Ep6(S5) Making Resonance: Forced Migrants and Music Across Borders

Today you’ll hear Liberty Chee speak with two scholars whose research focuses on musicians who have been displaced from their homelands.
Rose Campion looks at what the music industry can teach us about migration policy. Her ethnographic research explores how forced migrants from all over the world build their careers as professional musicians in Germany. She talks about how they try to ‘make it’, and how these experiences complicate the perception that “music is a universal language that brings everyone together”.
We also have Louis Brehony, who, starting as a musician and fan, found his way to Palestinian music and the people who make this art both in the MENA region and around the world. He has now researched the topic academically for over a decade. He speaks about how concepts from Palestinian culture translate into music – and how “traditional” sounds and newer evolutions of style are marked by place and migration.
Rose Campion is a PhD student at the University of Oxford's Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (“COMPAS”) in the UK. She studies the creative and social impacts of music-making by forced migrants.
And
Louis Brehony is an activist, musician, educator, and independent scholar who is an expert on Palestinian music. He received his PhD from Kings College London and his book "Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of resistance" is based on 10 years of fieldwork and focuses on Palestinians dispersed in the MENA region. He is also a member of the Gazelleband.
The music at the end of the episode is the track “Salla Fina al-Lahz”, from the Gazelleband’s EP “Rihla #2”. It was composed by Sayyid Dawish and performed by Gazelleband: https://gazelleband.com/home
Further reading provided by the interviewees:
1. Campion, Rose and Sheyda Ghavami. (2024). Kurdische Musikerinnen in Deutschland: Ein Song-und Storybook. Landesmusikrat NRW.
2. Louis Brehony, Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of Resistance, AUC Press, 2023.
3. Ghassan Kanafani, Selected Political Writings, Pluto Press, 2024.
4. Louis Brehony, “Music and the Gaza Genocide,” Journal of Performance Studies, Summer2025.
5. Louis Brehony, “Exile Songwriters of the Palestinian Revolution (and the Problem with Sugar Man),” Arab Studies Quarterly, Winter 2023.
Louis would like to thank Reem Anbar (oud player with Gazelleband) and Tahrir Hamdi (Co-editor of Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings) for their contributions to the work he speaks about in this episode.