Listening Hymns: Sonic Observatory | ILYICH & Dirar Kalash

Listening Hymns is a performative spoken word archive, tracing ways of listening through the words of artists, musicians, poets, writers, educators, activists, and many others.

In this episode, Palestinian musician and sound artist Dirar Kalash joins me in the studio with his saxophone. Spanning instrumental, compositional, and improvisational practices, his work explores the political and poetic capacities of sound through works such as The Sonic Front, the composition We Can't Breathe (for Eric Garner, George Floyd, and Frantz Fanon), and the Sonic Praxis Working Group. Joining him on the double bass, we move between improvisation and dialogue. Together we reflect on questions of speechlessness, silence, and poetry in times of genocide, approaching sound not as an object but as an active relation that generates community, care, and knowledge.

Dirar expands on the Sonic Praxis Working Group and introduces the Sonic Observatory, sharing a vision of listening as a practice of reclaiming land, sustaining communal infrastructures, and cultivating relations across Palestine. Together we consider how the intentions with which we listen materialise into everyday practices, collective action, and the worlds listening brings into being.

This show reminds us that listening, sound, and music can become practices of relation, care, and resistance, especially in moments when language reaches its limits.

To learn more about the Sonic Praxis Working Group and the Sonic Observatory, and to follow the development of the fundraising campaign, please visit the links accompanying this episode.