Black Muslim & Musical is a living docuseries on the musical journey and influences of award winning artist Khalil Ismail. 

 

Too often, our stories are told from hindsight by distant people after a person dies and in this case, many details and jewels are lost so I seek to shift that paradigm. 

-Khalil Ismail

 

KI has won independent music awards, charted as high as #3 on indie radio, released 6 studio albums, and has placed music in the National Basketball association, Discovery channel and PBS, and commercials for Red Bull and the NCAA and more. 

He has performed in many countries and multiple continents. 

And his focus on strong message and humanitarian work has landed him lectures @ Princeton, John’s Hopkins, Cornell university and more!

Today his music is streamed and listened to more than 30,000 times a month in 70 plus countries despite taking a 5 year break from releasing any new albums!

 

This first documentary in the series in tandem with the American Islamic Heritage Museum will focus on the creator of the first music Khalil ever heard, Wilmore Sadiki. 

Wilmore tells a story of both triumph and disappointment from serving in Vietnam and discovering his musical talents by playing for his fellow servicemen to outliving most of them due to agent orange poisoning. 

After converting in Islam under Arab influence and his music was shunned until he met the community of Warith Deen Muhammad. 
He then became one of the first famous Muslim artists who unapologetically sung about Allah and transcended sectarian barriers only to struggle with lack of support for Islamic art and culture even in the communities that enjoyed his music.

Khalil’s aim is to give credit to his personal pioneers who paved the way and get to the root of why Black Muslim talents of conscience have struggled so much to be supported by their own communities. 

Join us in supporting this groundbreaking initiative