When does tradition become disconnected or even a hindrance to contemporary values and needs, and when does it offer the potential for reimagination beyond its fragmented past?

In recent years, artists have increasingly drawn inspiration from their musical heritages to develop novel and contemporary iterations, often integrating traditional elements and instrumentations with electronic music devices and contemporary compositional aesthetics.

Giada Dalla Bontà invites Saint Abdullah and Maya Al Khaldi & Sarouna to discuss these poetic strategies through their own experiences and perspectives. Rather than viewing local folkloric traditions as immutable templates, these artists embrace the fluidity of their forms, serving as conduits for preserving and disseminating otherwise overlooked or endangered local knowledges, while adapting them to the contemporary context.

Folkloric Iterations, Forms of Resistance reflects on how these artistic strategies can contest conventional notions of authorship and identity, creating new artistic languages and counternarratives. Departing from situated experiences and poetics, it questions how tradition can be reclaimed to foster cross-cultural alliances to cultivate forms of collective resistance and resignification against the background of resurging discriminatory politics, states of apartheid, mass killing, and patriarchal structures that remain entrenched globally.