Karakoz lands with a heavy impact. From the opening moments, Mai Mai Mai’s sixth album pulls no punches, grief pressed into aural forms. Maya Al Khaldi’s voice delivers a traditional chant, weaving through spectral melancholy and emotive synth melodies underscoring stunning vocal work and intricate, heart-pounding percussion.
The Rome-based artist spent six weeks between Bethlehem and Ramallah in early 2024, working with an incredible cast of guest collaborators: producer Julmud, yarghul maestro Osama Abu Ali, percussionists Jihad Shouibi and Karam Fares, and composer Alabaster DePlume. Archival recordings surface throughout, Hajja Badriya’s filtered voice on “Echoes of the Harvest” carrying both distance and immediacy. Mai Mai Mai drives Karakoz forward with intricate, interesting rhythms, all of it acting like a greater, unnamable force. These emotionally-driven sonic exorcisms reckon with what it means to create during impossible times. A truly stunning record.
Karakoz is OUT NOW on Maple Death. Essential listening.
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What are your earliest memories of sound and music?
Let’s divide the two experiences.
Sound, I’ve thought about it many times. It’s something that left a powerful impression on me, something that I believe later emerged with Mai Mai Mai. When I was a child, my father (my family has always worked close to the sea: sailors, fishermen, shipowners, and they looked after the tugboats at the port of Crotone) often took me to the docks to watch the cranes unloading containers from enormous ships, or to take a tour of the tugboats. I remember that going down into the engine room was an experience somewhere between fascination and fear. It was like being an ant in a car engine. The visceral, intense sound and those enormous mechanisms, the diesel and oil, those smells, and the going back up and seeing the sea and a wonderful sunset over the Mediterranean with the sound of the waves and the seagulls. I remember this sound clash among my first strong and intense experiences, and I find it fundamental to the sonic practice of Mai Mai Mai.
As for music, nothing special. Except that we listened to vinyl records at home, and I was fascinated by the object itself, the covers, spinning it on the turntable, and placing the needle. We mostly listened to classical music at home. My father listened to a lot of Franco Battiato.
Can you talk about your early experiments with sound and composition? What were you trying to figure out or express when you first started?
I actually started out as a drummer. I’ve always been obsessed with rhythm and timing, trying to break free from certain canons as much as possible by experimenting or, conversely, obsessing over repetition. My love for synths and electronic music then led me to experiment by combining acoustic and electronic sounds, and from there it probably evolved into my passion for creating sonic narratives by blending “real” sounds (field recordings, sound archives, acoustic instruments, voices) with the sounds of analog (and digital) equipment.
The press materials mention your “traditional industrial miasma” as a foundation. How did you develop that approach? What were the early influences or discoveries that shaped that sound?
We probably go back to the first answer in the interview to understand where this approach comes from. The industrial sounds of freight ships and tugboats and enormous cranes, the smoke, the dirt, the diesel fuel, meet the sonic and visual romanticism of southern Italy and the Mediterranean. An approach that leads me to combine the cleanliness of acoustics, ethnic tradition, and sound archives with the grime of machines and synths and field recordings.
As a musical influence, I’ve always looked to the Italian soundtracks of the ’70s: horror, giallo movies, and the fermenting avant-garde of those years in our country: library music, Italian prog, and psychedelia. I searched for references there, then found my own path.
You spent six weeks between Bethlehem and Ramallah during an incredibly difficult time (to put it mildly). Can you talk about what drew you to Palestine for this project, and how the decision to go there came about?
The research with Mai Mai Mai is rooted in the traditions of Southern Italy and the Mediterranean. So the move to Palestine came about because it’s a shore of our sea and a culture I find similar and fraternal, in many ways: culturally, sonically, and even in terms of landscape. What brought me there were the people I’d met and the relationships I’d developed over the past few years. After meeting the Radio alHara crew at festivals and concerts in Italy and Europe, we established a great relationship, both human and artistic. I organized several events in Rome, bringing them to the city or co-curating events together. And at a certain point, my desire to be there with them to realize a project took shape (this happened in the summer of 2023, with plans for the Fall). Initially, it was supposed to be a tour that included a stop in Amman, Jordan, a date in Ramallah and Bethlehem, spending some time there for recording, and then a stop in Beirut, Lebanon, to perform before returning to Rome. But then the plans were forced to change. Initially, it seemed like everything would be canceled. But then, after talking with the people involved, with Ibrahim Owais and the Wonder Cabinet in Bethlehem, and with Julmud and Maya Al Khaldi in Ramallah, we reshaped the project, but I think it was important not to cancel it. It seemed like a difficult decision to go, but it would have been even harder to decide not to.
