Kafari’ (he/him) is the alias of Cincinnati, OH born, Portland, ME based pianist and rhythm bones-weilding beatmaker Ahmad Muhammad. Kafari’s music synthesizes his love of ambient piano music, instrumental hip-hop and acoustic percussion, and takes deep inspiration from pioneering jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby, beatmaking legend J Dilla, and the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who in a 2014 performance sparked Kafari’s interest in traditional music and the Irish rhythm bones – a percussion instrument popularized in America in the 1800s through Blackface Minstrelsy. Kafari often distributes and teaches bones at his performances, sharing pieces of their complex and fraught history and workshopping basic rhythmic techniques with his audiences over his beats.

Kafari will be performing as part of Yasmin & Friends! A special showcase of emerging artists of color produced by Curatorial Artist in Residence, Yasmin Williams.