This Land Sings: On Music and People in Palestine

Guest curator
Ahmad Al-Aqra'

As long as music has been present in Palestine, it has evolved and blended with the tunes and melodies of successive civilisations encountered. It progressed, fused, and took on many patterns and forms with transnational connotations.

The exhibition provides a reading into music practices in Palestine and explores how music practitioners in Palestine adapted melodies and tones to paint personal and collective pictures for and about Palestine. This music will speak to Palestine, thus becoming a tool to express the intertwined and diverse relationships, dialogues, and experiences of those who live in and advocate for Palestine. With this tool, the exhibition will weave through several imagined spatial manifestations that have translated these relationships. It will also tell the story of Palestinians in connection with the music they have produced, the representations of their identity they have embraced, and the contours of their history and future that they have drawn. 

Exhibition idea: Iyad Issa
Exhibition concept development: Ahmad Al-Aqra, Ruba Totah, Nadine Aranki, Malak Abdelwahab
Concept paper drafting: Ahmad Al-Aqra
Content editing: Ruba Totah, Phd
Academic advisor: Khaled Jubran
Contributing research papers: Khaled Jubran, Rachel Wilson, Bashar Shammout, Nadeem Karkabi
Archival research: Ashraf Hamdan, Malak Abdelwahab, Ramzi Abu Radwan, Ahmad Abu Zayyad, Samar Ozrail, Ramatan Samara, Ruba Totah
Historical content Formulation: Ahmad Abu Zayyad
Exhibition design: Milk Train