5. Swana electro artists in the PAN M 360 spotlight: Sammy Halimi, Crissemarqueur, Firas Nassri, Mourad Bncr, OM El Beat, Shadya, Wake Island
The Arab population makes up 20.6% of visible minorities in Greater Montreal, ranking 2nd after the black population, which is close to 30%. Visible, they say? Perhaps not so much. The fact is that they are poorly represented in many areas of society, including the electronic music scene.
And yet, Swana electro artists are on a roll in every major metropolis in the world! Montreal, however, is no exception to the trend. The city is full of little treasures, but they are more often acclaimed abroad or outside the province than on the island. Their visibility in the media or on the big stages or at major events is still rather minimal here.
With this feature by our contributor Salima Bouaraour, PAN M 360 shines the spotlight on this thriving pool of artists involved in the development of Montreal’s cultural and nightlife scene, as well as promoting and defending the values of equality, justice, creativity, inclusivity and the celebration of Arab beauty.
In alphabetical order:
Aquaventure (Canada/Québec/Algeria):
Sammy Halimi is the curator of the Oxygen summer event series and producer known as Aquaventure.
Both his events and his music production are inspired by Nature and all the potential it can offer in terms of a welcoming setting for the community to experience sound or ideation.
Sammy has appeared on stage at the Mutek Festival, in a creative project with RAMZI, and as a speaker at the International Conferences of the Sommet de la Nuit to share with the city of Montreal how to take over parks or unusual semi-natural sites for artists, using Berlin or Amsterdam as a model.
Crissemarqueur (Canada/Québec/Tunisia)
Taher Gargouri is the mastermind behind LATEX, a kinky, ultra-advanced series of offbeat events.
A DJ known as Crissemarqueur, Taher is also curator of production company Slata Prod (Tangerine, Kafichanta, LATEX). He is also co-founder of the Fédération des Arts Nocturnes – FANTOM-.
LATEX brings a new, contagious energy to the Montreal kink and rave scenes, while creating a more secure and much-needed space for BIPOC, queer and marginalized individuals (artists and audiences alike) to express themselves and celebrate their identity. Fusing BDSM and Techno in spaces that are inclusive and safe for Montreal ravers, LATEX brings a live sensory experience to the community.
Crissemarqueur frankly and sincerely explores his North African roots through percussive, sensual tracks tinged with techno nuance. His mixes are rich in terms of selection, and he uses remarkable technique to offer his audience a wide range of listening experiences, alternating between traditional oriental music, percussive, black and danceable techno and electro.
Our interview with Crissemarqueur HERE.
Firas Nassri (Canada/Québec/Syria)
Firas is a prolific artist and producer whose music explores his desires, the various facets of his identity and multidimensional culture, and the meaning of creation.
His highly successful album, La Levantine en 2021, blends electronic and oriental music. Released on the CosmoVision label, this album was supported by the collective, whose aim is to promote Montreal artists of immigrant backgrounds through a collaborative approach.
Among other things, he developed Ossa Project: a duo with Lebanese-Canadian multi-instrumentalist and singer Naïm Souaid, in which they explore sung tales in Arabic against a backdrop of rich, varied and dreamlike electronic music.
His latest project, “Ghosts Within”, was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and premiered in Vancouver. It was enthusiastically unveiled to Montreal audiences on September 24.
Indistinct voices of PA (Canada/Québec/Algeria)
Mourad Bennacer (Bncr) has been a versatile multimedia artist for over two decades.
His sound and visual work is inspired by the concept of ephemeral memory and is imbued with beat music, leaving plenty of room for texture and detail. He thus creates a meeting point between his North African cultural heritage, worlds imbued with science fiction and a fascination for technological obsolescence.
For several years now, he has been pursuing a prolific professional career as a trainer and sound designer specializing in the creation of immersive environments at the Society for Arts and Technology, spatialized audio and mixed reality. Blending live sound recording, instrumentation, sound synthesis and microsampling techniques, his musical language appropriates the notion of space in a singular way and comes close to cinematic composition. He regularly collaborates with renowned artists such as Pierre Friquet, Nature Graphique Studios and Iregular.
