Mashrouʼ Leila is not a bandʼs name. It is not a proper noun per se; Mashrouʼ Leila is Arabic for ʻan overnight projectʼ lusting out a microphone, a violin, a bass, two guitars, drums and keyboards. It started out as a music workshop at the American University of Beirut in 2008, an open platform for students of architecture and design, somewhere to experiment with sounds and make things audible. Haig Papazian, Carl Gerges, Hamed Sinno, Omaya Malaeb, Andre Chedid, Firas Abou Fakher and Ibrahim Badr have enjoyed this sound fetish savoring its façade of nonchalance and feeding on its lack of genre – sustaining their collective as Mashrouʼ Leila, an experiment. 

You can hear Leila, cascading melts of masculine vocals only suspended with thrusts of violin, beats and bass – attacked by neurotic melody that means no harm – sometimes tender, even sometimes on pause. Through the music, you can smell where Leila has been, in bed sheets, on sidewalks, jasmines in riﬂes and spilled coffee on dresses as she made you play with aubergines, dancing her dance. Music has constantly been their place to play with things, to match and mis-match, a project. 

In the various performances, Mashrouʼ Leila is a constant attempt to taste and produce, more than happy to harvest anyone from the audience as a guest in their encores. They have performed around Lebanon since 2008, playing in various venues in Beirut, taking over supposed public piazzas as well as clubs, pubs, hybrids and the such – they also played in Zahle, Sour, Jounieh, Saida and Deir el Qamar, each of which pushed forward their thinking about how to go about their music, lyrics and performance. It is only when Mashrouʼ Leila goes live, that you can actually catch a glimpse of Leila. As it talks to you of Beirut, the city that tastes of the absurd, the product of its day-to-day experiences, its stubborn security and lack of the latter, its musical bombshells, incoherent sexuality and thrusting pleasure…narcotic pain – as it brings forward hints of Arabic Tarab, rock, to folk pop, electro, you can see Leila in every man and woman in the silent- come-raving audience. In this trajectory, they participated in music workshops and concerts in Amman and Cairo to maneuver their way into a pan-Arab music scene, to know and to announce, more importantly to grow, musically. 

In March 2009, Mashrouʼ Leila won the Lebanese Modern Music Contest jury prize and public vote organized by Radio Liban in partnership with CCF, Incognito and the Basement. They recorded their debut album with B-root Productions, released in December 2009. The music in the album is a reclamation of the aftertaste; sequel-ing a dose of Beirut.

written by Raafat Majzoub

تجربة صوتية متكاملة نقدمها لكل مستمع فضولي
Kerning Cultures makes immersive podcasts for the curious listener.

With multi-fold projects in his music archive, El Far3i is a Palestinian and Jordanian songwriter, rapper, drummer, and producer from Amman, Jordan. Known for his dichotomous solo act El Far3i/ Far3 El Madakhil, he enmeshes Arab acoustic folk and hip-hop and continues to experiment sonically, evolving into the more recent forked axis, El Far3i Flux.
This brand encapsulates the essence of both the versatility of styles and the complexity of ideas. It is a space within which a sense of freedom exists, enabling experimentations with different tools, instruments, and writing techniques... A vision rooted in the ideals of independence, yet branches out to reflect the journey. Those concepts race between censorship and exaggeration, concealing at times, and pushing hard at others.

Deep lyrical capabilities and versatile flow styles, have allowed El Far3i to homogenize Arabic vocals with rap, to create a native Arab sound in the vast world of acoustic and electronic pop. His vocal inspiration sediments deep into the high mountains of Palestine, down to the Jordan Valley. It derives from global hip-hop techniques, while preserving the power of simple grooves, and floating, yet daring, ghost notes in the background.
His songs come from his region’s subconscious, with lyrics that archive the socio-psychological, political and personal subtexts of Arab daily life, extending to the diaspora. Themes of love, borders, spirituality and identity manifest. El Far3i’s ever reflexive raw rapping style contrasts his soulful melodies, creating chantable anthems and craved earworms.

