Palestinian Sound Archive x Qatar Creates Mixtape.
This year, Qatar Creates invited Palestinian Sound Archive to curate over three hours of music and sound, much of it digitised and heard at this event for the very first time. The Palestinian Sound Archive are pleased to take you on a journey across genres, from acoustic to jazz, soft rock to spoken word, revolutionary and political tracks, spanning the 1970s - 1990s.
Spoken Word Mixtape:
A number of the musicians featured - Sumud, Al Fajer, Zeinab Shaath, George Kirmiz, Riad Awwad and many more - were an integral part of the alternative music scene and had a substantial following outside of Palestine. This mixtape brings them together, honouring a critical point in Palestinian history.
Home Recordings:
Recorded in the late 1980s by musician and sound engineer Bashar Shammout when he visited Jenin to create a set for a German radio station and ended up in a Bedouin neighbourhood for an unplanned but unforgettable music session in the living room of Atef Swaitat, this mixtape features improvised mawal, yarghool, ataba and poetry.
Samples:
The final recording features modern samples and vintage Arabic music that was included in one of the latest Palestinian Sound Archive NTS Monthly radio shows with Metro Beirut Records, sounds from one of the earliest Palestinian rock and funk bands established in the 1970s as well as artist Checkpoint 303’s remixing of a famous interview with Ghassan Kanafani and reworking of field recordings from the Gazan seaside.
The Palestinian Sound Archive is determined to preserve Palestinian audio history through different mediums : by re-releasing music/sound recordings (in physical and digital formats), through club nights and radio sets, through audio-visual installations, live performances and storytelling sessions which situate the music in their cultural, social and political contexts. Working with the archive for the past five years, it has become clear that it is not only these sounds that need to be safeguarded, but the extraordinary histories and experiences of the musicians who made them, which form part of the broader Palestinian story. We have (so far) uncovered hundreds of stories of Palestinian artists, which we share through live performances: “Inside the Palestinian Sound Archive”, focused on different musicians, and the wider music industry, including tales of how they made and distributed their work in the face of displacement, censorship, exile, persecution, arrests, the First and Second Intifadas and other major events.
The Palestinian Sound Archive was founded by Mo’min Swaitat in 2019 but is comprised of and supported by freelance visual and sound artists, musicians, DJs, curators, organisers and researchers, without whom the work would not possible.
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