FoF presents: Mo'min Swaitat's "Palestinian Sound Archive", a celebration of music, spoken word and album artwork from historic Palestine.

Friends of FoF, we welcome you back to the start of a new year of programming. We feel that more than ever, the need for amplifying and centring Palestinian voices is necessary.

We will begin travelling through time via music, spoken word and album artwork from historic Palestine, mainly from the 1960s – 1990s with the ‘Palestinian Sound Archive’; part of the @majazzproject a Palestinian-led record label and research platform founded by actor, director and filmmaker @mominswaitat in 2020. We will also be screening a short documentary film that accompanies the archive.

Over several years, Swaitat amassed an extensive archive of cassettes and vinyl records from Palestine and beyond, spanning everything from field recordings of Bedouin weddings to revolutionary albums from the First and Second Intifadas, instrumental tracks, poetry, soul, folk songs and jazz. Many of these were acquired from a former record label in Swaitat’s hometown Jenin, in the north of the West Bank.

Swaitat comes from a long line of Bedouin musicians and storytellers, and the archive references his rootedness in music as a means of celebrating one’s culture and sense of belonging. He plays everything from jazz to funk, soul to dabke, field recordings to spoken word, and folk to electronic music from Palestine, the broader region and across the Global South.

This event explores archival practice as a decolonial methodology and act of resistance, through sharing archival sounds and images that preserve and document Palestinian heritage, culture and resistance.

IG link: https://www.instagram.com/p/DGF8FXjt5zn/

When: 9th February

Time: 5-7pm & 8-10pm

Tickets : £7 / £10 / £15