Palestinian artist Lougien Dawoudiah is exploring the connection between solidarity and music with SUBR صبر, a deep listening music project.
The Ottawa-based DJ and advocate said the name is based on the Arabic word “sabir,” which means patience, forbearance and tolerance. The term is also synonymous with the words cactus, thorny and resilient.
Through reconfigured music controllers and layered speakers, SUBR offers a study into traditional Palestinian sounds, modern productions and field recordings.
The project began in summer 2024 when musician Nicholas LePage and Dawoudiah met at the University of Ottawa’s pro-Palestine encampments. They found common ground in the role of music in activism, which led to the creation of SUBR. While Dawoudiah continues to work on the project, LePage is pursuing a creative path in Montreal.
The Charlatan sat down with Dawoudiah to learn how art can be used as a means of resistance and to explore the intricacies of Palestinian culture.
The Charlatan (TC): What compelled you to bring SUBR to life?
Lougien Dawoudiah (LD): I had gone through a period of loss, despair and helplessness. We were doing, and we still are, doing everything that we can to express our solidarity and to support our communities, speak up for ourselves, to advocate.
I began to realize that to do these things for a long term, I needed to find a tool that comes more fluently to me where I can continue to fill up my cup and share with the community. Each one of us comes with our own unique set of skills — it’s like an ecosystem. To be able to explore that gave me a healing — almost a unique way to connect with my own culture and explore music, both traditional and contemporary, and to share it in a study of the songs and a study of the sounds.
The process of doing so has been something that has been reinstilling a sense of identity, a sense of purpose for myself and recharges me in order to continue speaking up and to go on another day, at least mentally. It also really made me question the role of art and how it could be used at a time like this. I really feel like it helped me fine-tune and shape my skills in order to be supportive to my community, but also to be honouring and appreciative of my tradition and my culture and share it with the world.
TC: What is your process of making music?
LD: What I’m looking for at the core is definitely to provide an avenue to observe a little bit more closely to Palestinian sound and art and I usually let my ear guide me. It starts off through research and through an act of digging and just listening myself and collecting tracks. I love finding these recordings of wedding songs or wedding bands and people’s own remixes and covers. Sometimes they’re also field recordings, meaning something from a protest or a speech.
Then I put them through a software in my computer that I control through my music mixer. I slow tracks in order to take a really deep look into the structure of different tracks and different songs and pull them apart. Be it drums on their own, or harmony, bass and vocals, I use those as different stems in a way that enables me to use the song itself as an instrument.
TC: Some of your track titles are named after household West Asian artists, like Rim Banna, a Palestinian singer and composer. Why is that?
LD: I think that they are almost like teachers and storytellers. Rim Banna specifically did a lot of important work in preserving a lot of chants, poetry and folk songs that are still sung to this day. Some of them were more modern music, but some just stuck to the traditional tracks and the true traditional songs.
To be able to listen to them years after and especially so far away is something I value so deeply and it also helps any art. I also want to make sure I am highlighting and giving light to a lot of Palestinian creators, artists and activists in that way. It started out with Rim, but I’m hoping to expand this away from music and to my writing and poetry to introduce people to acts of deep listening and contemplation.
TC: How does your music help preserve Palestinian culture?
LD: I believe I am only part of a collection of efforts that are working really hard to not just preserve our culture, but create a new culture. I’m quoting this from a Palestinian artist and rapper that I respect called Muqata’a. I was watching a documentary in which he had a recorder and went to the market to get different sounds that he then mixes within his beats for his rap music. He lives in Ramallah, Palestine and he sees firsthand the amount of cultural takeover and ethnic erasure that happens not just literally through the war and the bombardment, but also through food, culture and even some parts of music.
For him to be able to collaborate with different parts of our tradition, community and culture and bring it back in this new form is a type of resistance and I find that incredibly inspiring. It’s almost like holding hands with the ancestors and with my community to create another or continue creating that culture that is being taken over and continuing to resist and exist.
TC: You’ve characterized art as a means of resistance. Is art also a representation of hope for you?
LD: Absolutely. I think it’s been a difficult time for all of us. I felt like I had to convince myself of the normalcy of doing regular things in light of what’s going on. There are times where I felt a sense of seclusion, but nothing made me feel as alive again as listening to music and really having time to rest.
It’s been helpful for me as a form of escape and of manifesting and imagining and a form of pride as well. Combining this kind of music with other interests that I already have makes me feel like I am at the door of this library, this glossary of exciting things to explore. Because in all honesty, there is a lot of discourse about if this is a fad. Are people profiting off of the fact that there is war? Some of the doubts that I have with myself are: am I getting opportunities because people feel like they need to give it? Do they feel bad? I don’t let that get to me too much, but I think that’s part of the struggle sometimes.
I guess it adds more responsibility for me that I would honour. The importance of having art that is earnest and sincere in order to represent my people, my community and to stand up against wherever Zionism finds us. It is something I as a real, raw human deal with. I just hope that my back-and-forth shows the importance of it and not that I am lost within it.
TC: How do visuals add to SUBR’s performances?
LD: Another part of my show that I add is background visuals. I currently use one that I created with a walking tour of a market in Gaza as the base. I’ve just edited the video in a way where all the motion is captured. It’s in black and white, but every moving character would leave a trail of moving colour behind them and they would overlap. The image would become clear, and then mushy again and then people would notice you filming — it just shows the life of the city.
By breaking things apart and showing them back to you again, I want it to be seen in a way that really admires the details of the music, the culture, the people, the way our words sound. I hope people leave with something new, and I hope they leave with another perspective that when they do hear a new story, they see more of the life behind it.
TC: What do you hope people take away from SUBR’s music?
LD: Right now, more than ever, people have the knowledge of what’s going on in Palestine and that has been incredible. I’m around others who understand this in a way that I could not have found fathomable when I was younger. So I hope when they come to my show they see a little bit of another version of that.
A lot of the images that are shown on TV are kind of little brackets. There is a lot of struggle, but sometimes unintentionally people can carry that image in their mind. I hope that I am able to hold up a kaleidoscope into that. By breaking things apart, even if you’re hearing familiar sounds that you have before, maybe in this form you can find a way that you can relate or kind of lose yourself in it.
TC: What has the reaction in the Ottawa community been to the music and what has that meant for you?
LD: I feel completely lucky to be in the place that I am and to be in Ottawa. I’m lucky to be in the community I’m in to be able to have the opportunity and to feel the safety and the encouragement to venture on this creative journey. I really credit them and I hope that I can give back to the community as much as it’s given me.
With that said, I have been surprised. As a person who was just starting, especially at our first show I don’t think I did that much promo because if something went off I didn’t want the whole world to be there. And so to look up at the end of the show and to see a lawn full of people was really incredible and encouraging. The community keeps me going and the crowds and the response. So far, it’s been really positive, and I’ve gotten to connect with incredible people.
TC: How is art activism in and of itself?
LD: It’s a fuel for resistance. It’s an avenue to be able to express oneself. It also provides a sense of camaraderie and also lifting of morale and expressing your identity. All of these things are incredibly important.
My grandparents are refugees. They have settled in a few different places before coming to Canada and so I understand my place as a settler within where I am. The fact that the only way that I get the safety that I feel and the community that I have, was on the backs of another vicious colonial act. There’s an incredible, huge, big connection between the resistance. From Turtle Island to Palestine, colonization is a crime.
It’s an honour to be here and also it’s important for me to acknowledge my participation as a settler here. Without the safety that is granted to me here, I won’t be able to resist what’s going on back home.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Featured image provided by Lougien Dawoudiah.
