M{if} Discourse Series
Muqata'a Concert Performance
Curated by Ahmed Al-Nawas
Museum of Impossible Forms is excited to invite Muqata’a to performance a concert evening at Museum of Impossible Forms. Muqata’a is locally known as the “godfather” of the underground hip-hop scene in Ramallah, a city in the West Bank, Palestine, and has been heralded for influencing a new generation of Palestinian musicians.
“Muqata’a” means to disrupt, or boycott.
“I sample classical Arabic music in my records. When our land is being taken away, our culture is muted. So it’s a way to try and disrupt that – being a glitch in the system is very important. When your heritage is being attacked by the state, you have to find ways of being remembered, so I sample a lot. A lot of the Arabic music or old records in my grandparents’ homes in Jaffa and Safed, for example, were taken when their house was confiscated. So this is a way to bring those sounds back.”
The “sound of Palestine” is hard to define as one sound, but I’d say it’s definitely aggressive – it’s about fighting back; it’s the response to the sound of checkpoints and military helicopters and all these things we’re used to hearing daily. I’ve never been to Haifa [in Israel], but from what I hear it’s a different music vibe there too, to do with the different environment, living directly under the Israeli government. But I’m not allowed to go there because I live in Ramallah, so I need a special permit. I describe my music as instrumental hip-hop, but others have described it as weird/ syncopated/glitchy/dark/noisy. It’s my own interpretation of hip-hop and my surroundings.
A former member of the acclaimed collective Ramallah Underground, he plies a brand of experimental hip-hop – based on sampling and looping the sounds of his city. Muqata’a features in a new documentary, Palestine Underground, which follows members of the growing subterranean dance culture as they put on DIY parties across the region.
Muqata'a is an electronic musician and MC based in Ramallah, Palestine. Creating sounds using sampled material, field recordings, and electronic devices, the results range between harsh beats, abstract tones, and glitch.
He co-founded the Ramallah Underground Collective which toured extensively across the Arab World, Europe, and Australia, until the collective split up in 2009. Muqata'a is also co-founder and member of the sound and image performance group Tashweesh alongside artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme.
He has released several solo albums including; Inkanakuntu (2018) on Discrepant, Dubt Al-Ghubar (2017) on Third Type Tapes, La Lisana Lah (2017), and Hayawan Nateq (2013). Muqata’a has composed several film scores, as well as scores for dance performances, and is now working on different collaborative and solo projects.
Museum of Impossible Forms is a cultural space, located in Kontula, Helsinki. It is a contested Space and it represents a contact zone, a space of unlearning, formulating identity constructs, norm-critical consciousness and critical thinking. Impossible Forms are those that erase and facilitate the process of transgressing the boundaries/borders between art, politics, practice, theory, the artist and the spectator. For 2019-2020, Museum of Impossible Forms operates under the curatorial theme of ‘The Atlas of Lost Beliefs (For Insurgents, Citizens and Untitled Bodies)’
Museum of Impossible Forms is a safer space. It follows safer space policies to create a welcoming, inclusive, awesome environment.
Events at the Museum of Impossible Forms are completely free and accessible without prior booking.
Museum of Impossible Forms is accessible by lift with thresholds up to 4cm on the way. The toilet has no thresholds but is not spacious enough to meet accessibility standards. The nearest accessible toilet is located at Kontula metro station.
For directions, please refer to this Map.