In 2008, El Far3i first started performing songs and rap on his guitar at local venues in Amman. At the time, he was in the middle of producing his first hip-hop release under the name “Far3 El Madakhil”. A year later, his first demo collection of acoustic songs was released, and shortly after, other rap tracks saw the light on the Internet.
2012 was a witness to El Far3i’s two albums, both his debut acoustic “Soat Min Khashab”, and Arab Rap album “Far3 El Madakhil”. Since then, he has released an Arabic sample-based boom bap album, Kaman Dafsheh (2014), and the defining acoustic record, El Rajol El Khashabi (2017).
He is currently working on combining new melodic skills and rap with latest production trends as his fans await upcoming music that touches on new hip-hop styles. He is also carefully ‘engineering’ a project that weds Arab sound with electronica… Flux.

El Far3i’s grass-roots approach to music projects, and his belief in the importance of solidifying, growing and evolving different independent scenes, has resulted in numerous collaborations with the Arab World’s top rappers, songwriters and producers. 
Such versatility and vision had also translated into him co-founding two of the biggest Alternative bands in the MENA region; El Morabba3 and 47Soul. El Far3i still does occasional live collaborations with El Morabba3, and continues the journey he started with 47Soul in 2013.
Over the past decade, El Far3i has played hundreds of memorable shows and has whisked the audience away with live performances in the Arab world, and Worldwide. He continues to tour and take the stage in festivals as a Solo Artist, and with his band, 47Soul.
His media archive is rich with interviews with various Arab and International news outlets from TV, to Print to Radio. He has also been featured for his knowledge on the Arab alternative scene in documentaries and lectures. 
El Far3i has a vast loyal following from different parts of the World. His social media platforms have hundreds of thousands of followers, and his tracks on YouTube have received millions of views. At this very moment, his music is being streamed on one of the digital platforms by a listener looking for sonic solace.

The Irrelevant Arabs is a topical podcast that puts Arabs in the moderator's seat when talking about the Middle East. Topics ranging from recent political events to social taboos and modern day culture in the region are covered and openly debated. 

Hosted by two Syrians, a refugee and an immigrant, we are two friends who find ourselves facing the challenges of adapting to a new culture.  We are trying to articulate our opinions on current events back home only to find our voices muffled by the mainstream media and its versions of our stories. We battle daily to fight off stereotypes forced upon us, as if our opinion was irrelevant- hence our chosen name, "The Irrelevant Arabs." We have grown tired of being hosted by others talking about our culture and lives. Most discussions surrounding the Arab world and Middle Eastern affairs in the US are initiated by people not from the region. In light of this, a two-way dialogue is needed. The Irrelevant Arabs is one of the many efforts to challenge current narratives by putting Arabs in the moderator's seat.

Diverging from the typical podcast/talk show, we are hoping to create a more interactive medium by allowing our audience to vote both on topics that they'd like to hear discussed and on invited guests. We want to create a dialogue that can help bridge the ill-founded gaps between Western and Arab thought. At the same time, we are fighting to clarify the lack of authenticity in the current era. From fake news to false, filtered, and blocked content, we hope to bring to our audience the realities of living through a revolution and to amplify the voices of the exiled.

هيدا راسي أيام بنطح الكوكب أيام بنطح صدر ماتيرازي

Da Arabian MC's  (Suhell Nafar, Tamer Nafar, Mahmoud Jreri)

Heralded by the major French newspaper Le Monde as “the spokesman of a new generation,” DAM, the first Palestinian hip hop crew and among the first to rap in Arabic, began working together in the late 1990s. Struck by the uncanny resemblance of the reality of the streets in a Tupac video to the streets in their own neighborhood of Lyd, Tamer Nafar, Suhell Nafar, Mahmoud Jreri were inspired to tell their stories through hip hop.

After their timely song “Min Irhabi” (“Who's the terrorist”) was downloaded over a million times shortly after its internet release in 2001, DAM became a household name among youth throughout the Middle East. Rolling Stone in France distributed the song free in one of their issues, and the song has been featured in various compilations.

Ten years of performing all over the world has strengthened DAM’s commitment to continue living in their hometown of Lyd – fifteen minutes from Tel Aviv – working to provide the youth of the city and neighboring communities with programs and opportunities that have otherwise been denied to Palestinian citizens of Israel. In addition, they have conducted workshops for young people from the West Bank to the US, Canada, and Europe.

