Beyond 1932 Project

What happens when archives aren’t treated as something frozen in time? ________ In 1932, the Cairo Congress of Arab Music brought together musicians and scholars from across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. Its aim was to unify musical knowledge and practice, but its legacy proved far more complicated. Beyond 1932 asks: what else did this moment set in motion? What legacies have been overlooked? And what futures — cultural, institutional, and artistically— are still possible? This project invites contemporary artists from the Middle East and its diaspora to work with archives as living, unstable materials. Through experimental, improvised, and archival-inspired performances, artists re-engage with historical sound, tracing how tradition travels, transforms, and continues to shape musical practice today. Join us at the upcoming events to experience these questions live and watch the video to hear Dr. Rim Irscheid, the project’s curator, explain the vision behind Beyond 1932.

This jam session is a sneak peak into one behind-the-scenes moment of Beyond 1932. It captured another side of what the residency has been trying to explore. Beyond discussions of the Cairo Congress, archival histories, and the legacy of Arabic music, the residency has also been a space for making music together in the present. Bringing together Oxford Maqam musicians, academics, and artists including Kamilya Jubran, the gathering moved fluidly between conversation, improvisation, and performance. What emerged was not simply a discussion about music, but music itself. The session reflects one of the residency’s central ideas: that Arabic musical history is not something fixed in the archive or confined to historical analysis, but something living that continues to be reworked and carried forward through practice.

This final concert felt like a culmination, but not in a way that closes things off. Instead, it brought many of the project’s ideas into practice. Sound as something living and ever-changing, history as something to be engaged with rather than preserved at a distance, and performance as a space for both inquiry and expression, opening up new ways of understanding Arabic music and history. This post captures some of the editor’s key moments in the concert for those who want to reminisce, reflect, and those that missed it. An English translation of the album’s original lyrics becomes another layer through which audiences can continue engaging with the work after the concert has ended, offering new meanings, reflections, and points of connection beyond the live performance. More than a conclusion, the concert became a reminder that these questions do not end when the residency does. They continue through listening, discussion, and the ways people carry these experiences forward afterwards.

As Beyond 1932 comes to an end, this marks the beginning of a series of reflections on the moments and questions that have shaped the residency along the way. It brought together people from different spaces. Experimental musicians, academics, and wider audiences interested in Arabic music and its histories. It created a shared environment for artistry, listening, questioning. This post captures some of what the audience took home with them. “The relationship between performer and audience, as Kamilya conceives it, is not grounded in shared comprehension, but in the possibility of a neutral, shared space of listening, despite differences in language or context. Meaning is not transmitted but collaboratively shaped, and where technology becomes a means of curating what can be collectively perceived.” — Huan ran Gao, Beyond 1932 Student Blog Writer, Audience

Last Tuesday, Kamilya Jubran and Werner Hasler invited us into a space of listening. As part of the Beyond 1932 residency, their performance at Cafe OTO unfolded as a dialogue between language, instruments, and voice, giving us a unique performance of their album و WA (2019). In this way, the performance echoed the concerns of the residency itself: what it means to return to the archive not as something to preserve, but as something to work through. Where the 1932 Cairo Congress sought to codify and stabilise sound, this performance lingered in its instability—creating its own musical identity. We were honoured to host Kamilya Jubran and Werner Hasler as part of the Beyond 1932 Artist-in-Residency, and to witness a practice that resists being fixed, choosing instead to remain in motion.

TONIGHT: KAMILYA JUBRAN & WERNER HASLER Palestinian musical royalty Kamilya Jubran joins long-time collaborator Werner Hasler for a duo performance shaped by more than two decades of shared practice. Working across voice, oud, trumpet and electronics, the pair have built a language of friction, space, ornamentation and improvisation that feels both deeply rooted and wholly singular. Tonight’s performance centres on و WA - the duo’s 2019 album-length suite. Based on several movements (or ‘wasalat’ in classical Arabic music terminology), ‘Wa (Suite)’ is a 45-minute-long piece that gradually builds up and unveils a sound world where Jubran’s voice, tumultuous lyrics and scattered oud playing meet Hasler’s lingering trumpet lines and electronics. It is music that keeps expanding its own possibilities, pushing dialogue, tension and intimacy further with every movement. After a long career with Sabreen, Jubran has continued to carve out one of the most influential bodies of work in alternative Arabic music, constantly searching for new forms for melody, texture and composition. Hasler, meanwhile, brings a distinct approach to trumpet, live electronics, sampling and spatial sound. Together, they make music that feels searching, rigorous and alive. The performance is followed by a Q&A with the artists with Dr Rim Irscheid, practice-led researcher at King’s College London. The Beyond 1932 project is funded by the EPSRC via the UKRI/EC HE Guarantee ERC scheme. @beyond_1932 @rim_irscheid @kamilya_jubran @werner_hasler 🎟️ £12 door / £10 advance / £6 members → Tickets via link in stories and cafeoto.co.uk → Doors 7:30pm

