The Intifada Tapes
Kerning Cultures
Kerning Cultures Network
4.9 • 529 Ratings
🗓️ 13 May 2022
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Stuck in his Palestinian hometown of Jenin during lockdown, Mo'min Swaitat walked into an old music shop where thousands of dusty cassettes lined the walls. They contained decades of Palestinian music and field recordings once confiscated by the Israeli army, long since forgotten, and never meant to make it out of Palestine.
This is the story of what was on those cassettes, and Mo'min's mission to give them a second life.
This episode was produced by Nadeen Shaker and edited by Dana Ballout. Fact checking by Deena Sabry, sound design and mixing by Nadeen Shaker, Alex Atack and Monzer El Hachem. Our team also includes Zeina Dowidar.
You can listen to the Intifada album on Bandcamp.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm |
| 0:02.0 | from Bayoam to make |
| 0:06.0 | and the world that is predictable |
| 0:07.0 | they've seen in half |
| 0:08.0 | and one story that always kind of captures my imagination |
| 0:11.0 | and in despair |
| 0:12.0 | the street's lost culture |
| 0:15.0 | and you're listening to Kearning cultures |
| 0:18.0 | I'm Daniel listening to Kearning Cultures. |
| 0:27.0 | I'm Dana Balutz and this is Kernan Cultures. |
| 0:38.9 | Our story today starts at an airport. And the way to move to London Heathrow. |
| 0:41.7 | Our story today starts at an airport in Jordan. |
| 0:48.9 | More specifically, in a back room where Moumint Suayat has been brought by a group of airport security guards. |
| 0:54.1 | My plane about to go and then I'm in an investigation room. |
| 0:58.5 | And he's standing in the middle of five big luggage. |
| 1:00.3 | They're all full of cassette. |
| 1:02.6 | Momit is a Palestinian music collector. |
| 1:04.2 | He's an actor and a playwright. |
| 1:14.2 | And at the time, he was traveling with 2,000 cassettes, packed in five suitcases. This all makes sense a little later. |
| 1:20.2 | And when airport security asked him what I think is a pretty fair question, why was he traveling with thousands of cassettes stuffed into his luggage? And could he please open them up so they |
| 1:26.0 | could check? Mottman had no choice but to say yes. |
| 1:29.8 | And they asked me to take them all out. |
... |
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