mixed feelings: Solidarity is Sacrifice | Saverio & Jessika Jamal Khazrik

mixed feelings is a radio show exploring accessibility in the arts from the experience and practices of disabled artists worldwide – an ongoing experiment in multiple ways of broadcasting and making radio accessible beyond hearing-only experiences.

In this episode, saverio invited Jessika Jamal Khazrik to take over mixed feelings. Her musical practice is devoted to communal solace, collective transcendence, and trans-generational healing – informed by ancestral chanting traditions like Armenian sharakan, Levantine mawwal, and Iraqi radh. In this hour-long episode of mixed feelings, Jessika shares a tribute/revisitation/rendition of the Palestinian folk song Ya Leil Ma'at Walak, along with the trans-millennial Iraqi lullaby دللول Dellelol. Ya Leil Ma'at Walak talks about the pain of dispossession, of displacement in times of war and genocide. دللول Dellelol comes from Sumerian literature, and mothers have sung it for millennia. There are Arabic elements from Jessika’s grandmother’s tongue, Surat, inherited from Akkadian, a language similar to the Kaldian Aramaic. Jessika's work honors a central element of her culture: the commitment to refrain from military operations and instead focus on studying the stars to learn how to improve life on Earth. Jessika has been working only with her voice, and different a cappella recordings of these ancestral songs, deepening a research she started during the summer on the Ya Leil Ma'at Walak version by Reem Banna. Beginning in one stanza, she expanded it in time, working extensively with repetition and frequencies close to the ultrasonic. There are elements in the mix that are higher than the spectrum of what is told as the human range of hearing, offering an anti-normative aural experience.

This episode is mainly in spoken Arabic, mixing classical Arabic, Palestinian Arabic, and Iraqi vernacular Arabic, with spoken words in English. A transcript is available here.

Tracklist

• Jessika Jamal Khazrik - نعشق We Adore (recorded for the mix)

• Mina Deris - دللول Dellelol

• Rim Banna - يا ليل ما اطولك Ya Leil ma Atwalak

• Jessika Jamal Khazrik - The Conscious Sacrifice (recorded for the mix)

• Jessika Jamal Khazrik - իմ սարը مرهم Marham (unreleased)

• Jessika Jamal Khazrik - Interbreathing (unreleased)

• Mudthr - دللول Dellelol

• Badria Anwar - دللول Dellelol

• Jessika Jamal Khazrik - يا ليل ما اطولك Ya Leil ma Atwalak (unreleased cover)

• Jessika Jamal Khazrik - Our Unity Is as Old as the World (unreleased)

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With a commitment to practices that explore sounds in all forms, mixed feelings is co-curated by Saverio Cantoni, Dana Cermane, and SchwarzRund, merging conversation and sound art, music, and experimental practices transforming our present. mixed feelings is guided by a notion of accessibility as an empowering creative territory – What would the radio be like if it were accessible to Deaf folks? Are we willing to give space to the Deaf community in a conventionally hearing-only territory? As an ongoing format initiated in 2021 and since hosted by Refuge Worldwide, mixed feelings unfolds in one-hour-long episodes in spoken languages and signing language (mainly International Sign Language), with screenreader-accessible transcripts accompanying each episode. This fluid format evolves over time, recognizing accessibility as a still very speculative practice, and the folks involved in this project will shape it by merging individual experiences and communal thinking.

mixed feelings is part of the initiative DRAUSSENSTADT, funded by Berliner Projektfonds Urbane Praxis and the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.

With special thanks to Frances, George, Graeme, Leona, Linnéa, Nicky, and Richard.