Sound was classified. Standardised. Fixed. Nearly a century later, the 1932 Cairo Congress of Arab Music still shapes how music is defined, taught, and remembered. This panel brings together artists and scholars to question that legacy. Scroll to meet the speakers behind this panel discussing the decolonial legacy of the Congress. Join us for a conversation with them on sound, history, and what it means to listen critically today. 📍 Pyramid Room, King’s College London (WC2R 2LS) 🗓 9 April 2026 ⏰ 4PM

Get your tickets! Electronics, oud, vocals, text. The making of unheard sound. As part of the Beyond 1932 residency, Kamilya Jubran and Werner Hasler perform their third studio album و WA, followed by a Q&A session. Don’t miss it! 📍 Cafe OTO, Dalston 🗓 7 April | ⏰ 7:30 PM

This panel invites you into a conversation on the enduring legacy of the Cairo Congress of Arab Music — not as a fixed historical moment, but as something that continues to shape musical practice, pedagogy, and cultural memory nearly a century later. With contributions from cultural historian Hazem Jamjoum, musicologist Gülçin Özkişi, and musicians Tarik Beshir and Kamilya Jubran, the discussion moves across archives, lived practice, and experimentation to ask how musical traditions are preserved, reinterpreted, and carried forward. 📍 Pyramid Room, King’s Building (King’s College London) 🗓 Thursday 9 April, 4:00pm 🎟 Register via the link in our bio

“A unison of timbres, cultures complementing, the complicity of verses, and modes and languages confronting each other.” Widely revered in experimental and alternative music scenes, Kamilya Jubran and Werner Hasler, an accomplished trumpet player and seasoned electric musician, have together shaped a distinctive and influential cross-cultural sonic practice. As part of the Beyond 1932 Residency, they will perform their third studio album, و WA—Arabic for “and”. Blending voice, oud, trumpet, and electronics, the duo craft sounds where traditions meet and sentences collide, unveiling a voyage into a unique, unheard sound. Lyrical yet richly textured, their performance unfolds as a process of interrogating their listening and expression, their research, and their desire. Jubran and Hasler envelopes the audience in a space where their respective roots and presents enter artistic conversation. The evening will feature a live performance of و (WA) (2019), the duo’s third album, followed by a short Q&A with the artists. 📍 Cafe OTO, Dalston 🗓 7 April, 7:30 PM ✨ Join us for an evening of boundary-pushing sound and intimate artistic exchange.

📣 Open Call for Student Writers! Interested in music, history, or cultural criticism? We’re looking for students to write 500–800 word reflections for the Beyond 1932 blog on our website: • 7 April 2026 – Concert by Kamilya Jubran at Cafe OTO • 9 April 2026 – Panel at King’s College London on the (de)colonial legacy of the 1932 Cairo Congress of Arabic Music *DEADLINE to apply: 29 March 2026 Different students can cover each event! Apply here or through the link in our bio: https://forms.gle/mvHNwC7DuyzBDeqr9 You will be contacted if selected. DM us for any questions :)

Go behind the scenes of Bint Mbareh’s Beyond 1932 performance. This video brings together reflections from those involved in the project—sharing the ideas, intentions, and conversations that shaped the evening, alongside moments from the performance itself. At the heart of the performance were questions about what it means to listen: as immersion and as a way of learning. And what does it mean to become a musician — not through mastery alone, but through repetition, participation, and collaborative sound-making? Part of the UKRI/ERC-funded Beyond 1932 research project at King’s College London, this residency continues to explore how the legacy of the 1932 Cairo Congress resonates today, not just in archives, but in living practice. The recordings that come out of the Beyond1932 residencies are being preserved at the British Library Sound Archive, as part of the Beyond 1932 collection, to diversify what we find in an archive on Arabic music. Project Team: • @martinhenrystokes - PI of the project • @sophiefrankford - Post-Doctoral Ethnographic Researcher • Yara Salahiddeen - Post-Doctoral Ethnomusicologic Researcher • @rim_irscheid - Post-Doctoral Researcher (Curator) • Farid Ghrich - Research Assistant The Beyond 1932 Residencies are part of a three-year collaborative research project at King’s College London.