Grief is hereditary. It is collective and more than mere streams of tears – as countless generations of oppressed Palestinians can attest. On the album Karakoz, the Rome-based musician Mai Mai Mai creates a resonance of this collective sorrow and attempts to grasp the desperate hope of the Palestinian people. Not through political slogans, but through dark spiritualism and synthesizers.

Karakoz is an ancient form of shadow theatre with roots in the Ottoman Empire, and the album title serves as an omen of the musical pulse that sets in from the opening track, »Grief«. Here the music sounds like an archaic folk hymn: slow, repetitive percussion creates a tear-soaked minimalism, and the piece feels like a ceremony passed down through generations. With synthesizers slowly coiling around Maya Al Khaldi’s yearning vocals, »Grief« becomes a cultural bridge between forgotten traditions and the painfully current tragedy that today envelops Palestine in an all-consuming darkness.

Across the seven tracks, one hears trauma like a wind murmuring through the streets and among the olive trees. This may be because the album was created in collaboration with local artists and includes archival material from The Palestinian Sound Archive – an archive of decades of forgotten music, poetry, and album covers. Karakoz is a reinterpretation of Middle Eastern spiritualism and forgotten music. It is a testament to grief as lived experience, and as an archival bulwark, Karakoz thus takes part in the struggle for a free Palestine.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

Why is it that one can always recognize a lullaby? This musical archetype, circular and hushed, sung into us with mother’s milk. Composer Bent Sørensen’s solo piano cycle 12 Nocturnes is a tribute to the night’s musical cultural heritage. The nocturne – a nocturnal, lyrical composition – merges with, among other forms, lullabies and cantatas in a poetic narrative from sunset to sunrise about what is close at hand and yet unfathomable: that the sun rises, that children are born, that stars can be glimpsed through small windows on earth, that the piano can create worlds with twelve tones.

Bent Sørensen wrote the twelve short nocturnes between 2000 and 2014 for pianist (and wife) Katrine Gislinge. They have previously been released digitally. Now they appear as a studio recording paired with Piano Concerto No. 3, La sera estatica. The premiere of this “ecstatic evening” stands in contrast to the nocturnes’ simple, balanced forms. With a dramatic opening, multiple orchestral groups, and crackling storminess in the soundscapes, the dreamy nocturnal universe is ruptured by a surging ardor that unfolds in two parts, where purer melodic lines gradually take over the second – complete with a distinct (night?) bell.

Yet the piano concerto’s sovereign quality does not quite come into its own when presented as a postscript to the nocturnes’ rounded narrative. The two elements work best separately, so that the ecstatic evening for full orchestra does not puncture the magic of stars scattered blinking across the piano’s staccato attacks, or Sigrid’s nocturnal dances and lullabies. There is ample drama in the beautifully conveyed single night – for even the child Sigrid will one day no longer be sung to sleep.