Mirath:Music is a touring sound exhibition about the musical heritage of North and Northeast Africa and West Asia. The exhibition takes an experimental curatorial approach, using the participating artists’ individual takes on the subject and bringing heritage to life by playing with musical elements from different times and places.
Developed over a year of collaborative work, the exhibition features the productions of Amel Zen (Algeria), Ghassan Sahhab (Lebanon), Hajar Zahawy (Kurdistan – Iraq), Mohamed Adam (Sudan), Rehab Hazgui (Tunisia), Yacoub Abu Ghosh (Jordan) and Zaid Hilal (Palestine) who were invited by the Goethe-Institut to come together and theoretically and musically reflect on the questions of what musical cultural heritage is, and what it means to them. Provided with a platform to meet, it was upon the artists to decide on the overall concept for the exhibition and the content of their sonic works.
Because of the unforeseen circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, the artists had to meet virtually. Physical absence, and the lack of direct interaction that ensued, have no doubt influenced the collaborative process and the outcome; yet, distance and geographic fragmentation formed an integral part of the collaborative experience. In the grip of lockdowns and restrictions on free movement, the artists produced two original musical works each, in addition to one 15-minute common, collaborative track that encompasses their scintillating backgrounds.
Given access to three prominent sound archives, the Ennejma Ezzahra Center for Arab and Mediterranean Music, the Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research (AMAR), and the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv, the artists resorted to different techniques and approaches in creating their musical works. Despite those varying approaches, their work was interlaced by common questions around cultural heritage and the archive: What role do archives play and who decides what is archived? What counts as cultural heritage and is there a common definition that can be applied to a vast geographic area, whose borders were drawn through divisive colonial agreements during the first half of the 20th century? Is heritage situated in the past, or does the present pour into a distant future - which then turns into a remembered past? And hence, are today’s works the heritage of tomorrow?
Working with these questions in mind, the artists started off from their personal experiences, situated in the present, and simultaneously aware that time is an impalpable ingredient affecting their musical conceptualization.
Some of the artists resorted to recordings from the archives, and explored through their work the differences and similarities portrayed in music through the passing of time. Others utilized online platforms to retrieve pieces of their musical heritage, lending new life to them through their own musical arrangements. Another group of musicians worked with their own field recordings, using sound in order to capture current events and create a personal archive; a process which questioned the relationship between music and sound and their social and geographic locality. The source artists used most prominently, however, was the individual and collective memory of peoples.
Living in a region that has constantly witnessed wars, plundering and foreign invasions, many of its peoples have transmitted their knowledge orally, making their memories into vessels of events. Their testimonies are reproduced in songs, poems, and musical pieces; kept alive until today by their peoples, who become a walking, ever-evolving, and vibrant archive.
This raises many questions about methods of cultural preservation. Is the archive a real reflection of a certain period in time? If the archive is an institutionally formed container of knowledge, then to what extent does it reflect the diversity and constantly shifting nature of culture on the ground? How much information can an archive preserve, without working in collaboration with the indigenous peoples who produced the work and understand its intricate details?
Whose voices are heard and whose voices are muted becomes a contested territory for each individual to ponder. As this project has demonstrated, the artist and the musician play a key role in pushing forward these questions and highlighting what they themselves, as independent thinkers, consider to be relevant for the memory of future generations.
Within this wonderful array of differences, key characteristics and commonalities can been found. The visitor is invited to take a deep dive into the sonic memories of past, present, and future musicians from diverse and colourful backgrounds, and listen. Each work tells a different story and provokes a slightly different response - all through the unifying power of music.