Walking through those cities, meeting musicians, exploring archives – what were some of the moments or encounters that fundamentally changed how you heard the music or understood what you were making?
It was an intense experience that certainly left an indelible mark on me, both personally and artistically. Every encounter I had during those days, every conversation, every meal shared, every walk I took, every place I visited changed my perspective. I thought I was prepared, but I must admit that seeing with my own eyes what it means to live daily under occupation, deprived of the rights and freedoms we consider common, in an apartheid regime that aims to divide, isolate, and eliminate, was a step beyond. My plan was to share moments and create something through collaboration. But it went much further. I hope the result of “how all this changed” me can be heard in the notes and voices of Karakoz, and that it reaches straight to the heart.
The residency was split between January and May 2024. How did that gap in the middle affect the work? Did you return to Rome with recordings and ideas that evolved before going back?
The residency was actually only supposed to be three weeks in January, but as soon as we returned to Rome, we immediately began looking for and planning a way to return. When the Wonder Cabinet began planning a beautiful project called Sounds of Places, we immediately imagined how to collaborate and make the return feasible, which indeed happened in May when this sound gathering was held. In May, the situation seemed to be calming down (obviously not): it was nice because many more people and more international artists came and got involved. In January, there were only three external participants (me, Ilaria Doimo, my partner, in residence with me to photograph and film the project, and Sofia Lambrou, a Greek-Spanish artist). By May, there were about a dozen international artists, plus many local artists involved. In May, for example, we did a collaboration with Alabaster dePlume and Samy El-Enany on a live improv set, and with Manaal Oomerbohy on an audio-video installation. It was a special moment, so different from the vibes in January. There have been fruitful and stimulating exchanges, working on this project focused on the Cremisan Valley, one of the last green spaces between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, which for years has been at risk of being occupied and illegally annexed, and therefore no longer accessible to the Palestinians who own vineyards, olive groves, and cultivated land there.
The album brings together Maya Al Khaldi, Julmud, Osama Abu Ali, Jihad Shouibi, Karam Fares, Alabaster DePlume, and archival recordings of Hajja Badriya. How did these collaborations come together? Were you actively seeking specific voices and instruments, or did the connections happen more organically during your time there?
There was no way to really plan the activities. As I said before, the entire initial program had already changed. And changed again, and again. I didn’t even know if we’d be able to get in, and once we got in, we had to move around and stay for the activities. So I had a plan in mind, but I knew it had to remain flexible, and only day by day could we confirm the various activities. Among the musicians I already knew and respected for their work were Maya and Julmud, whom I had contacted some time ago. Obviously, Owais in Bethlehem was fundamental in making the residency possible. The other collaborations were born on the spot: while I was in Ramallah, thanks to the support of Radio Atheer, I contacted the conservatory, asking about the possibility of meeting musicians from the traditional scene. I was obviously targeting instruments in particular, primarily percussion (I told you I am a drummer and I love to work on rhythms), and then string instruments like the oud or bouzuq, and wind instruments. In Bethlehem, they were trying to arrange a meeting with this legendary Osama Abu Ali: a musician and player of the yarghul (flute) who is something of a local star of traditional music. He collects bamboo and makes his own flutes, plays nonstop at the biggest weddings and village festivals, and has videos with millions of views. This collaboration was possible thanks to Yousef and Elias Anastas (founders of Radio Alhara and Wonder Cabinet, who knew him and had collaborated with him). When he arrived, I was in awe, partly because I didn’t know if he could understand my aptitude and my musical language. Instead, I grabbed his flutes from a briefcase, and we started playing right away, and it seemed as if we’d already known each other for a long time. The other specific collaboration I wanted was with the Popular Art Center: when they gave me the go-ahead to meet them and have access to their archive, it was a moment of great happiness and honor! They do a great job (and like any organization that works on Palestinian culture, heritage, and art, they are also under attack and often in danger. These would be perfectly normal activities, but obviously not under an occupation that seeks to destabilize, frighten, block activities, and try to destroy the archive (as a source of memory). The hours spent listening to digitized tapes recorded in the villages are divided by year, area, and topic. It was wonderful. A portal that catapulted me to distant and very recent places and times, with unknown yet so familiar people. My research focused on the themes that interest me most generally in my work: ritual and spirituality, first and foremost, such as funeral chants, olive harvest songs, or religious holidays, or those linked to the changing seasons and rurality. As I mentioned previously, the collaboration with Alabaster dePlume came about in May: we knew each other but not in person, put in touch by a mutual friend precisely because I had been to Bethlehem and Alabaster was planning to come. Those cosmic forces that surround us wanted him to organize his arrival right in the period of sounds of places, and so he got in touch with Radio Alhara and the Wonder Cabinet and organized everything in order to be there: from there, then spending two weeks together, it came naturally to do something that narrated that intense experience that we shared.
