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With roots in Beirut and a career split between Montreal and New York, Nadim Maghzal is one of the driving forces behind Laylit, a collective and event series highlighting music from the SWANA region and beyond. Also known as one half of the duo Wake Island, Nadim is a producer, DJ, and former molecular biologist who now channels his energy into music full-time. We sat down with him ahead of his performance at Piknic Électronik, where he’ll be playing alongside Casa Kobrae, Manalou, and MNSA, to talk about his journey, the origins of Laylit, and the cultural movement behind it.
PAN M 360: First of all, how would you introduce yourself?
Nadim Maghzal: I’m an artist originally from Lebanon, a musician, producer and DJ. I’m now based in Montreal
PAN M 360: Have you always been an artist and a musician?
Nadim Maghzal: My journey is a little complex. I’ve always made music since I was young, but when I got to Montreal in the early 2000s, I was studying biology at McGill University. I went far with it, I basically got a PhD in molecular biology and graduated in 2013, but I kept pursuing research and teaching. So I’m also a scientist, but music has always been my biggest passion. Before Laylit, I was involved in many bands in Montreal, like rock bands, punk bands, live music. Very DIY. All of it was with my Laylit partner, Phil. We started Wake Island in Montreal and toured the world with this project that has evolved over the years from rock music to electronic music and more recently to ambient experimental stuff. So yeah, music has always been the center of my world. But I’ve done other stuff in life and I’ve been very, very fortunate to be able to explore different things and just to have the privilege to be able to focus on music these days and work in that medium. That’s a blessing, honestly.
PAN M 360: Completing your PhD must have taken a big chunk of your life. How did you manage to still make music?
Nadim Maghzal: Yeah, it took me about six and a half years to finish it. The best part of it was pursuing music in parallel. It was especially amazing because I drew so many parallels between art and science. A PhD can be really frustrating, especially in science, when you’re doing research in your lab the whole time. So being on the road, touring, being creative, being in the studio, it was always kind of a great escape and a beautiful way to get inspired. One thing inspires the other. And even though they seem like completely different things, weirdly for me at the time they went hand in hand. Another fun fact, since we’re talking about this, the third co-founder of Laylit, Saphe, who’s in New York, is also about to finish his PhD at Columbia University studying anthropology. I don’t know if that’s relevant, but just a fun fact.
PAN M 360: Just so the readers know, when there’s a Laylit event, everyone is safe because there are two doctors. Was there a moment where the music kind of took over?
Nadim Maghzal: Basically when I was in New York, from 2015 through 2020, I still had a foot in the science world. I was teaching a lot to make ends meet because just doing music can be extremely difficult, especially when you’re independent and trying to do interesting projects. Our first Laylit party was in 2018 in Brooklyn in a tiny little bar, and very quickly in 2019 we started seeing how much potential this project had. It was part of a movement in New York that really exploded because of the need for spaces like Laylit to exist in the cultural landscape. I realized that Laylit was going to be very time-consuming. It kind of naturally happened, I stopped teaching science and focused all of my time on Laylit and the other projects we had, like touring with Wake Island and music production.
Then there was the pandemic, that was kind of a very confusing time, of course, because parties and live events and touring are all physical. So there was some questioning around what I should do with my time and whether or not music was dead. Like, should I maybe go back to science? Maybe music is dead as we know it, like it doesn’t exist anymore. But in 2021, when things opened up in New York again, we were reassured and kind of pleasantly surprised because events were crazy. People needed to party, and since then, music has become everything I do.
PAN M 360: What would you attribute to the success of these events? You mentioned a movement happening in New York around 2018. Can you tell us more about this?
Nadim Maghzal: When I was living in New York and participating in the nightlife as an audience member, it became evident that there was a lot of space for our people (SWANA), our culture and our music, to simply exist. Music from all around the globe was being played in clubs and diversity was really cherished. Seeing this as an artist from Lebanon who was in this indie rock bubble in Montreal, it was inspiring. It felt like a long time coming to reconnect with my own roots, and dance music was the perfect medium to revisit and dive into the core of what made me who I am, the rhythms, the culture, the language.
The first party was very informal. We were like, “Hey, let’s just throw a small party on a Wednesday night and invite our friends to come hang out”
We did this thing in a bar called Mood Ring and we were shocked, it was packed. People wanted more of it. It felt, at the time, that there was a need for this. Our community never really had spaces. To be clear, there have always been music events, but most of the time it stays within the community, weddings, parties in the Suburbs, but I never really felt like Arabic music was celebrated in the heart of New York City or Montreal’s music culture. We realized, “We have a chance at this. We should work it.” So we did, and it’s been amazing.
Post-9/11, Arabic culture took a big hit. It took a lot of time for the community to get over the stigma in society, and we’re not quite over it, and to share the beauty and diversity of this culture. We do this in dance music and we’re happy to have a tiny contribution.
