Monzer Darwish's compelling documentary «Syrian Metal Is War» captures the story of how the Metal underground in Syria seeks to survive during war.
The #MeToo movement also reveals other discriminations. In music, sexism often works in tandem with exotism. To resist both, the Egyptian musicians Dina El Wedidi and Youssra El Hawary resurrect an old claim: the personal is political.
The Scandinavian code of conduct «jantelagen» encourages modesty and conformity. The movie «Silvana» shows, how the Swedish rapper Silvana Imam celebrates the exact opposite: pride and individuality.
The relationship between music and place has a long history. This article discusses the academic discourses regarding the relationship between music and place.
In Egypt, the high amount of digitalization has not translated into monetization for most musicians. This is not just because most families live at or below the poverty line. So what does this mean for the future of local artists?
In Beirut every gunshot has a different meaning. There are sounds of war and of celebration. The Lebanese musician Serge Yared explains how they are used in music and aestheticized.
In this photo series South African photographer Dylan Culhane stages artist Umlilo in collage portraits and evokes a sense of multiplicity.
An impressive and moving testimonial of rapper and comedian Ali Gul Pir from Karachi, Pakistan, who is faced by death threats due to his art. In the podcast he talks about what makes him feel lonely when living and working as a musician in Pakistan.
What reads at first sight as a rather classic «coming out» story is not a linear narrative. In the music video «Magic Man» South African artist Umlilo and director Jasyn Howes produce a temporal and spatial disorder through fragments of moving images.
«Nowadays no song is independent», says journalist Manal Faheem Khan from Karachi and explains how the Pakistani music business works. The music video «#Kholo BC» by Ali Gul Pir and Adil Omar might be a rare exception here.
The legendary «Donaueschinger Musiktage» offer in its 2018 edition a different perspective on how we perceive synthesizers. In the commissioned pieces, the composers Marcus Schmickler and Florian Hecker take the sounds from the past to the now.
