Son[i]a #416
Maya Al Khaldi and Sarouna

In a practice rooted in feminist and decolonial thinking, singer and composer Maya Al Khaldi (born 1989, Jerusalem, Palestine) and qanun player, DJ and producer Sarouna (born 1995, Jerusalem, Palestine) use a range of strategies to reimagine their immediate context—Palestine—incorporating personal and socio-political elements into their music. Amongst other things, Maya has worked with children in Gaza, using sound and music-making as a psycho-social support tool, while Sarouna founded Tawleef: an independent Palestinian record label and art space led by women, fostering a self-sustaining musical ecosystem and creating new kinds of public spaces while navigating the ongoing challenges of occupation and systemic injustice.

Released by Tawleef in 2022 and produced by Sarouna, Maya Al Khaldi’s album عالمتاني – Other World creates conceptual, sonic, and visionary connections between past and present, integrating both personal and collective cultures and experiences into the archival form. Drawing inspiration from Palestinian folklore—and incorporating recordings from the archive of traditional Palestinian music at the Popular Art Center in Ramallah—Maya’s debut album breathes new life into archival material as a way of imagining possible futures.

In this podcast, Maya and Sarouna talk about the Palestinian music scenes and about their own musical approaches and artistic practices. They question the electronic music genre from a decolonial point of view and talk about the issues around fusion and the exoticization of cultural expression. Folklore emerges as a complex and often disputed concept. The conversation touches on the tensions between the archive and lived experience, the challenges of non-existent or inaccessible archives, and the importance of preserving cultural heritage. They also reflect on the crucial need for collective mourning as Palestinians and talk about the weight of imposed guilt, and about resilience. Sarouna’s thoughtfully captured field recordings of everyday moments in Palestine are woven through the podcast.