It is near closing time, so we move quickly—trying to absorb, reflect and respond all at once, anxious to be present. I would have preferred to spend a whole afternoon sitting, reading, listening, learning, but time had got away from us. Instead, I stare close, then far, then close again at the constellation of cassette cases in front of me.
These cassettes are one element of “The ring finger is mine” Tracks from Palestinian Bedouin Poetry by Mo’min Swaitat and The Palestinian Sound Archive.1 The work is a visual and sonic capsule of memory, family, community, culture and resistance. Except a capsule is stored away, hermetically sealed, nothing comes in or out. Here, the cassettes unfurl from printed family pictures, drifting across the gallery wall like seeds on the wind. Between the headphones, the projector and the speakers, we are presented with a mix of field recordings, family video and the artist’s documentation of the continuing resonances of the culture and community of musicianship in Jenin and the Galilee, spanning nearly six decades of celebration and performance. Swaitat’s installation is, formally, a work concerned with the composition and visualisation of the archive as an artwork; yet its impact is neither that of a de-animated archive, nor an aesthetic exercise in arrangement and curation.
The ’we’ of this encounter is myself and my sister, I’m visiting for the weekend. I appreciate the thoughtfulness in introducing me to new places and engaging with my interests; making those interests shared. We’re in Shieldfield, Newcastle upon Tyne, at The NewBridge Project where they are showing Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds, curated by Ellie Armon Azoulay.2 It is a product of distance and the busyness of our lives that when we find time to see each other it is often around live music, at gigs and festivals or in reminiscences of the last times we assembled under speakers and amps.3 We both revere that feeling, as the music is summoned before you. Now, inside the exhibition we are once again communing in the audio realm.
The cassettes which populate this gallery wall carry hours of audio recordings, made by the hands, the voices and the ears of Palestinian musicians, to tell hundreds of stories and connect countless lives. In a physical format and a practice in which family and community members are brought together to experience live music, or through its recording, a memory of it. Each case is illustrated by a small image which narrates its creation and accompanies its contents. A fist closed firmly around jagged stones. A boy, eyes closed, microphone to his lips. A pair of kittens looking longingly from a picket fence. A stained-glass scene, a white bird crossing the landscape. Two hands holding each other inside a ring of white flowers.
This collection surrounds the traditions of one family, all within living memory, but through the tangible presence of the love and joy held by its materials, the archive speaks to the irreplaceable variety and significance of the people and cultures of Palestine. While, across the rest of the room, the exhibition reverberates with these acts of creativity and the depth of living audio culture occurring across the globe.
We are often encouraged to take history as a story, through the narrowed lenses which form the structure of our education, politics and media. A story which can be named, organised and classified. A story which can be read. But when that story is read in the same way we read a novel, we do a disservice to the multiplicity of what history really represents. The written word is past tense, it is never live, it cannot make you dance. Yet, history is happening now, history happened twenty minutes ago, history is happening in the halls of parliamentary buildings and in the broom cupboards of all the people you did and didn’t think about today. Maybe this history ought to be heard, rather than read, listened to as it is happening, before it is allowed to become History, with a big H.
Swaitat relays the stories of his family through the archive and through this installation but when we lend an ear, we also hear stories which have never been told, ones which have been forgotten and ones which have been erased. Listening to these histories, in all the literal and metaphorical meanings of that phrasing, matters. And it will continue to matter for as long as there are stories to be heard. The living story, which is the target of the genocide in Palestine, matters.
Live music cultures cannot occur in a history book, nor can they occur in last week’s news. I want live music to continue to be a meeting place for siblings and a centre for community and a foundation for fond memories, soon to be re-lived. I want to lend an ear, to hear the music of these histories which are happening right now, to hear them as they sound—alive and present.
Footnotes
- The Palestinian Sound Archive [Accessed: https://majazzproject.com/]
- Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds, curated by Ellie Armon Azoulay [Accessed: https://thenewbridgeproject.com/events/resounding-diasporic-sonic-worlds/]
- A Stones Throw, North Shields, a festival of local and not so local bands in warehouses, pubs and working men’s clubs.