PAN M 360: Around Lebanon and the Middle East, there are musical movements that extend between many different countries. The diversity and complexity of genres in SWANA culture can be hard to wrap one’s head around. When curating a lineup, how do you approach this?
Nadim Maghzal: When we first dove into this, it was a bit overwhelming, particularly because of the diversity you’ve described. Growing up in Lebanon and even just listening to Arabic pop, there are so many influences. We learned a lot from this project. It was a challenge to dig into the repertoire, to start listening to things we didn’t know. Trying to understand the social aspects and where cultural movements stem from has been very enriching, not only from a curatorial standpoint, but I believe for audience members as well, by opening the space to DJs from across the SWANA region.
As an example, at the Piknic show we have Manalou and Casa Kobrae, from Algeria and Morocco respectively, who’ll be spinning with us. They bring music and rhythms native from those regions, sounds that I didn’t grow up with but it’s still very close to the music I do know, there’s always this novelty aspect which is really cool.
It’s so rich. We try to bring that diversity of sounds to the audience. It’s not always simple because some audiences have a preconceived idea of what an Arabic music party is, they expect to hear top 40 hits. But sometimes we’ll book a DJ who digs into a more folkloric repertoire, stuff that hasn’t been heard before. As long as we’re learning something new, the project stays interesting and stays alive. We’re here for that, not just to throw events or be party promoters.
PAN M 360: Since Laylit covers artists from across the region without reducing Arabic music to a stereotype, do you think there’s a common thread across the SWANA region?
Nadim Maghzal: There are definitely commonalities. I’ll try to describe them in a way that avoids stereotypes. I would say language is one thing that overlaps the most, but even there, the SWANA region has a lot of diversity in languages. There’s one main language spoken in many dialects, but you also have Armenian, Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, Amazigh etc.
My perspective is that in general, in everything I’ve heard, there is always a generosity in sound. Whether it’s a sad love song or a happy festival song, the emotion is delivered with generosity. There’s less holding back. Obviously, it’s subjective and not unique to Arabic music, jazz can be generous too, but in contrast to minimal techno or other more intellectualized music, Arabic music tends to feel more open emotionally.
Rhythmically and melodically, the region shares deep structures and patterns, from Syria to Egypt to Iraq. There’s a shared musical language, but what makes it fascinating is the mix of influences, Amazigh, sub-Saharan, blues, African music… it gets messy in the best way. There are unifying elements, but also awesome regional differences. That’s what we try to highlight in our events.
PAN M 360: How does being an artist in the diaspora affect your approach to music?
Nadim Maghzal: That’s the third dimension, right? You take all this richness and then open it up in the diaspora, and all this mixing starts happening. For myself, as someone who spent half their life in Lebanon, I’ve learned a lot through this process. As you get older, it doesn’t get easier, it actually gets harder to know who you are, where you’re from. But through artistic expression, the hybridization of sounds creates unique identities for each artist as they dig into their influences.
Also, growing up in Lebanon, our music was always shaped by tradition, yes, but also by western music. The same is true in Egypt and Syria. You can hear Russian ballet influences in recordings from the 1920s. In North Africa, you can find Arabic reggae records. So it’s not just diaspora, Western culture was part of my musical identity from early on. We all try to dig into our childhoods for inspiration because that’s what resonates most.
PAN M 360: When organizing a Laylit event you have more control, but at Piknic you mostly focus on the music. How are you curating this one?
Nadim Maghzal: We adapt to whatever space we’re performing in. The focus is always first and foremost on the music and the lineup. For Piknic, we’re just proposing a lineup of DJs. There will be Manalou, who I spoke about earlier, and Casa Kobrae, a Moroccan DJ from Casablanca who’s now based in Montreal. The focus is on Montreal-based DJs from the SWANA community and shedding light on their musical expression. We hope to have an audience that is receptive and just as curious as we are.
PAN M 360: Last question, what are you looking forward to this summer? What’s motivating you?
Nadim Maghzal: When we started Laylit, it picked up so quickly that we had to put all of our attention on the events in New York and Montreal. Quickly, other cities were added, and we got so busy that I had to put other projects on the side, including, for me, a big part of what I love about music, production.
Now that we have more of a system in place, we’ve been focusing on original music as a collective, softly opening as a record label. We put out our first compilation a few weeks ago. It was such a rewarding experience.
That’s what’s driving me these days, it’s a synthesis of what Laylit has been for me. Putting those feelings into tracks, encouraging other producers to do the same. Not just DJ sets, but tracks that others can play. Saphe in our collective always says, music travels faster than us. It’s so rewarding to see people from Athens or Russia listening and playing our tracks. There’s a lot of new music coming and we’re very excited to share it.
