Walking Sounds: music from Iraqi Kurdistan

“….we had the good fortune to be able to interact with different people through the shared language of music” – Luca Chiavinato.

In the summer of 2016, Sammaan and Hana, young Iraqi Kurds, travelled to Padua to share their experiences of the Youth Centres in Iraqi Kurdistan which are coordinated by Un Ponte Per and that was when they met Luca Chiavinato and Dario Bano.

Together, they decided to set up an artistic residency project in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Recordings made during these musical workshops attended by young Syrian refugees and Iraqi and Kurdish IDPs, were later arranged and re-mixed in collaboration with Paduan musicians Silvia Rinaldi, Aisha Ruggeri, Francesco Ganassin and Sergio Marchesini and the Bel Teatro association, with technical support by Franz Suono. The disc was produced by Caligola Records and also contains 11 tracks by 11 young men and 9 young women who make up the “Mshakt” collective, as well as live recordings from their performance at the Domiz camp.

The cover art is by Claudio Calia, graphic artist and author of the graphic novel “Kurdistan: Despatches from the Iraqi Front” (Beccogiallo 2017).

The CD  was launched in December 2017 at the Kurdish Social Forum in Sulmaniyah.

It was made possible by contributions of Un Ponte Per and the “Ya Basta Caminantes Association”.

You can buy a copy of the CD using this link.