You mention the heart of your process has always been about building connections and understanding people and their rituals. How did that philosophy guide your work in Palestine specifically?
This very attitude guided me. The difference is that usually we approach things in an intense and profound way, but also lighthearted and carefree, sharing beautiful moments tied to creating, producing, and experiencing moments with different points of view, different methods, and seeking a connection. All this happened, of course. But this time, however, there was so much more to the sharing: an ongoing genocide, mourning, the feeling of being stuck and speechless, helpless, of not knowing what to do, as people and as artists. It was a constant questioning of the meaning of our work in a moment like this, a constant search for it, and wondering if it exists at all. Knowing, moreover, that it’s not just a moment but rather a matter of living under an occupation for decades… There have been so many other levels that have burdened and enriched these weeks. I don’t think I can truly understand what it means, but it has certainly opened my eyes. And I hope that music says more than words.
Maya Al Khaldi opens the album with ‘Grief,’ a traditional grieving chant. Can you talk about working with her and how that piece came together? What did her voice and that particular chant bring to the record that felt essential, especially as the first thing listeners hear?
“Grief” is the first track on the album for many reasons. Maya was the first person we met when we arrived in Ramallah. Speaking with her, discussing the situation, listening to her stories and her tales, as well as her music, was a pivotal moment in this experience. She pointed me in the right direction—or if not the right one (who knows), at least the one I’ve taken, which I consider an excellent path. We’d already been in touch via email to figure out what to do and how to direct the work. Finding the meaning of a collaboration like this, how to combine our practices, and above all, what to tell and express. While telling her about my work, I even played her a track (“Il Pianto”) I composed using a traditional funeral lament from Puglia, sung in Griko Salentino (a language spoken in that area, a mixture of ancient Greek and local dialect). We discover we have a lot in common: she is an academic researcher and her studies are on Palestinian folklore, and she was carrying out research on Palestinian funeral chants, now on the verge of extinction, trying to bring them back to light. Both in an ethnomusicological and philological sense, and obviously as a piece to be inserted into her artistic practice.
Grief is also the feeling that seemed to envelop everything in that moment. Therefore, having to tell and communicate something, it would certainly have been a clear and direct message. She worked on the lyrics and then came to the Radio Atheer studio, and we recorded her version and interpretation of this chant. It was so powerful that I felt the urge to work on it immediately (while the rest of the material waited months before I got to work on it). The next day, I was in the studio, head down on the synths, completing this lament. The basic track was finished within a few days. I was still in Ramallah when we listened to it again together to see if she liked what I’d composed. Such was the need to let out that internal lament that gripped us. And it was also for this track that I then decided to continue: it couldn’t remain a standalone single. It was too powerful. It was the beginning of a story that needed to be continued… and starting from this, I began to tell this journey through the tunes and the voices you can now listen to in Karakoz.
Your sound has evolved considerably from Rimorso to Karakoz. Can you talk about how Palestinian traditional music and the environment there influenced or transformed your approach to composition and texture?
