Music Stars Making A Social Impact: Why & How Fajjr Khan & Ali Andre Are Helping To Change Our World
An Interview With Edward Sylvan
Ali:…We truly believe that the fact that we are here is helping to pave the road for those who will come after us. For me as a Palestinian-American, simply existing is an act of resisting the systems in place that attempt to silence voices like my own. I’m so grateful to show the world the diversity of our religion, our cultures, while also sharing our personal stories and ideas through our art, showing our listeners that they aren’t alone.
As a part of our series about stars who are making an important social impact, I had the pleasure of interviewing Fajjr Khan & Ali Andre.
fajjr+ali is a pop duo comprised of vocalist Fajjr Khan and songwriter Ali Andre Ali. They combine poetic and heartfelt storytelling with a contemporary sound, bringing a new image to American pop music. With constant media focus on the Middle East, South Asia, and Muslim women, fajjr+ali hope to shed light on a different facet of their beautiful and varied cultures. They released their debut EP eleven90 in June of 2019, which features production by Grammy Award-winning producer Shafiq Husayn.
Thank you so much for joining us on this interview series. Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit of the ‘backstory’ of how you both grew up?
Fajjr: I am a South-Asian American singer/performer born and raised in a country town in Pennsylvania. As a child of immigrants, I grew up being exposed to such a diverse world of art. I was exposed to the music and culture of India and Pakistan along with the quintessential American classics from my parents, as well as west coast rap and grunge rock from my angsty, identity-crisis-having siblings. As I grew up, joining the school choir and eventually doing theater tied together my strange musical package with a very intricate bow. It took me a while to truly understand how important all of this was to me until I went to college — that’s when I met Ali!
Ali: I grew up in a suburban Massachusetts town in a mixed household. My dad comes from a Muslim Palestinian/Jordanian household and my mom grew up in an Irish-Catholic one. Both of my parents were born in the Boston area and growing up my family had a small pizza and sandwich restaurant. I grew up with them blasting classic rock on every car ride or in the restaurant kitchen and learned to love that music alongside the pop and hip-hop music that was on the more contemporary radio stations. Even though I was a shy kid, I was always attracted to the arts and was lucky to be able to study music and acting in town or at school, eventually deciding to pursue acting in college, whereas Fajjr said, we met!
Can you share with us the backstory that led you to this career path?
Ali: I was really lucky to grow up in a town that had solid arts programs in the public school system. We had a school band you could join starting in 5th grade and I decided to join. I started playing saxophone and stuck with it through high school taking part in concert band, marching band, and jazz band. In high school, I started focusing more on theatre, but my mom would say that music was my first love. When I decided to study acting at NYU, I was placed in the Experimental Theatre Wing, a program with a strong focus on creating your own work. Having grown up playing music, music naturally found its way into the original pieces I was creating and by senior year I started writing original songs. Having met Fajjr in college and knowing she was a great singer and performer, I shared some of my songs with her, and after college, we decided to jump at the opportunity to record music together, and fajjr+ali was born.
Fajjr: When we first started hanging out in college, we already knew that we both were theater kids but we didn’t quite realize how serious it was until we went out for karaoke for the first time with some upperclassman who was showing us around. This was the first time we heard each other sing and the first time we sang together. After that, we were inseparable from each other and from the karaoke lounge. We would go on weekdays, weeknights, sometimes in between classes! We didn’t know then that it was the start of something so much bigger than just singing karaoke. It took us a few years but those experiences are what steered us to eventually forming fajjr+ali.
What would you advise a young person who wants to emulate your success?
Ali: Art and life take time, lots of time. Some people find success quickly but for most, it’s a journey full of ups, downs, and lots of growth. When Fajjr and I started out we thought we would just jump in and start recording and performing as musicians right away but everything took time, and I’m really grateful it did. We’ve learned so much on our journey on how to navigate the industry, how to collaborate together, and how to write songs that we are passionate about.
Is there a person that made a profound impact on your life? Can you share a story?
