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Conversations on a century of MENA music heritage in podcasts.
Dr. Harun Korkmaz, Turkish academician, music historian, singer and composer. (podcast forthcoming).
In 1935, King Fouad I of Egypt presented a copy of the Cairo Arab Music Congress collection on 78 rpm records to the Musée de la Parole et du Geste in Paris. These recordings were not accessible until the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) published them in their entirety, for the first time, in 2015.
In partnership with the BnF, the Beyond 1932 project decided to highlight a part of these recordings through podcasting with artists. Additionally, we conducted interviews mainly with the key French scholars and experts implicated in the original recordings’ analysis, restoration, digitization, and publication.
The 13 podcasts in French are divided into three series:
Conversation documents the work involved in publishing the recordings of the Cairo Congress by researchers and experts in Paris.
Song-podcast dedicated to one specific song, from the Cairo Congress recordings, chosen and commented on by MENA artists in order to valorise them.
The train leaves in 5 minutes ! Short audio clip explaining, highlighting or questioning a term related to Arabic music, by a researcher or an artist, with an educational focus.
We will start broadcasting from September 2025 onwards, on this page and on the main podcasting platforms (RSS). Full translations into English will appear on our blog page regularly. The French series will be followed by other episodes in Arabic, Turkish and English.
For the production of the French podcasts, we received a grant from the King’s College Impact Acceleration Account (IAA), supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Credits:
Farid Ghrich : Interviews and production – Beyond 1932 research project, London. https://1932muscon.kcl.ac.uk
Hossam Fazulla: Visuals and post-production – Digital artist and podcaster, London. https://www.boslaarts.com
Courtesy of Faris Badarni: Jingle from his jazzy cover of Bint shalabiya (بنت الشلبية) – Pianist, composer and producer, Munich. https://soundcloud.com/faris-badarni
Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris : authorisation for the complimentary use of the audio recordings from the Cairo Congress based on our common partnership. https://www.bnf.fr/fr