Houbara - Resonanzen Iran 2025

Resonanzen Iran - Tag #1

The third edition of "Houbara - Resonances Iran" will take place at the beginning of June. The two-day festival sees itself as a place for exchange, new encounters and shared experiences. Houbara is dedicated to artists and ensembles who question genre boundaries, creating and exploring their own worlds of sound. A meeting space for musical explorations, feminist perspectives and cross-border listening experiences - between experiment and tradition, between personal expression and political statement. This year, curator Sophie Emilie Beha and co-curator Mona Matbou Riahi are broadening the focus: It extends to multi-layered, contemporary and boundary-breaking music with references beyond Iran to the countries of the neighboring region. After all, the regions known today as Iran is a mosaic of languages, cultures, histories and identities.

The program of the two evenings shows just how broad this spectrum can be:
The 29-year-old singer-songwriter Sanam Maroufkhani kicks things off with her newly formed quartet and wonderfully sensitive songs. The duo Stereotype got to know each other in Tehran's small, isolated, resistant underground scene and now break with every conceivable cliché with violently oscillating synth basslines and noisy syncopated beats. The band HUUUM sees various dialects, dances and melodies as a form of revolution and dresses folklore in futuristic sounds.
The four musicians from Zemiene pick up on this the next day (04.06.) and combine Persian and Scandinavian folk songs. After Ava Rasti transforms the JAKI into never-ending soundscapes of soft drones, the premiere of the new trio of Aya Metwalli, Rabih Beaini and Julian Sartorius ensures an energetic festival finale! A lecture performance by Hanna Grześkiewicz on the role of sound for the feminist revolution in Iran completes the evening.

About the title of the festival: The houbara is an Iranian endemic migratory bird that is threatened with extinction. The title also refers to "The Conference of the Birds" (منطق الطیر) by Fariduddin Attar - a great mystical poem that is one of the most important works of Persian literature. It describes the pilgrimage of thousands of birds of the world in search of an ideal king. In the end, thirty birds remain - and realize that they themselves are the king they are looking for.

Program Day #1
3^rd June 2025

19:00 | Concert hall
Artist Talk w/ Sanam Maroufkhani, Meshkat Mosavat & Rojin Sharafi. Host: Thomas Venker.

20:00 | Concert hall
Sanam Maroufkhani Quartet

21:00 | JAKI
Stereotype

22:00 | Concert hall
HUUUM

Curated by NICA artist Sophie Emilie Beha. In collaboration with Mona Matbou Riahi.

Sanam Maroufkhani Quartet
Sanam Maroufkhani's music is characterized by its lyrical and very personal character. It stems from keen observations of the world and intimate reflections. Her voice is both strong and vulnerable, not only telling her own story but also addressing social and political issues, making her sound both personal and universal. Following her roots, Sanam combines her influences from Middle Eastern music and Persian lyrics with the expressive depth of Western alternative cinematic pop. With Houbara - Resonances Iran, Sanam expands her trio into a quartet: surrounded by the friendship of the others, the four musicians celebrate vulnerable and intuitive music-making that touches the audience emotionally and carries them away.

Stereotype
The story of Stereotype is a story of defiance. Time and again, borders have to be overcome - socially and geographically, mentally and emotionally. Making music sometimes seemed impossible to the two musicians and yet it was the only solution. It is an outlet and a refuge, a declaration of war and a driving force. Meshcut and Xeen channel grief, unrest and hope into intense songs between electronic rock and synthwave.

Raw, experimental and with a dark allure: all the tensions that the duo have experienced on their artistic journey so far resonate throughout. The sound, vocals and lyrics not only reflect their external journey from Tehran via Istanbul to Paris, but also their inner states, which are deeply influenced by the oppression in their Iranian homeland and the resulting nomadism.

HUUUM
HUUUM fuses folkloric Iranian singing, free jazz, ambient and electronic beats to create a completely new kind of dance music. The band stands for synthesis, openness, substance and zealous intransigence. Atypical rhythms, microtonal music, multilingual vocals and sensitive improvisations interweave art forms and cultures. The trio reinvents the geopolitical musical landscape: together, the musicians explore the question of how their instruments can speak in the sound world of other cultures - for example, when Western saxophone sounds try to imitate the Persian wind instrument serna. The power of learning, unlearning and relearning is a tangible tool and a guide for the trio's creative input and output. The result: music that is bold, new, surprising - and apologizes for nothing.

Here is the program for day #2