His EP UNREST, released by Unlog in 2021, is a synthesis of this career path, an assertive transition to a new musical colour.
Mourad is also an active member of Silicon Beats, an electronic music collective known for its jam sessions and film-concerts. He is also co-founder of Unlog, a music collective and label focused on electronic and audiovisual explorations. Unlog has forged a distinctive musical signature over its ten years as a label and music event organizer, supporting the work of international and local artists such as Engone Endong, Camille Frey, Tehu, Vince Konigan, TSF and many others.
Om El Beat (Canada/Québec/Syria)
Producer and DJ Om El Beat – Batoul Almohamad – is of Syrian origin and based in Montreal.
This prolific queer artist has numerous albums and performances to her name. She interweaves nostalgic moods with melancholy electro. Her mixes are a fusion of swana, electro and techno.
The CosmoVision label has also successfully supported some of her projects.
His live appearances are often alongside Crissemarqueur, Wake Island, SHADYA, QUEEN AND QUEER and many others! His activity in the Middle East is extremely rich.
In 2021, an incredible live show was filmed with a drone overlooking the city of Istanbul in Turkey.
SHADYA (Canada/Québec/Algeria)
A queer artist, decolonial intersectional feminist and committed to the fight against systemic racism, SHADYA has been pursuing a multi-faceted career for over twenty years.
She has been founder and co-manager of an electronic music label – Chez.Kito.Kat records – since 2006, DJ, journalist for PAN M 360, co-curator of the Tempio Nero/AnaLoveMyLog parties and involved in committees such as MTL24/24’s Conseil de Nuit (since 2020) or the Racisme, exclusion sociale et laïcité de l’État committee of the Ligue des droits et libertés (2021).
Through horizontal collective management with DBY and Mr Bios (producers and DJs), the label currently boasts 91 releases by some 30 international artists. The label’s artistic direction is resolutely oriented towards explorative electronic music, mostly analog and modular. Dancefloor references are distributed by Lobster Theremin (UK) and Underscope (FR). Artists from the Montreal label can be found on the stages of the great institutions of electronic music: Berghain, Mutek, Le Sucre… The label is referenced on Hate Music, Trax, Nova, The Wire, Les Yeux Oranges, Resident Advisor, Les Inrockuptibles, NPR, Le Monde, and FIP Radio de Radio France.
A long-time performer in an electroclash band in Europe, she now devotes her time to djing, mixing electro/techno/breaké/acid/oriental/dark/jungle/ hip hop electro breaké swana selections. SHADYA performs regularly in Montreal and has had the opportunity to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Nuit Blanche at MTELUS in February 2023 in partnership with MTL24/24, or a musical celebration for the Musée d’art contemporain Pompidou in Brussels at Kanal Studio in 2021.
ra.co/dj/shadya
Wake Island (Canada/Québec/Lebanon)
Wake Island is a Montreal-based duo of electronic music producers from Beirut.
Through their music, they attempt to reconcile their Lebanese roots with their North American life. Blending Middle Eastern sounds with techno rhythms, they create pop songs that are sometimes reminiscent of the 80s and 90s, while keeping a clear openness to the future.
The duo consists of Philippe Manasseh (he/him) and Nadim Maghzal (he/him), two Lebanese immigrants who met in Montreal in the early 2000s. Since 2018, the band has been firmly established between New York and Montreal in the Middle Eastern and LGBTQ scenes.
In particular, they have created Laylit, a dance party seeking to showcase the musical diversity of the Middle East and North Africa region. Glorified by the New York Times and Pitchfork, Laylit celebrated its 5th anniversary in the summer of 2023 with an America/Middle East tour and a Boiler Room session in New York.
Since 2020, they have been focusing on multidisciplinary projects, establishing their presence in the interactive and VR/AR fields.
For this compilation, Wake Island generously offers us a track from their latest album: Sleep 2.0 from the Born to Leave album.
Wake Island Boiler Room, Summer 2023, New York
Nadim Maghzal (Wake Island)
The End