Yes, I also sense an evolution, or at least a difference. First of all, three years have passed between Rimorso and Karakoz. It’s a long period of time in which you grow and in which I’ve also had many other experiences (many live performances around Europe, the vinyl collaboration with maestro Lino Capra Vaccina, and I composed two feature-length soundtracks). If I listen to the first albums, the “Mediterranean trilogy” (Theta, Delta, Phi), on the one hand, I hear a vast sonic difference, but on the other, everything is so coherent. It’s a long journey that began years ago, which has obviously evolved and formed while remaining linear and coherent. This transition is also felt between Rimorso and Karakoz. Then, on this latest album, the production was done with Filippo Brancadoro, who, with his technical skills and abilities, and his studio full of interesting instruments, was a key figure in arriving at this sound.
Obviously, the place, the time, and the people involved in the album greatly influenced the composition and the overall sound. I tried to leave as much of the contribution and collaboration of the musicians involved as possible, as well as the archival sounds and field recordings. My musical practice is closely tied to a certain type of ghost, which is why I also consider it a Mediterranean type of Hauntology. I’ve always worked with what I consider the ghosts of southern Italy: they are my ghosts, which I handle in a very personal way, and I tend to make them interact with the music, often ending up succumbing, disappearing into the miasma, like fading memories, recollections that become thinner, dreams that seem very clear upon awakening but quickly fade away. In Karakoz, however, I wanted these ghosts and spirits to be very present and to drive the narrative, without dispersing, without disappearing; quite the opposite, a ritual to make them appear and give them new shape. This approach, which I have kept since the beginning, has totally influenced the composition of the album and therefore also the sounds that I have looked for, even if it always remains a distinctive sound of mai mai mai.
You spent time with the Ramallah Popular Art Center’s Sound Archive. What was that experience like? How do you approach working with archival recordings in a way that feels respectful and alive rather than extractive?
Let me start by saying that I really enjoy archival work, whether it’s dusty books in old libraries or audio archives: you could say, I’m a bookworm. I approached them in a completely reverential way: the work they do represents a great act of resistance, and they suffer the consequences. While I was there with them at the first meeting, they told me about the constant attacks, abuses, and threats they face due to the occupation. Simply teaching and spreading their culture and arts (like Dabke, the Palestinian dance symbolizing resistance), simply working to preserve the memory of this culture, their daily activities, typical of a cultural center, living under forced occupation, are considered “dangerous.” These were wonderful encounters, and I’m happy to have been able to listen to their voices and those immortalized on hundreds of tapes and cassettes. A cathartic immersion that allowed me to delve into this Land, beyond space and time. As I mentioned above, my approach to the material was different than usual. I always remain far from ethnomusicological purity: I’ve never appreciated the idea of sound as embellished and displayed in a museum, like a display case in which we see embalmed and dead folklore. Mine is for sure a dirty approach, but one that attempts to revive those spirits and voices. At the core is a strong internal dialogue that I carry on, I internalize them and empathetically revive them within me, a cross between meditation and a séance: then they emerge, and I transform them and play them to convey what I felt, those shivers, those goosebumps, those tears, those smiles and laughs. Compared to the way I work with the Ghosts of southern Italy, in this case, I wanted their voices and their messages to be much clearer, for them to carry on the communication, even if in a present struggle between synths, machines, and voices, but always a very clear dialogue. Perhaps the best example on the album is the piece with Alabaster dePlume: here the dialogue becomes a three-way conversation, I know that his soul is very similar to mine and we have lived some profound experiences together, the dialogue has opened up, between the pulsating of a modular buchla, his sax and a voice that speaks of times and places very distant but instead, inside us, so familiar and close.
The album is described as exploring memory, identity, and sound. Whose memories are you holding in this work? How do you navigate making art about a place and people while remaining aware of your position as an outsider?
