- JACK MCGRATH
- NORTH AMERICA
The cover image of “The Intifada 1987,” an 11-song protest album recorded in Jerusalem in December 1987 and re-released to wide acclaim in 2021.
Music & Arts
ON FEB. 24, the Darna Lounge in Arlington, VA, hosted the Palestinian Sound Archive, a project dedicated to recovering and remastering Palestinian records. Organized by Sima Dajani, the event featured a discussion with the archive’s founder, Mo’min Swaitat, a Palestinian actor, filmmaker and music producer based in London. After the talk about the project, Swaitat showcased the remastered records by performing a DJ set for the crowd.
The Palestinian Sound Archive traces its origins to an unexpected discovery during the COVID-19 pandemic. Swaitat returned to his hometown of Jenin to film a documentary and became stranded due to the lockdown. Wandering the quiet streets, he came across Tariq Cassettes, a shuttered music shop he frequented in his youth. Curious about its contents, Swaitat received permission to explore the shop’s stock. Inside, he discovered a treasure trove of 7,000 cassettes and vinyl records. “So much Palestinian culture has been lost or locked up in Israeli military archives, so it was magical to find this. It’s a journey through the past and the future of a whole people,” he said.
“It had been shut down for almost 20 years, so everything was so dusty and disorganized,” he recalled. “But I created a listening station and sat there for hours listening to Palestinian revolutionary music, Palestinian soul, jazz, punk and Bedouin field recordings.”
Recognizing the immense value of the recordings, Swaitat purchased the entire collection from Tariq’s shop and selected 2,500 cassettes to transport back to the United Kingdom. Five suitcases stuffed with tapes aroused suspicion at the Amman airport and he was interrogated for several hours by Jordanian authorities. Convinced that he was smuggling the psychostimulant Captagon, the guards quizzed Swaitat about various tapes before eventually allowing him to pass without breaking the cassettes open.
Of the vast collection, one cassette in particular captured Swaitat’s imagination. A mysterious yellow tape simply marked “Intifada” in pen, the cassette contained an 11-song protest album recorded in Jerusalem one week into the First Intifada (December 1987). The unique mix of electro-disco beats and spoken word poetry featured Palestinian artist Riad Awwad, his sister Hanan Awwad and contributions by Palestine’s national poet Mahmoud Darwish. Around 300 cassettes of the album were sold in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but Israeli forces seized nearly all the copies and arrested Riad Awwad. Imprisoned without charge or trial, Awwad was interrogated about the seditious songs and tortured for several months.
“The Intifada 1987” became the first volume of music to be restored and released by Swaitat’s archival record label, Majazz Project, in 2021. The re-issued album received critical acclaim, with Pitchfork magazine describing it as “part ode to the beauty of homeland, part historical document of Palestinian struggle, and part instruction manual for revolution.”
The Palestinian Sound Archive has allowed Palestine’s rich musical heritage to reach global audiences by re-releasing a wide range of music from the 1960s to the 1980s. In addition to “The Intifada 1987,” Swaitat has unearthed recordings such as the Palestinian Black Panthers’ Mixtape, a collection of revolutionary songs recorded by young resistance fighters in the forests near Jenin, and the Palestinian Bedouin Tape Archive, featuring recordings by Swaitat’s uncle, Atef Swaitat, a celebrated wedding musician.
“The response has been amazing. I’ve had messages from young Palestinians and those in the diaspora telling me they loved it, or they bought it as a present for their parents who were young when it was originally released,” Swaitat said.
Today, the Palestinian Sound Archive/ Majazz Project can be found on <majazzproject.com> and streaming platforms, including Spotify, Bandcamp and Soundcloud, while Swaitat releases newly digitized material every month on NTS Radio (<www.nts.live/shows/palestinian-sound-archive>). Through live DJ sets, streaming services and radio broadcasts, Swaitat ensures that these voices from the past remain part of Palestinian identity and resistance.