Kings Place & Supersonic Festival presents Jerusalem In My Heart (JIMH). Their performances are unlike anything else; enthralling multimedia experiences delivered with punk rock impulsiveness. Their sound is defiant and visceral, fusing Arabic folk instrumentation, melismatic singing and abyssal synth drones. They are joined by Farida Amadou, a boundless artist taking the electric bass to new dimensions.

Jerusalem In My Heart is an immersive audio-visual performance from Lebanese producer/musician Radwan Moumneh and Montréal-based filmmaker Erin Weisgerber.

Their performances are enthralling multi-media experiences, fusing modern experimental Arabic and electronic music with punk rock impulsiveness. Radwan’s buzuk-playing, Arabic lyric-writing and melismatic singing is joined by Farida Amadou, a boundless artist taking the electric bass to new dimensions.

In its original incarnation, Jerusalem In My Heart was a site-specific multi-media happening of strictly one-off interdisciplinary live performance events orchestrated by Moumneh. No two JIMH concerts were ever the same, each was a particular and newly composed presentation of music, set design, film/video and theater/dance components with a singular concept and narrative.

With fourth album Qalaq (October 2021) JIMH presents its most distilled, gripping, and intensely sculpted record to date—featuring a different guest on each of its 13 tracks, including Moor Mother, Tim Hecker, Lucrecia Dalt, Greg Fox, Rabih Beaini, Alanis Obomsawin and Oiseaux-Tempête. Despite these atomized (and distanced) collaborations, Moumneh’s overall compositional arc integrates them into an album flow that makes Qalaq the least dualistic, most formally diverse yet compelling cohesive JIMH record to date. “Qalaq” is an Arabic word with a meaning Moumneh particularly intends as “deep worry”, on various universal levels (needless to say) but also specifically with respect to Lebanon/Beirut, its collapsing domestic politics, economy and infrastructure, tragic geopolitics, and the desperate extremisms rending all of its adjacent states. Framed by Moumneh’s spoken and sung Arabic, buzuk and sound design, Qalaq is a visceral and haunting work of contemporary electronics, Arabic songcraft and sound art.

Farida Amadou

Farida Amadou is a self-taught bass player based in Belgium. Since 2011 she has taken the Electric Bass to new dimensions, exploring notions of blues, jazz and hip-hop through mind-warping freely improvised music.

A former member of punk/noise band Cocaine Piss, Farida is no stranger to collaboration. Since 2017 she has worked with legendary figures including ex-Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore and free jazz pioneer Peter Brötzmann, as well as Lebanese audiovisual project, Jerusalem In My Heart.