• Tue 01 – Thu 03 10 2019 •
In Between Spaces Indie Idiosyncracies

Curated by THOMAS GLÄSSER in dialogue with SARAH EL MINIAWY

With DEENA ABDELWAHED, GRÉGORY DARGENT, ANIL ERASLAN, TAMER ABU GAZALEH, WERNER HASLER, KAMILYA JUBRAN, LEKHFA, MAURICE LOUCA, MATTHIAS MAINZ, KAMILA METWALY, SARAH EL MINIAWY, MUQATA´A, MARYAM SALEH, NADAH EL SHAZLY, JOSS TURNBULL, PETER GRAF YORK, PHILIP ZOUBEK, ZULI

European enthusiasm for pop music and club sounds from the Middle East has remained unbroken for several years. In Between Spaces: Indie Idiosyncracies, a music and discussion event running several days, organized by musician and curator Thomas Gläßer in dialogue with Egyptian-Algerian producer and music manager Sarah El Miniaway, takes a closer look at processes of intermingling between Arabic and Western music that have surged in alternative music scenes of many Arab cities in the last decades.

The program sets three highlights in the Stadtgarten concert hall and the newly opened club "Jaki", the converted Studio 672 in the Stadtgarten, which above all illuminate the musical phenomena themselves.

The first spotlight focuses on global contemporary music as presented by the duo of the Israeli-Palestinian singer and oud player Kamilya Jubran together with Swiss trumpeter and electronic musician Werner Hasler. German musicians Joss Turnbull and Matthias Mainz engage – so to say from the reversed perspective – with elements of Arabic and Persian music experimentally. The encounter with different musical idioms is what connects these artists, allowing them to expand the possibilities of their musical spaces and develop new material.

Another spotlight highlights recent electronic club music, which has become a kind of Esperanto sound of the urban-digital sphere and westernized nightlife, and reflects local imprints and semantic triggers. Egyptian electronic sound artist Ahmed El Ghazoly aka Zuli enmeshes his involvement in the Cairo electronic scene within an international musical reference system, in which locality hardly plays a role anymore and Tunisian musician Deena Abdelwahed, living in France, builds excitingly quirky bridges between the spheres of experimental music and pop that otherwise rarely meet in the Tunisian music scene.

The third spotlight is thrown on multi-layered experimental pop music, as constructed by the Egyptian-Palestinian supergroup Lekhfa of Maryam Saleh, Maurice Louca and Tamer Abu Gazaleh. Or Nadah El Shazly, who recorded her deliriously disorienting album Ahwar (2017) between Cairo and Montreal.

In a series of lectures and a panel, the symposium addresses intra-musical questions as much as discussing local contexts, production conditions, political parameters and the reception of Arabic music in various European contexts.

A ZAM Center for Contemporary Music e.V. event in cooperation with the Academy of the Arts of the World and the European Center for Jazz and Contemporary Music at Stadtgarten

In Between Spaces: Indie Idiosyncracies is part of the event series Global Diffusion - Musical Statements Cologne, supported by the city of Cologne.

In Between Spaces: Indie Idiosyncracies is presented by WDR Cosmo and Stadtrevue.

Funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Cultural Office of the City of Cologne and the Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb.