Another Sky is a touring festival of experimental music from the SWANA (South West Asia & North Africa) region and diaspora, including incredible pieces of improv, ambient soundscapes, compositions for western and non-western instruments, DJs, moving-image works, voice and machine-learning technologies. Blurring genres and categories, Another Sky celebrates the breadth of talent and ideas of SWANA/diaspora artists.
For Arnolfini, the line up includes: Wire Recorder Piece, Halim El-Dabh (1921-2017) The Egyptian-American who beat musique concrète to it. El-Dabh’s Expressions of Zaar premiered in Cairo in 1944, substantially pre-dating Pierre Schaeffer’s earliest musique concrète works. Another Sky will present a diffusion of Wire Recorder Piece, the surviving fragment of Expressions of Zaar, which utilises samples of female voices chanting during a zaar (a healing or exorcism).
Also work by FRKTL, Sophie Hoyle, Hardi Kurda, Mariam Rezaei, and Salam Shamki with Zeynep Ağcabay.
Another Sky is co-directed by Sam Salem (composer; co-founder Distractfold Ensemble; RNCM) and Emily Moore (Southern Bird artist management & production; former co-director Kammer Klang).
Funders: Arts Council England, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, PRS for Music Foundation, The Marchus Trust, Hinrichsen Foundation.
Partners: Arnolfini, Counterflows Festival, Cyborg Soloists, Ensemble Contrechamps, Irtijal Festival, The Mosaic Rooms, Royal Northern College of Music, Safar Film Festival, Space21 Festival.
The festival launches Another Sky as a long-term artist development network, this year platforming artists who live in or whose heritage spans Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Türkiye.
