania, Afraaz is currently based in Toronto. He’s been studying music since the age of three, and began performing around the same time. He plays piano, flute, tabla, and other instruments.
His music explores a diverse array of traditions and genres, and as an artist, he wants to focus on global conversations and cultural exchanges.
The Music
Afraaz says he draws inspiration from a diverse array of composers and thinkers who hail from across the globe, and who represent multiple classical traditions, including Bach, Islamic philosopher and music theorist al-Farabi (870-950), Scriabin, and Indian mathematician Ramanujan.
His music is inseparable from his beliefs and what they stand for, including the Sufi concept of Fana, and Freedom from Form, an aspect of the Daoist philosophy.
In the Sufi philosophy, Fana means, literally “dying” or even “annihilation”. In terms of the belief system, it’s about submitting your human ego to God, whereby you become an active part of God’s plan. Your individual self “dies” to become part of a union with God — essentially a denial of selfishness at its core.
For followers of Daoism, the expression “Freedom from Form” means a way of moving beyond the confines of any form or structure, fixed identities and dualistic thinking. Letting go of the usual rules is the road to a spiritual liberation.
Those are simplified explanations of concepts that are meant to be put into practice in everyday life, as well as in art. Afraaz describes this way of thinking as “Transmigration of the Soul”, a mode that takes its palette of creation from global traditions.
He also incorporates his love of mathematics and how it relates to music. His approach to music and art is informed by science, including considering the nature of sound, and its power to aid in healing both body and mind.
Multi-Instrumentalist & Composer
As a multi-instrumentalist as well as composer, he studied privately and in masterclasses with a variety of mentors, including American conductor, multi-instrumentalist and composer Maestro Alexander Frey, and Swedish concert organist, pedagogue, composer and visual artist Professor Hans-Ola Ericsson. Along with his studies in Western classical musical traditions, he counts as mentors the late Indian tabla player and composer Zakir Hussain and Malian kora virtuoso Ballaké Sissoko.
“I am also deeply inspired by Yusuf Lateef, and Adam Rudolph,” he says. “I had the pleasure of working with the Go Organic Orchestra at the Aga Khan Museum under the direction of Adam.” That took place in 2024.
This video includes a piano performance by Afraaz Adam Mulji at the Aga Khan Museum auditorium, Toronto. Mulji’s original composition was inspired by a 16th-century Spanish antiphoner (a book of liturgical music) in the Hidden Stories exhibition, on loan from Western University, London, Ontario.
This performance and conversation were part of the virtual symposium, Hidden Stories: Global History, Local Networks (February 24-25, 2022), which celebrated the exhibition Hidden Stories: Books Along the Silk Roads at the Aga Khan Museum.
The Concert
In a statement, Afraaz says he will be improvising his performance. “I will be spontaneously composing in the stream of consciousness; free music: autophysiopsychic methodology,” he says. “I have no idea what I’m going to play in short. It emerges of the moment, and by the moment. It also is co-created by the audience’s energies and mood,” he adds.
“A kind of serendipity if you will.”
- Find tickets for the August 23 performance at the Small World Music Centre, as part of their Incubator Concert Series, [HERE].
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