I would never pretend to be the bearer of other people’s memories. All of Mai Mai Mai’s works are intended as journeys told through music: it can be an accompaniment or a soundtrack, or sonic portraits of moments and stories. On these journeys, I always accompany trusted people with whom I share these experiences; they can be guides or adventure companions. I never feel like an outsider or a stranger: I sail along the shores of the Mediterranean; these are lands that I feel are mine and cultures that I feel are sisters. I am certainly a guest, and I enjoy listening, watching, and discovering, especially when guided by people I trust. KARAKOZ is no exception to this attitude. They are the memories of this journey, which takes place in a specific moment and place, but is also outside of time and traditional geographies. They are filtered through my memory, which is full of voices, sounds, smells, and colors. So the story is very personal, but it is full of other points of view that I want to keep very clear as part of the story itself, so that someone will be able to identify with them, precisely because they are Mediterranean spirits and Ghosts who tell their stories, past, present, and future, or even those that never existed. This album is also accompanied by text and photographs (you find it in the LP published as inner booklet and poster or you can find it online published by NERO Editions on their site: https://www.neroeditions.com/docs/among-the-shadows-of-karakoz/) There are a couple of introductory texts (one written by me and one by a friend who knows the place and the people well and I asked to give us her point of view, Micol Meghnagi) and then conversations with those involved (Maya Al Khaldi, Ibrahim Owais, Elias, and Yousef Anastas). The photographs also accompany the story, taken by Ilaria Doimo and Sofia Lambrou, recounting in images those places and moments.
The Karakoz (the shadow theater) is described as representing the physical, communal side of the record, while Jinn carry the spiritual force. Can you expand on that duality and how it manifests in the music itself?
For the first edition of Sounds of Places (May 2024, Bethlehem, Cremisan Valley), I had prepared an audio-video installation: I had edited and mixed an hour of sound flow entirely recorded in Palestine, and was looking for a video section to match. In my research, I stumbled upon the traditional shadow theater of the Ottoman Empire (so Palestine was also part of it at the time). Besides reminding me of strong connections with traditional Italian puppets or with the “pupi siciliani”, and therefore feeling akin to it, it matched perfectly with this idea I had that those sounds, those soundscapes, those human and non-human voices, were like shadows that tell their stories while the spectator listens and enters their world. This combination of “shadow sound” and shadow theater guided me to complete the installation, which I called “Karakoz”… and after that, I thought of keeping the name as the title of the album as well. These Shadows are the storytellers; we listen to them and watch them appear and disappear.
Jinn are spirits, beings of the middle, who shuttle between different worlds. They have their own personalities and powers. They can be invoked or encountered. Following a legend that holds a Jinn inhabits the old souk of Bethlehem, I’ve often been there recording with my Zoom, even after the market is closed, at night, to see if I could capture a message or presence. And so it has been in many other places I’ve visited and traveled. I know I’ve encountered some Jinn, and that some of their spiritual power is also present in those recordings. I grew up with the spirits of abandoned places in Calabria and Southern Italy: Greek ruins, Roman temples, collapsed churches, abandoned factories, and ghost ships. So seeking an encounter with a Jinn, without disturbing or offending them, since I’m in their lands, seemed my duty. And in this travel diary, their spiritual energy is obviously also present, as well as being engraved in gold on the album cover, as a warning to the listener.
This is an album recorded during an ongoing genocide. That’s an impossible context. How did you hold that weight while making the work? What felt important to preserve or amplify, and what felt impossible or inappropriate to touch?
It’s a question I asked myself before leaving, whether it made sense to go. It’s a question I asked myself daily while I was there, and that I asked others. I don’t think I’ve found an answer. Or perhaps the answer lies precisely among the notes of Karakoz, among those voices, those percussions, those soundscapes, those Shadows and Spirits. I still have so much to process inside me. Composing this album with the material recorded there certainly helped. Just as it helped me to see the people I collaborated with start making music again, even just for this excuse, respectfully pushed by me and my requests, by my being there in that moment. I saw and shared this moment of release, a push to reactivate, to stop being silent, to feel the urgency to compose and make art and music, to understand that it’s important to make your voice heard, and indeed it’s part of a certain type of resistance that is necessary. I felt like I was an active part of this process, and this awareness helped me. But still, I don’t have the answer.
And finally, to close as always, what are some of your favorite sounds in the world?
As I told you, I’m a drummer. And I love hearing the traditional sounds of percussion, the rhythms so different from culture to culture, which also differentiate dance and movement, the moment of celebration as a shared social experience within families, tribes, and clans. From the drums of southern Italy, the tammorra, or the tarantella and pizzica, to voodoo drums, Japanese percussion, and the rhythms of various carnivals around the world, all the way to Indonesian gamelan. Especially when the music is linked to a certain ritual and spiritual moment, it fascinates me deeply and inspires me in my work and my practice.
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