25.08.2025 Community Evening Diaspora Music Business & Collectivity across Geographies

Geographies, MusicScattered but Connected: Diaspora Music Business & Collectivity across Geographies

Music Pool Community evening co-curated by AL Berlin

The past decade has seen significant growth in Arab speaking diasporas in European cities due to intensifying geopolitical events in the region. Arab speaking diasporas, often working with European and North American entities such as booking agents, festivals, labels, venues and agencies, recognize the need for new work models and approaches to produce, perform and disseminate their work, questioning existing hegemonic models within the global music industry and how these articulate themselves in performance, touring, production and dissemination deals available to independent artists not only of Arab of origin.

In this Community Evening, we would like to bring together musicians and cultural workers from the SWANA region (South West Asia and Northern Africa) living in Berlin for a panel conversation, to discuss experiences and approaches of building sustainable practices and collective work within this context of fragmentation and work across borders, and within systems that often exclude us. From visa struggles and unstable funding to censorship and solidarity, the conversation explores what it means to create music and community in this context, both internationally and locally in Berlin.

We aim to talk about topics such as: – Visas & Bureaucracy: How mobility restrictions shape who gets to perform and be heard – Sustainability & Funding: Making a living amid unstable support and extractive economies – Cooperation in Berlin: Building networks and mutual support among SWANA cultural workers

While the conversation focuses on the particular experiences of SWANA cultural workers, it is interesting for anyone dealing with diaspora music business, and all artists, organizers, and anyone invested in rethinking transnational music work are very welcome.