DAM’s music is a unique fusion of east and west, combining Arabic percussion rhythms, Middle Eastern melodies, and urban hip hop. Their work has been influenced by artists as varied as Ghassan Kanafani, Ahlam Mosteghanemi, Mahmoud Darwish, Naji al Ali, Tupac, Biggie, Public Enemy, MBS, K'naan, and Pharoahe Monch.

“IHDA” (“Dedication”), DAM’s long-awaited first international album, was released in 2007, and DAM has seen its songs and members featured in films such as “Ford Transit” (Dir. Hany Abu Assad) “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?” (Dir. Morgan Spurlock), “Salt of this Sea” (Dir. Annemarie Jacir), and “Local Angel” and “Forgiveness” (Dir. Udi Aloni). DAM's history and influence on the Arab hip hop scene is detailed in the feature-length documentary “Slingshot Hip Hop” (Dir. Jackie Reem Salloum). The group has also been featured in Vibe, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Q, Basement, Reuters, and The New York Times, and has appeared on MTV, CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera

فرقة الراب العربي الفلسطينية - دام
دام - الناطقون بلسان الجيل الجديد، على حد تعريف صحيفة "لي موند" الفرنسيه, هي أول فرقة هيب هوب فلسطينية وإحدى أوائل فرق الراب العربي, بدأ مشروعهم في آواخر التسعينات, حين لفت نظرهم التشابه بين الشوارع في فيديو توباك( فنان راب امريكي مشهور) وبين حارتهم في مدينة اللد, ما دفع تامر نفار وأخوه سهيل نفار ومحمود جريري إلى رواية للعالم من خلال الهيب هوب.
في عام 2001 صدرت لهم أغنية "مين إرهابي" التي حملها من الانترنت أكثر من مليون شخص. وجعلت من "دام" اسماً تداولا بين جيل الشباب في الشرق الأوسط، حتى أن مجلة الرولينغ ستون الفرنسية، عالمية الشهرة، وزعت الأغنية مجاناً في أحد أعدادها, كما ودخلت هذه الأعنية في العديد من البومات المنوعات العربية والعالمية، إلى جانب أغانٍ أخرى للفرقة.

بعد عشر سنوات من التجول بين منصات العالم، صار أعضاء فرقة دام اكثر إصرارا على العيش في في مدينتهم - اللد التي تبعد 15 دقيقه عن تل ابيب، وازداد عزمهم على تزويد شباب مدينتهم ومناطق اخرى ببرامج وفرص التي لا يتمتع بها الفلسطينيون في اسرائيل، بشكل عام. فقاموا بفعاليات تشجيعية وورشات عمل، خرجت من حدود مدينتهم ووصلت إلى مناطق الضفة الغربية والولايات المتحدة وكندا وأوروبا.

الموسيقى التي تنتجها "دام" هي مزيج مميز بين الشرق والغرب, حيث تجمع الإيقاع العربي والألحان الشرقية مع الـ"هيب هوب" الحديث. وقد تأثرت أعمالهم من عدة مبدعين مثل : غسان كنفاني, أحلام مستغانمي, محمود درويش, ناجي العلي, upac‪,‬ B‪.I.G, K’nan, MBS, Pharoahe Monch. ‬T

"إهداء" هو عنوان أول ألبوم عالمي لـ"دام"، والذي صدر بعام 2007، بعد طول انتظار من قبل الجمهور. وقد استخدمت بعض اغاني هذا الألبوم في عديد من الافلام مثل : فورد ترانزيت ( من اخراج هاني ابو اسعد) " اين اسامه بن لادن" (من اخراج مورجان سبورلوك) " ملح هذا البحر" (من اخراج أن ماري جسير), و "ملاك محلي" و "مسامحة" (من اخراج اودي الوني). عرض تاريخ "دام" وتأثيرها على ساحة الهيب هوب العربي في الفلم الوثائقي "سلينج شوت هيب هوب" (من اخراج جاكي ريم سالوم). كما وأن الفرقة تظهر في الإعلام العالمي في عديد من المقابلات والتقارير في الجزيره ووسائل الإعلام الأخرى، منها: ‪Vibe, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Q, Basement, Reuters, and The New York Times, and has appeared on MTV, CNN, BBC

The Arab Bass Dropper

Contact / Booking -> hello@psychaleppo.com

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