Jerusalem In My Heart return to Supersonic as part of their 2022 UK tour with Belgium’s Farida Amadou. The immersive audio-visual performance project fuses modern experimental Arabic music and analog film using hand-made processes and live projection techniques. The resulting multi-media works showcase JIMH’s intensive cross-cultural and socio-political artistry.
Since their performance at Supersonic 2019 the project have garnered broad acclaim with their collaborative album ‘Qalaq’, a whirl of electronics and folk instrumentation performed by a “dismantled orchestra, across dissociated/isolated space-time”.
“An album that’s as defiant and visceral as it is vulnerable.”
– The Guardian
Qalaq is an Arabic word with a meaning that Lebanese-Canadian producer/musician Radwan Ghazi Moumneh particularly intends as “deep worry”.
“The Side 2 tracks are all named ‘Qalaq’ and then numbered, representing the degree to which the layered and complex violence Lebanon and the Levant has reached in the last couple of years,” explains Moumneh, “from the complete and utter failure of the Lebanese sectarian state that drove the economy to a grinding halt, to its disastrous handling of the migrant influx from neighbouring failed states, to the endemic corruption that led to the August 2020 port explosion, to the latest chapter of Palestinian erasure and yet another brutally asymmetrical and disproportionate bombing campaign on Gaza.”
While ‘Qalaq’ saw Jerusalem In My Heart draw on a wide pool of avant-garde collaborators – including Supersonic alumni Moor Mother alongside Tim Hecker, Lucrecia Dalt, Greg Fox, Rabih Beaini, Alanis Obomsawin and Oiseaux-Tempête. – Moumneh and Montréal-based filmmaker Erin Weisgerber still make up its core. Moumneh uses buzuk, modular electronics, and voice to reimagine contemporary Arabic music, while Weisgerber performs 16mm film and audio loops live on multiple projectors to produce imagery that melds her external vision and internal landscape.
‘Qalaq’ was released on 08 October 2021 via Constellation Records. Jerusalem In My Heart are playing a string of UK dates beginning from 7th July, including a performance on the Sunday of Supersonic 2022. Get your tickets for Supersonic 2022 here.
