K2 Friday Night

Cocktails, art, and music make a heady mix at our kick off to West Side Fest 2024!

• Café Serai becomes the K2 Lounge, offering a drink menu to accompany the evening’s special Ragini x Rubin DJ Lineup.
• Arrive early for 2-for-1 drinks from 6:00–7:00 PM.
• Explore all the galleries for free and dive deeper with a tour of Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now at 7:15 PM

Coming with friends? Learn about group reservations and tours.

For more details on West Side Fest, including the full schedule, visit westsidefest.nyc.

About the Ragini Festival

The Ragini Festival explores art, creative impetus, and mythology from a post-continental India. Life after colonialism revealed a fractured South Asian identity, which has morphed into post-colonial identities of Indo-Caribbean, Fijian, Mauritian, and more. Representing Ragini Festival’s curatorial mission to “explore music that both captures folk and traditional art born out of the migrations of indentureship”  DJs Roshni Samlal, Zara Dekho, and offering rain will transport you into a trans-indies listening experience.

About the DJs

DJ Roshni Samlal is a New York–based tabla player who hails from the West Indies, where she was initiated into the ancient tradition of Indian classical music by her vocalist father. She has continued her tutelage in the Benares style of tabla, playing under Shri Tapan Modak and currently a student of the epic Farukhbad exponent Anindo Chatterjee. While her passion is Indian classical tabla, she has also played folk, jazz, and other genres. Samlal has performed at notable local venues such as Knitting Factory, Pianos, and The Bitter End.

Zara Dekho is a DJ and curator based in Brooklyn, and raised in Karachi. She is the co-runner of Brooklyn party and label Rare Frequency Transmissions, and more recently cofounded Tarka, a project and event series celebrating the diaspora through food, music, performances, and arts. Zara Dekho’s sets exhibit a versatility impacted by time and space, spanning genres such as house, techno, bass, and electro while paying homage to sounds of her South Asian roots.

offering rain, of the Disco Auntie collective, seeks to be of service to spirit, harmony, and joy. offering rain infuses playful sounds from various genres and pairs them with poetic lyricism to create a raw, dynamic, and innovative approach to music making and storytelling. As a multicultural first-generation artist born and raised in New York/Lenape land, they create a genreless experience by pulling from their Indian and Ecuadorian roots and tying them to the remix, fusion, and culture of NYC. Using dub, reggaeton, soul, techno, and Bollywood styles, offering rain tells an authentic story of their experience in New York and the world.

Lead support for the Rubin Museum is provided by Bob and Lois Baylis, Barbara Bowman, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Dharma Joy Foundation, Noah P. Dorsky, Fred Eychaner, Christopher J. Fussner, Agnes Gund, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Global, the Estate of Lisina M. Hoch, Henry Luce Foundation, The Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Matt and Ann Nimetz, The Randleigh Foundation Trust, Shelley and Donald Rubin, Tiger Baron Foundation, and Ellen Bayard Weedon Foundation. 

General operating support of the Rubin Museum of Art is provided by the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Alex J. Ettl Foundation, Daphne Hoch Cunningham and John Cunningham, Anne E. Delaney, Dalio Philanthropies,, Dan Gimbel of NEPC, LLC,  The Prospect Hill Foundation, Basha Frost Rubin and Scott Grinsell, Namita and Arun Saraf, Linda Schejola, Eric and Alexandra Schoenberg, Eileen Caulfield Schwab, Jesse Smith and Annice Kenan, Tsherin Sherpa, Tong-Tong Zhu and Jianing Liu, with generous donations from the Museum’s Board of Trustees, individual donors and members, and corporate and foundation supporters. 

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

The Rubin Museum’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

Photo by Filip Wolak