Athena is a band from Istanbul founded by twin brothers Hakan and Gökhan Özoğuz in 1987. They started off in ’87 as a trash metal band, but turned to rock/punk/ska with time. In 2014, they released the album Altüst, featuring a song Ses Etme, which caused a lot of controversy, since the music video for it was following one day in the life of a transgender person. This whole album is definitely worth your time, but the song I would love to emphasize and just can’t stop listening to is Adımız Miskindir Bizim. Beauty for the ears, beauty for the soul. ♫ Pr ..read more

//Photo @Loulou d’Aki , Make A Wish – Gaza// Ghassan Kanafani wrote the Letter from Gaza in 1956. It was published translated into English in The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine by the Tricontinental Society of London in 1980. Today, a day after the horrendous Israeli attack on protesters in Gaza, which resulted in more than 60 killed and 2700 injured, I thought it would be appropriate to publish this letter – a look at the continuity of the oppression. ▼ Dear Mustafa, I have now received your letter, in which you tell me that you’ve done everything necessary to enable me to stay with you in Sacr ..read more

Formed in 2012 by Parisian DJs Guido Minisky and Hervé Carvalho, Acid Arab patiently honed their style by meeting with scores of artists from all over North Africa and the Middle East. Born in the transcultural cauldron that is Paris, their concept was to create a space for Arab culture in the world of contemporary electronic music. They laid down groundwork by releasing several EPs (the Collections series) on electronic music label Versatile, featuring collabs, remixes and tracks by other artists. Latley I became quite addicted to their track Stil (ft. Cem Yildiz), from the album Musique de ..read more

//Al Mutanabbi Street by Art Hazelwood// Once a major center of learning in the Middle East, the library at the University of Mosul was destroyed in 2014. The Iraqi-American Reconciliation Project (IARP) is holding a book drive for Mosul to restore the library as a credible resource center at one of the Middle East’s most important universities. Community members can donate books or funds for shipping and handling costs. IARP’s goal is to collect 15,000 books to help restock the shelves of the University of Mosul library and $15,000 to pay for shipping and handling costs. They ..read more

/Kamilya Jubran, photo via Mosaic Rooms/ Kamilya Jubran is a beloved Palestinian musician who has been voice of resistance for decades now. Elias Jubran, her father, an authentic instrument maker and a music teacher; was her first source of classical Arabic musical education. For two decades, Kamilya was Sabreen’s lead song performer, and player of Oud, Qanoon, and other oriental instruments. From 1982 to 2002, they represented the voice of resistance; struggle for freedom, and a deep and dynamic artistic-political process that created a new style of a modern Arabic song. Jubran did many great ..read more

/Photo: CodePink.org/ The crisis in Yemen continues. Near famine conditions developed in many parts of the country. Just this month, UNICEF’s Middle East director, Geert Cappelaere said that 11 million Yemeni children are now in desperate need of humanitarian aid. How can we help, how can we get involved constructively? Here’s a little list of what we can do, put togehter on PRI + some of Middle East Revised‘s additional inputs. MonaRelief Fatik al-Rodaini has been called a hero by Yemenis. He collects funds, buys food from local vendors, and creates batches of fo ..read more

Yazan Halwani’s new mural is painted on a building previously destroyed by the Civil War located on Beirut’s Greenline – the former frontline of the Civil War splitting Beirut into the Christian East and the Muslim West. Part of Beirut’s public cultural memory, the mural depicts Tarek Noueiri (Muslim boy) and May (Christian girl, whose family took refuge in West Beirut) sharing cotton candy; from Ziad Doueiri’s classic West Beirut movie. The mural is a reminder of Lebanon’s post-war settlement: a political system built on sectarianism and business interest that blocks true national cohes ..read more

/photo: Jeremy Pollard/ The end of September marked fourteen years without Edward Said, literary theorist and an intellectual of a wide range. To commemorate Said and recall the magnitude of his works, we are in conversation with Judith Butler, Laleh Khalili, Avi Shlaim and Illan Pappé, asking them what they find most relevant and important in/about Edward Said’s work in this day and age. Judith Butler, philosopher and gender theorist, professor at Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory, University of California: Said unerstood the work of imagi ..read more

/Art by Tania Al Kayyali/ Adonis is a great poet, but it is also a name of a great (not so) little Lebanese band. Like it is captured by Now Lebanon, “the five boys from Adonis produce songs that are, at times, achingly gorgeous, charming, whimsical and enchantingly Lebanese.” Time Out Beirut suggests: “If the rambling back alleys, low-slung electricity cables and small, dusty, bustling neighborhoods of Beirut had a soundtrack, this would be it.” You can listen to one of their new songs, beautiful La Bel Haki, on You Tube. ♫ Previous Playlist: Suhaiymah Manzoor Khan PJ Harvey & Ramy E ..read more

//all images © Boutros Al-Maari// Boutros Al-Maari was born in Damascus in 1968. He has held several solo exhibitions in Paris and Damascus, and participated in a large number of group exhibitions in Damascus, Beirut, Alexandria, Hanover and Paris. Al-Maari currently lives and works in Hamburg, Germany. Through his paintings he transmits a feeling of the contemporary and the traditional, all on the same canvas. In a way, his paintings are an exaggerated drawings of the typical characters from the Syrian daily life, with a twist of magic in them. • • • For more on Al-Maar ..read more