What does it mean to grieve home — being away from home and actually losing home? What does it mean to express that grief in sound, and to create spaces and belong through music? Detroit-based, Beirut-raised Layan Srour asks these questions in her own work, the duo Taqsim, and in an event series called Jalasat.
The Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, and Artists At Work have this moving short film. I think it says everything there is to say about this moment — not only for the Arab communities but across communities.
“It feels like I’m releasing all of this grief and all of this homesickness in these knobs, and it feels so good to just let it out in these sounds that I’m so familiar with. And I wondered if other people were feeling this way, too.”
Layan Srour is a Detroit-based interdisciplinary artist and curator exploring sound, media, and visual art, with a practice focused on memory, movement, displacement, and belonging, all deeply shaped by her upbringing in Beirut, Lebanon. She is one half of Taqsim, an Arabic electronic and experimental duo with Yvonne Pruneau, rooted in improvisation and personal soundscapes recorded in Lebanon. Drawing on these textures and a shared search for the feeling of home, Taqsim blends synthesizers, sampled drums, and layered soundscapes to connect Detroit with Beirut’s resilient energy.
JalasatIn collaboration with the Arab American National Museum and Artists At Work, Layan developed Jalasat (Arabic for ” gatherings “), a monthly pop-up performance series that reframes site-specific performance as a point of community care, cultural exchange, and collective storytelling through live music, poetry, and art.
Jalasat aims to strengthen community connections, increase artist visibility, and make cultural engagement more accessible. Each monthly pop-up takes place in a different local café or gathering space, featuring a unique lineup of performers and vendors while maintaining the spirit of creativity and togetherness at its core. Artists are culture carriers and bearers of community as well as keepers of collective memory. Through the support of the AANM, AAW, the City of Dearborn, small businesses, performers, and audience members, Jalasat has become a space of expression, nostalgia, and community.
Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, Michigan!)
Artists at Work (national US program)
Here’s Taqsim in action — okay, CDM, we need some serious CDM bump here.
To connect all the way across the ocean and sea back to Lebanon, today Roland Ragi has his regular program for Palestine’s Radio alHara, “A Fondling Reminder,” at 3pm Beirut time / 8am Detroit time. Tune in (just in case our Detroit and Dearborn friends need something over their coffee this morning). Or listen to the July edition. Here’s hoping we all meet in person soon.
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