Ali: Both of us owe a lot of our success to our families. I was so lucky to have a family that never discouraged me from pursuing my passions, even knowing that being financially stable in the arts is so hard. Recently I’ve been thinking that if I chose a path in finance or business I’d be able to help my family so much more than I can right now, and at times that has weighed down on me. When I’ve shared these thoughts with my dad, he’s reassured me that he’s so happy that I’m pursuing my dreams. Fajjr’s family has also been very involved with us from day 1 and without their guidance, we definitely wouldn’t be where we are now.
Fajjr: I truly think we would not be where we are without my mom. She really is our #1 fan and has done everything in her power to help us record, perform, and connect with people we need to in order to advance. I can confidently say I would not have been able to survive the craziness of being an artist without her.
How are you using your success to bring goodness to the world? Can you share with us the meaningful or exciting causes you’re working on right now?
Fajjr: Honestly, simply striving to be better musicians has proven to be so much more impactful than we ever could have imagined. In the beginning, we felt this pressure to be making political statements or creating this narrative about fighting for our seat at the table — which we are — but we learned very quickly that when we performed, just simply doing what we do while being Asian/Arab-Americans and with me wearing hijab was something people had never seen before. People would see me step up to the microphone and immediately realize that there was something or someone that they haven’t seen before, a story they were never told. But nothing compares to when other Muslims or people of color see us perform and when they come to speak to us after the show there is this feeling of relief. I want to cry thinking about how many young girls wearing hijab have said something along the lines of, “I didn’t even know this was possible,” or “I never even considered this to be an option for someone like me.”
Can you share with us a story behind why you chose to take up this particular cause?
Ali: Although our music might not necessarily speak to all of the causes we are most passionate about, we both feel very strongly about the representation that we are bringing to the table as Fajjr mentioned. As Muslim artists, including someone who wears a hijab in her daily life, and as the descendants of Arab and South Asian families, there weren’t many other people with backgrounds and stories like ours that we could look up to, and often voices that we could look up to are stifled. We truly believe that the fact that we are here is helping to pave the road for those who will come after us. For me as a Palestinian-American, simply existing is an act of resisting the systems in place that attempt to silence voices like my own. I’m so grateful to show the world the diversity of our religion, our cultures, while also sharing our personal stories and ideas through our art, showing our listeners that they aren’t alone.
Can you share with us a story about a person who was impacted by your cause?
Ali: After meeting in our first year of college, both Fajjr and I experienced the loss of a parent. This sort of shared experience helped us grow closer together as friends and dealing with loss and grief is something that has found its way into our music often. We’ve become friends with so many great people through our performances, and a couple of years ago, someone we had become friends with experienced the death of her brother. Around that time we were thinking of recording and releasing an acoustic version of our song “First Part of a Dream” and we decided to dedicate it to our friend and the loved one she had lost. It was a small gesture, but we wanted to show that we understand her grief and pain. She was so moved and we were so grateful to be able to connect our song to something so much deeper and more personal and show our friend that she wasn’t alone. Through art, we can learn that we are less alone than we think, that we all go through pain, and that we can help each other move forward together.
Are there three things or are there things that individuals, society, or the government can do to support you in this effort?
1. Go out of your way to support independent artists, especially artists of color. Once a month do some research or go on Spotify or Instagram and start searching and when you find some music you like, share it with 3 people you know. Most people don’t realize that 4 new listeners could mean a lot to an independent artist.
2. If you are in a role where you organize events, or have a position of influence in any community, get to know local artists and musicians of color and recommend them to perform at community events and other paid performance opportunities.
3. If there are any government programs to aid minority artists, they should be made accessible and well-advertised. Grants and funding are not often well-known and require certain privileges such as internet, strong writing skills, business plans, and time. Many independent artists would not even know where to start. If anyone is in a position of influence in a government entity, they should work to get this money to people who can really use it.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started”
- We wish someone sat down with us and explained all the different aspects of the music business. It’s incredibly convoluted, songwriters and performers are treated differently (obviously being both makes it slightly easier), some things are regulated by the government, some have no regulations, and some are decided on a case-by-case basis. It can be hard to wrap your mind around all of that.
