Ridha Ibrahim Introduces His Song "Kan Ya Makan" to Second Life

PRLog (Press Release) - Mar 09, 2010 -
Tunisian-born singer/songwriter Ridha Ibrahim will premiere his latest song “Kan Ya Makan” (or Once Upon a Time) for the residence of Second Life Saturday, March 13th at 1pm PST at The Black Dahlia in Lemania Indigo’s SIM. The impetus for “Kan Ya Makan” occurred when Ibrahim saw Madonna University sign language students performing translations of their favorite songs. "I saw sign language as a way to reach out to the Deaf community with my music," said Ibrahim, who works to communicate with all cultures through his songs. The video features Madonna sign language student Kaitlyn Mann and attempts to transcends all language barriers to inspire, entertain and tug the heartstrings of people from many cultures simultaneously.

The song is a love story that blends eastern melodies with Arabic lyrics. "Due to my lack of knowledge of Arabic, Ridha and I spent over thirty hours translating the song to English," said Mann. "This was an opportunity for me to dig deeper than the simple word-for-word approach of transliteration. Ridha explained the song's deeper meanings and allegories," wrote Mann in her study guide for the project. 

In an effort to match Ibrahim's musical poetry, Mann enlisted the talents of Dan McDougall, director of Madonna's Sign Language Studies program to create a poetic American Sign Language interpretation of the song. "The creative nature of this project allowed Katie to explore concepts of ASL poetry taught in class, and to stretch them to their limits with dance. The end result is not uniquely hearing, nor uniquely Deaf - it's somewhere in-between." Each moment of the Kan Ya Makan video contains symbols - words, signs, images - all chosen and combined purposefully. 


The Second Life audience has always been receptive to new idea’s by Ibrahim and were very instrumental in providing an on line presence to the music video’s USA premier. Once again showing that he enjoys reaching out to all everyone, this Second Life concert will give him an opportunity to share his Tunisian roots with the virtual audience.

You can follow Ridha on several social networking sites including Facebook,  Blogger as and YouTube. All his links can be found at www.ridhamusic.com.