RUMI: 800th Birthday, Coleman Barks, Sukhawat Ali Khan, Kent video

kpfa.org *Features Stephen Kent from KPFA's Music of the World Thursday* With COLEMAN BARKS & master musicians Stephen Kent + Geoffrey Gordon + Sukhawat Ali Khan + Kris Yenney Introduced by Shams Kairys! JELALUDDIN RUMI, born in 1207 in medieval Persia (present day Afghanistan), was widely recognized while still young as a brilliant scholar and popular teacher. Meeting at 37 the wandering Sufi dervish Shams of Tabriz transformed Rumi into an astonishingly powerful artist, ecstatic poet, and spiritual force as profoundly meaningful now as he was eight centuries ago, when a flock of scribes gathered and walked with him, writing down his spoken words, the prose poems that remain so inspiring today. COLEMAN BARKS is clearly responsible for much of Rumi's current impact. An internationally renowned poet, translator and bestselling author of The Essential Rumi, The Soul of Rumi, Rumi The Book of Love, and The Drowned Book. He was prominently featured in Bill Moyers's PBS television series on poetry, The Language of Life and Fooling With Words. Barks taught English and poetry at the University of Georgia for thirty years, and now focuses on writing, readings, and performances. In the 1960's and 1970's, Ustad Salamat Ali Khan and Nazakat Ali Khan, Sukhawat's father and uncle respectively, were known throughout Europe and the rest of the world as the famous "Ali Brothers," rivaling Ravi Shankar's popularity in the United States. By the invitation of royalty and many heads of ...