In comparison to Los Angeles, there was never an Iranian «community» of popular musicians in Germany. Nevertheless, Iranian popular musicians and scholars debating popular music left their traces. Why, our author asks here, were some of them more successful than others?

In this essay, the conductor, researcher, and performer Yalda Zamani makes a case for more interdisciplinarity in the conductor’s practice. The search for new methods of collaboration and exchange could inspire new and progressive concepts of leadership in musical practice.

In dem Gedicht für sein gleichnamiges Lied beschreibt der iranische Schauspieler und Dichter Ali Kamrani seine Erfahrungen als Einwanderer in Deutschland.

In the German Democratic Republic, the song «Unsere Heimat» (Our Homeland) became an anthem that glorified the idea of a socialist homeland. After the fall of the Berlin wall, the song disappeared from public memory. At least this was what our author thought.

This is the story of a Palestinian song. A song that originated in the beseiged Palestinian district Yarmouk in Damascus, Syria. After Aeham Ahmad, who played this song in the streets of Damascus, fled to Germany, the meaning of the song has changed.

Every physical interaction leaves traces. In the fifth episode of «Sonic Vignettes», Salomé Voegelin reflects upon the grain of the voice as an irreducible trace of human contact and why it is it is endangered by AI cleaning language.

Some people think they know what Italian music is, until you really start to ask. An introduction to the Norient special «Sonic Traces: From Italy».

This text is a literary remix of Enrico Prampolini’s «The Aesthetic of the Machine and Mechanical Introspection in Art» (1922), considered a key text to understand the so-called second wave of Futurism, also referred to as «futurismo degli anni venti».

In this short memoir, an excerpt from a longer version originally published (in Italian and English) on his website, London-based Sicilian visual artist and musician Seb Patane reflects on what it meant to be a young Italian fascinated with British subcultures.

Italy might be 9,000 km away from South-Korea and yet, K-pop has reached its shores nonetheless. NTS Radio-affiliated Paola Laforgia reflects on the reason behind its popularity both inside and outside of the Peninsula.

Drawing from his first-hand experience with sound installations and AI-assisted music composition, musician and philosopher Lorenzo Brusci, founder of MUSICO, offers a multimedia techno-poetic essay on the history and current status of machine-assisted musicking.