- You have to be open to change. As artists, it’s sometimes hard to create something and then let it morph and grow into something different than you had first imagined. Be open to any possibility while you are creating.
- It takes a village. We are slowly learning this but having a solid team or support system behind you is imperative. It seems sometimes that successful artists are able to do everything on their own but we guarantee they have others standing beside them helping them on their journey.
- It’s okay to take a break. We are people who always want to be making work and growing as artists, but it’s okay to slow down sometimes. You can’t be working 24/7 and sometimes, when you give yourself the space and time to breathe, you’ll surprise yourself with what you can come up with.
- Everyone has a different journey. This one is something I’m still working on but trying to get better at. It’s truly pointless to compare yourself to others. You have your own story and your own art to share and it will happen on the timeline that is meant for you. If you can learn something from someone else’s journey, then that’s great, but there’s no need to compare it to your own.
You’re persons of influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Fajjr: If we could start a movement, it would be to give artists of color the room to be creative without struggle or obligation. We should not always need to create art to prove ourselves or fight for our voices to be heard. Of course, that struggle is part of our identity, but it can also steal our individuality. We want to have the freedom to create whatever is in our hearts as human beings; not just as a Hijabi, or an Arab, or a Muslim artist. Of course, we should support art we love no matter what the intention is — but we should all make sure we don’t fall into the trap of expecting certain voices to only address certain issues, with only white voices being seen as universal and unproblematic.
Can you please give us your favorite life lesson quote? And can you explain how that was relevant in your life?
Fajjr & Ali: “This too shall pass”- This sounds like a very general quote but it is so applicable to our music journey. Especially when it comes to the moments when we are feeling less confident about ourselves or not feeling motivated we always try to tell ourselves that it is temporary and we just have to let it pass.
We are blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Ali: It’s funny because whenever anyone asks us who inspires us, we always throw out the same names, but someone who I’m really inspired by is Jacob Anderson aka Raleigh Ritchie. He’s an English actor and musician, so seeing that he’s able to navigate both worlds inspires me a lot as someone who is doing the same. I’d love to sit with him and talk about his process of making music, his experience in the acting industry, and how he is able to balance both.
Fajjr: This is a tough question because part of me wants to say an artist that I really admire — but another part of me wants to say some music executive who can explain everything to us! I think I would say J. Cole: Ali and are huge fans of his and I think he really embodies a lot of what we want to be as artists. He is able to still seem like a real human even after becoming a superstar.
Thank you so much for these amazing insights. This was so inspiring, and we wish you continued success!
About The Interviewer: Growing up in Canada, Edward Sylvan was an unlikely candidate to make a mark on the high-powered film industry based in Hollywood. But as CEO of Sycamore Entertainment Group Inc, (SEGI) Sylvan is among a select group of less than ten Black executives who have founded, own and control a publicly traded company. Now, deeply involved in the movie business, he is providing opportunities for people of color.
In 2020, he was appointed president of the Monaco International Film Festival, and was encouraged to take the festival in a new digital direction.
Raised in Toronto, he attended York University where he studied Economics and Political Science, then went to work in finance on Bay Street, (the city’s equivalent of Wall Street). After years of handling equities trading, film tax credits, options trading and mergers and acquisitions for the film, mining and technology industries, in 2008 he decided to reorient his career fully towards the entertainment business.
With the aim of helping Los Angeles filmmakers of color who were struggling to understand how to raise capital, Sylvan wanted to provide them with ways to finance their creative endeavors.
At Sycamore Entertainment he specializes in print and advertising financing, marketing, acquisition and worldwide distribution of quality feature-length motion pictures, and is concerned with acquiring, producing and promoting films about equality, diversity and other thought provoking subject matter which will also include nonviolent storytelling.
Music Stars Making A Social Impact: Why & How Fajjr Khan & Ali Andre Are Helping To Change Our… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.