songs these jaws cannot hold
Summer to autumn 2026
The programme, songs these jaws cannot hold, traces and channels songs that bear witness to disappearance, opening ears to how memory and imagination are carried sonically.
Bringing into relation voices and repertoires from Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen and other historically entangled places, the programme reflects on the ways sound persists when other forms of presence are systematically under attack.
Through live performances and collective listening, songs these jaws cannot hold will consider song as an embodied form of remembrance: one that is voiced, restaged, adapted and continually reinhabited. The performances centre on songs and struggles that endure across generations, despite the constant threat of being swallowed, carrying histories in breaths and bodies that archives alone cannot hold.
Moving between endangered musical traditions including lament and revolutionary chants, alongside newly commissioned and contemporary sonic works, the programme explores what songs can preserve when lands, languages, communities and their histories are threatened by genocide, occupation and siege as well as colonial and state violence. Drawing from collective vocal practices, the programme aims to open a space for grief, mourning, collective presence and imagination, not bound to a singular time.
With artists Intibint, Noor Abed and Haig Aivazian, and others tba.
Image: Courtesy of Mosaic Rooms.
UK Registered Charity No. 1183882
Mosaic Rooms is generously supported by Al-Qattan Charitable Trust.
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