A deep exploration of the shifting relationship between sound, politics, and the visceral search for home with Hamed Sinno. The discussion moves from their childhood in Beirut, where they internalize a sense of being an outsider, to their time at the American University of Beirut (AUB), where they began to understand the expectations of a generation raised for export. Reflecting on the intense collaborative magic of their era with the band Mashrou’ Leila, they share the unique challenges of a musical collective coming up against governments and their eventual transition toward solitary and experimental sound work. The conversation also tackles the limits of representational politics, with Sinno explaining why they have shifted their focus toward direct political organizing outside of the arts. They examine the power of the listener, describing how an audience's perspective can transform a song into a political symbol far beyond the artist's original intent. Finally, they reflect on the recurring experience of political heartbreak, the difficulty of maintaining hope and the enduring, complicated pull of returning home to Lebanon.
0:00 Introduction
2:05 Finding Refuge: Distance and Identity in Transit
6:52 The Limits of Representation and the Function of Art
9:00 Bullying and the Seattle Grunge Escape
11:23 The Classed Bubble of Beirut
13:06 The Search for an Authentic Voice
15:58 Injecting Politics into Popular Discourse
18:22 The Magic of Collaborative Music
20:42 The Radical Intimacy of a Collective
23:54 Negotiating Worst-Case Scenarios
26:15 The Political Act of the "We"
27:31 Coming Up Against Governments: When Sound Meets Power
30:24 Solo vs. Collective
32:12 Surviving Political and Personal Heartbreak
35:13 Political Reality in an Undemocratic Time
38:45 Organizing Outside the Window Dressing
41:40 Popular Culture as a Strategic Tool
43:18 No-Input Mixing: Feedback Loops as a Physical Experience
44:40 Student Organizing and the Rhetoric of Palestine
49:23 Taxpayer Complicity and the Pull of Home
51:00 The Dream of Returning
53:50 Disassociating from the Beast
56:32 How a Cover Becomes a Revolution
58:42 Becoming a Meme: Intention vs. Cultural Resonance
59:40 Current Musical Resonance
Hamed Sinno is a writer, musician and activist born and raised in Beirut, and currently living in New York. They have an MA in Digital Musics from Dartmouth College, and a BFA from the Department of Architecture and Design at the American University in Beirut, where they founded and fronted Lebanese indie band, Mashrou Leila, until the group disbanded in 2022. Their song-writing leverages rhetoric, poetry, and social justice to weaponize popular culture. With a fatwa and multiple bans under their belt, Sinno moved to the US, and is currently exploring narratives of estrangement, while centering their research on vocality, and voice synthesis as sites of political negotiation.
Connect with Hamed Sinno 👉 https://instagram.com/hamed.sinno
Hosted by Mikey Muhanna 👉 https://instagram.com/mikey_mu
Theme music: Peninsular, Tarek Yamani 🔊 https://spoti.fi/47I59ns
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