A Look Back at a Multi-Year-Long Initiative: “Building Bridges: Muslims in America”

Yusuf Salim, known as Brother Yusuf, created a vibrant jazz hub in the unlikely outpost of Durham, North Carolina in the mid-1970s after moving down from Baltimore. In the recent season from Duke Arts Presents, his impact was celebrated during a triumphant weekend at the Hayti Heritage Center.

A man with a suit and tie looking up
Jazz pianist, composer, and mentor Yusuf Salim

The October 2023 weekend commemorating the life and legacy of the late Black Muslim artist was the final event of the Duke Arts initiative Building Bridges: Muslims in America, a five-year project combating the Islamophobia that became mainstream in the wake of 9/11. Another goal was to counter, through performance and education, the idea that Islam, and Muslims, compose a monolithic entity, rather than a global community that is racially, geographically and ideologically diverse. 

North Carolina Central faculty member Robert Trowers assembled a big band for a Friday night performance with the award-winning NCCU Jazz Band along with multi-Grammy nominated Nnenna Freelon, 2024 NEA Jazz Master Gary Bartz, international jazz singer Eve Cornelious, bassist Rachiim Ausar-Sahu and Grammy-winning pianist Chip Crawford, several of whom were personally mentored by Salim himself.

A women in a dark red dress listening to a man in a suit play the saxophone
Eve Cornelious with the NCCU Big Band on evening one of “Moonchild: Celebrating the Life & Music of Yusuf Salim.” | Photo by Robert Zimmerman
Documentary preview screening and panel discussion at Hayti Heritage Center | Photo by Robert Zimmerman

The next day, a lunch reception preceded a preview of “Moonchild,” a documentary film in production about Salim’s life by Durham filmmaker Kenny Dalsheimer. The screening was followed by a conversation about Salim’s musical and spiritual journey and his powerful impact on many artists, several of whom participated in the panel. His approach to building community through music as a force for creating connection and transformation was legendary.

Saturday evening closed the celebration with an intimate set featuring five of his luminous mentees: Frankie Alexander, Adia Ledbetter, Lois Delaotch, Freelon and Cornelious. The concert spotlighted the lyrical exploration of his music and the jazz standards that linked Brother Yusuf with these women vocalists.

Building Bridges began in 2018 as a joint initiative of Duke Performances (the predecessor organization of Duke Arts Presents), the Duke Islamic Studies Center and the Duke Middle East Studies Center, who collaborated on the first Doris Duke Foundation Building Bridges grant. Phase One brought in Muslim solo musicians or groups who visited local public schools and presented concerts and community events in venues in and around Durham.

A speaker in the foreground facing a classroom filled with high school students
Alsarah at Durham School of the Arts

The artists were selected for in-depth, typically week-long, residencies with a focus on K-12 engagement. Brian Valentyn, Manager of Campus and Community Initiatives for Duke Arts, and his collaborators found creative ways to engage students. When Alsarah and the Nubatones visited Durham School of the Arts, Alsarah was in for a surprise. Valentyn had asked PhD composition student Sid Richardson to arrange some of her music, which the 70-student chorus at Durham School of the Arts sang to the artist upon her arrival.

“She was in tears,” says Valentyn. “She and her sister posted it on Facebook, and we had people in Sudan responding and saying ‘this is so incredible that American kids care about our music’.” “Nobody has ever done that for any of my work before,” says Alsarah. “It was definitely a new thing, and honestly, a career-defining moment.”

Musician Rafiq Bhatia shared his personal experiences with students at his alma mater Enloe High School in Raleigh. “I was in ninth grade when the towers fell on 9/11, and it was on all the TV screens in our class,” recalls Bhatia. “We were all sitting there trying to make sense of what was happening. Most people that I was surrounded by didn’t know that they knew a Muslim, and the only place that people were finding out about what people like my parents might be like was by watching the news and hearing mostly really negative things. It was in that kind of circumstance that I started to think about the idea of music as a way to create a world in which I could belong.”

He has clearly found his way as a member of heralded experimental pop trio Son Lux, and was described by The New York Times as “one of the most intriguing figures in music today.”

Dr. Joshua Salaam, Director and Chaplain at The Center for Muslim Life at Duke and an artist himself in the international touring group Native Deen, was instrumental in planning the residencies, along with the Black Muslim Coalition (BMCo). He says Muslim students on campus felt very special and privileged to be in the same room and get special access to the artists who met with them.

“Art has this ability to transcend culture and language and religion. It can bring people together in a way that other things cannot, so art is one of the best tools and resources that we can be using at the university to bring different communities together,” says Salaam.

Ellen McLarney, Associate Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies was an integral part of Building Bridges. “Brian [Valentyn] and I followed up on the incredible success of that initial phase and wrote a second grant for Doris Duke to explore issues of race through music, but also through poetry, film, and art,” says McLarney. We helped organize an exhibit, conference and film festival on Muslim Futurism with the Mipsterz collective.

“Mipsterz (a mash-up of Muslim Hipsters) specializes in forward-thinking multidisciplinary projects, and we joined forces to present an immersive visual art exhibit at the Ruby. It was a beautiful and powerful installation,” says Valentyn.

“I believe in the power of teaching through art, literature and music, of raising awareness and educating about different worlds and voices,” says McLarney. “We wrote the grant just after the murder of George Floyd, and responding to the ongoing violence against Black lives felt so pressing, even though this violence has been ongoing for centuries.” Valentyn and McLarney especially wanted to educate about the powerful role of the arts in Islamic cultures and the vibrant Islamic art forms that have thrived in the US for a long time.

Over the course of the five-year Building Bridges project, an estimated 6,000 members of the Duke, Durham and Triangle communities were directly impacted.

“We sort of went beyond our wildest dreams in what we were eventually able to do—and this is a testament to Brian Valentyn’s organizational abilities and his deep engagement with the Durham community on so many levels,” says McLarney.

She also credits all the various partners who collaborated on the different projects. And she was especially pleased to end with the local connections of the “Moonchild” film and concerts last fall.

Though the Yusuf Salim weekend at Hayti was the culminating experience of Building Bridges, filmmaker Dalsheimer points out that the initiative is not really over.

“Building Bridges didn’t actually end in October because the movie documented the Yusuf Salim celebration. So when “Moonchild” comes out in 2025, it will continue to be shared,” says Dalsheimer. “Its impact will continue to ripple through communities with its message of shared humanity and supporting individuals to be their best selves. Salim was a bridge builder in his own life and in his art, so the film will continue to build bridges.”

Photo courtesy of Kenny Dalsheimer