Radwan Ghazi Moumneh curates a night of Arab music from diasporic Montreal and beyond.

Wake Island (Philippe Manasseh and Nadim Maghzal) and Radwan Ghazi Moumneh are three Lebanese-Canadian artists based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal who have joined forces to explore the intersections of Arab identity, diaspora, and contemporary sound through music, performance, and interdisciplinary projects.

Wake Island has long been known for weaving Middle Eastern sounds into electronic, pop, and ambient compositions that grapple with themes of migration, identity, and belonging. Their critically acclaimed 2021 album Born to Leave (nominated for best album at ADISQ) unfolded in three languages and later expanded into a multidisciplinary project spanning music, interactive art, and live A/V performance. The duo has also cemented its place in Montréal’s Arab and Queer scenes as co-founders of Laylit, the celebrated party and collective spotlighting music from the SWANA region and its diasporas.

Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, co-founder of Montreal’s renowned Hotel2Tango studio, has shaped the sound of hundreds of albums as a producer and engineer. His multimedia project Jerusalem In My Heart has toured internationally and released four acclaimed albums, combining electronic compositions, electroacoustic buzuk treatments, and contemporary Arabic modal singing. His work spans music, theatre, and dance, and he continues to redefine contemporary Arabic music through projects that blend tradition with experimentation.

Together, Wake Island and Moumneh fuse their distinct practices into a shared vision that pushes the boundaries of Arabic contemporary music. Their first collaboration, هجرُ /خلقُ / an ambisonic electronic ambient album expanding on the themes of exile and belonging introduced in Born to Leave, premiered at the Phi Centre in May 2024 as part of an immersive live experience. Bridging electronic experimentation, Arab musical heritage, and multimedia storytelling, their work situates diasporic voices at the center of global contemporary

Amal Kaawash is a Palestinian multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Lebanon. She is primarily a singer and songwriter who has collaborated with musicians both locally and internationally, including in Denmark, Egypt, and Italy.

In her performances, Amal weaves together storytelling and music, exploring the relationship between voice and memory. She draws particular inspiration from the traditional songs of the Levant, especially Palestinian musical heritage. Her original compositions focus on everyday moments and personal experiences, blending traditional influences with experimental melodies.

Beyond her musical practice, Amal has an academic background in biology and visual arts. She has also worked in cartooning, where she created the character “Meiroun,” named after her ancestral village that was ethnically cleansed during the Nakba.

Amal is a member of the Nohye Al Ard initiative for agroecology and is deeply interested in exploring the connections between land, sound, cultural memory, and community bonds.

Radwan Ghazi Moumneh and Frédéric D. Oberland are longstanding collaborators and friends who debuted their eponymous duo project with the Eternal Life No End LP released on Constellation in April 2026. What began as quiet shared experiments and occasional intimate live performances at Moumneh’s Hotel2Tango studio in Montréal, evolved into a full-scale transatlantic recording project, with the co-composers/co-producers expanding their experimental songcraft in a melding of ritual electronics and contemplative devotional forms.

Radwan Ghazi Moumneh is a Lebanese artist, producer, and musician based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal, best known as founder of Jerusalem In My Heart (JIMH), an interdisciplinary project rooted in contemporary explorations of Arabic musical traditions and socio-geographies, with various partners creating/projecting 16mm analog films, and sometimes involving other musical, theatrical, and contemporary dance collaborators. Moumneh is also a renowned producer/engineer whose credits include Matana Roberts, Alanis Obomsawin, Nadah El Shazly, Sarah Davachi, Jessica Moss, SANAM, and many more.

French multi-instrumentalist and photographer Frédéric D. Oberland is co-founder of Oiseaux-Tempête, the acclaimed musical collective that navigates intersections of avant-rock and free improvisation, with a string of albums since 2013 on Sub Rosa, and releases on NAHAL Recordings and Ruptured. He is a founding member of FOUDRE! and SIHR, performs in many other ensemble and solo configurations, has appeared on collab albums with the likes of Aidan Baker, Irena Tomažin, and Richard Knox, and composes for film. Oberland’s photography is collected in the 2026 art book Vestiges du Futur / Vestiges of the Future published by Sun/Sun Editions and his photos have appeared in a wide range of publications and album covers.

Across two decades, Moumneh has challenged assumptions about what Arabic music can denote, and opened pathways beyond inherited forms. Oberland has relentlessly explored improvisation and collective composition over this same period, amassing wide-ranging stylistic and instrumental acumen. On Eternal Life No End, Oberland plays Buchla and modular synths, alto saxophone, and clarineau; Moumneh sings and plays buzuk and rababa; both contribute electro-acoustic processing, and share rhythmic duties with acoustic hand percussion and drum machine programming. Together they shape a musical dialogue at once intimate and outward-looking, inscribing a sound world fragile yet luminous. Electronics press against the grain of the buzuk; modal lines drift into noise; drones shimmer and eventually break into rhythm. If Moumneh questions cultural inheritance and Oberland treats music as a site of collective action, their collaboration creates a place where these impulses converge and reconfigure. Eternal Life No End traces sonic territories between memory and invention, devotion and abrasion, the personal and the expansive.