i grant you refuge by Hiba Abu Nada tr. Huda Fakhreddine

Majazz Project is a Palestinian-led record label and research platform founded by Mo’min Swaitat in 2020. Over several years, Mo’min amassed an archive of rare tapes and vinyl from Palestine and beyond, spanning field recordings of Bedouin weddings to revolutionary tracks and synth-heavy 80s funk and jazz. Many of these were acquired from a former record label in Jenin in the north of the West Bank.

Majazz Project was borne out of the archive and is focused on sampling, remixing and reissuing vintage Palestinian and Arabic albums. It is a collaboration between Arab and non-Arab DJs, producers and artists interested in shedding new light on the richness and diversity of Arab musical heritage.

Palestine Sound Archive is a celebration of music, spoken word and album artwork from historic Palestine, mainly from the 1960s-1990s.

[In 2020, during the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic in Palestine, London-based artist Mo’min Swaitat discovered a large collection of cassette tapes and records from his youth in Jenin. Amongst them was Riad Awwad’s Intifada, the first album released in the first Intifada, containing revolutionary songs. It had been lost for years after the Israeli army confiscated all the copies they could find – 3,000 in all – and arrested Awwad. Inspired, Swaitat founded the Majazz Project, a record label that focuses on sampling, remixing, and reissuing vintage Palestinian and other Arabic cassettes.]

…

Majazz now has a show on London’s NTS Radio, called the Palestinian Sound Archive, where you can get a flavor of what we do. We hope to become stronger as the label grows and evolves. In April 2022, we put out an album with remixed interviews with my mentor Juliano Mer Khamis (1958–2011). The label is about so much more than just releasing songs as dance or background music. We aim to revive a sense of joy and celebration, much needed after so much Palestinian suffering, sure. But more than that, we aim to preserve the work and memory of the many artists who have formed the backbone of our cultural identity. Palestinian archives have been looted, dismantled, censored, and destroyed since the Nakba. There is true power in reclaiming these sounds and stories and in platforming the incredible range of artists who were making music during such fascinating and turbulent periods of Palestinian history. The label is as much about sharing their stories as it is about the albums themselves. And it feels particularly powerful that the label is Palestinian-run. There are a few international labels that are putting out some amazing Arab tracks – and there’s a whole other discussion to be had around that – but I feel an immense sense of pride in knowing that these albums are available to listeners around the world yet ultimately remain in our hands. Moreover, the reissues are borne out of a very close collaboration and discussion with the artists and their families.

We are going to reissue as much as we can and, in the long term, work on making everything accessible online as well as in a physical venue in Palestine. The plan has always been to build an audio-visual immersive digital platform, where people can discover more about the history behind each song/genre, building on my love of both theater and cinema. …

Clonfert mermaid, chancel arch, Clonfert Abbey, County Galway, Ireland, 15th century.

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