Mai Mai Mai

The heavy breath of a battered land, the dense shadows of an ongoing conflict. It is 2024 when Toni Cutrone arrives in Palestine for an artistic residency promoted by Radio Alhara and Wonder Cabinet. A profound experience lived between Bethlehem and Ramallah, from which “Karakoz” is born—the latest work by Mai Mai Mai, intertwining and blending the urgencies of our present with the roots of an ancient land. An ideal conjunction conceived as both memory and testimony of a raw present. A precise intention that entrusts sound with the act of storytelling, drawing on the contributions of experimental musicians, traditional timbres, and texts and conversations taken from archives or captured on location.

The resulting form is that of a complex substratum, created by the juxtaposition of the Calabrian artist’s electronic/industrial matrix—here kept in the background—with rhythmic patterns, voices, and resonances from Arab culture. A sorrowful fabric unfolding through mourning chants (“Grief,” performed by Maya Al Khaldi), hybrid soundscapes (the beautiful collaboration with Alabaster DePlume, “Echoes Of The Harvest”), and pulsating, tribal-tinged textures (the hypnotic “Old Poem Made Of Sand,” highlighting the percussion of Jihad Shouibi).

It is the Middle Eastern heritage that remains predominant, even when supported by deep synthetic beats (“Dawn on the Cremisan Valley”) or immersed in tension-laden noise drifts (“Jinn Of The Bethlehem Souk”), generating a deeply atmospheric journey that portrays pain without sentimentality, attempting to extract glimmers of beauty from the rubble.

(This article’s English version was produced with AI-assisted translation)

28/04/2026