Music Stories
Homesickness and loss in sound, from Detroit to Beirut: Layan Srour
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.
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The strength of grieving together, in Felisha Ledesma and Snakeskin
We live in a world of solitary trauma and unrealized grief. We can sit alone with our phones and see it reduced to images in an algorithm. We can see our loved ones go through trauma in ways we can’t even understand or reach. In Palm of Hand, through extemporaneous collaboration between Snakeskin and Felisha Ledesma, Malmö and Beirut, there is a healing expression of all this agonizing, fragmented experience. The result can be deeply centering, a balm to play on loop.
Digital Arabic Maqām Archive and open-source MIDI plug-in now available
Khyam Allami presented his long-term research project in Beirut yesterday, and it’s an exciting one. Hundreds of tuning systems, ajnās, and maqāmāt are now in a free, open archive, and there’s a free MIDI plug-in that lets you apply tunings (and tweak them by ear) across all major software tuning formats.
