14 | AUGUST 27 - SEPTEMBER 2, 2021 | WORCESTERMAGAZINE.COM
Underground Hip-hop icon Brother Ali set for performance at Electric Haze Robert Duguay Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
Mental health is a very serious thing that all of us deal with in some way. Depression can be a daily battle, while paranoia, schizophrenia and other ailments can destroy someone’s life to the point that suicidal thoughts begin to emerge. To raise awareness of this and to shed the stigma, the Tour For Life is underway with underground hip-hop icons Akrobatik and Brother Ali as the headliners. All of the proceeds will be going to benefi t Mental Health Connecticut, and the tour will be making a stop at Electric Haze, 26 Millbury St., Worcester on Aug. 27. With the doors opening at 5 p.m., a stacked bill featuring Jesse The Tree, Ms. Laura Michelle, Mic Savvy, Woocity Pat and many others will be taking the stage. Originally based in Minneapolis, Ali recently moved to the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul out of love for the country and the city’s Islamic culture. As with any person moving to a completely different place than where they grew up, learning the local language is very important and can be a struggle at times.. “The language barrier is pretty serious because most Turks only speak Turkish,” he says. “With most Muslim countries, you can get around with English and Arabic. I obviously speak English and I know enough Arabic to communicate with people, but in Turkey they speak Turkish and that’s it. It’s also not an easy language to learn, a lot of it is from Arabic and they have a lot of words in common, but I’ve learned the basic phrases so I can go to a store, I can take a cab and I can do those kinds of things but, man, it’s not easy. That’s the part that’s the most diffi cult and honestly just moving to another country is just really hard, it’s really diffi cult to do and it’s no joke. “The culture of Turkey actually makes a lot of sense to me,” Ali says. “It’s very Islamic and there’s diff erent kinds of visions and versions of it but this is the land where they ruled with the type of Islam that I believe in and my family
Brother Ali will perform Aug. 27 at Electric Haze. PHOTO/COLLEEN EVERSMAN
practices. It’s really just more of coming to another place where they have totally diff erent ways of doing things so the expectations have to be diff erent. I’m disabled, I’m almost fully blind, so for me my main advantage and the main tool that I have is my gift of gab. I can talk my way in and out of everything I need to,
I’m really good at it but I don’t have my superpower here.” Ali got involved with the Tour For Life due to his family’s history of mental illness and his wife being a therapist. While he thinks the stigma has withered away over the past 20 years, he also thinks that people are getting their in-
formation from the wrong sources and they’re trusting unqualifi ed people. “I got involved with this because they reached out to us, they asked me and invited me,” he said. “I was really happy that they did it. Suicide is part of my See ALI, Page 16
