Jerusalem in My Heart

Jerusalem in My Heart

Jerusalem in My Heart is a Canadian audio-visual project led by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh. It begins in 2005 and works across contemporary Arabic music, electronic composition, and visual performance. The project combines music with 16mm film projections and light-based constructions of space, treating sound, visuals, projection and audience as linked parts of the same work.

Approach and live performance

The project’s performances are infrequent, and each one takes a different form. Set-ups range from solo appearances to large ensembles of up to 35 participants, with varying amounts of stage theatrics and film or visual material. Multiple projections are used to create a changing stage environment. The project’s vocals and heavily distorted sonic style remain constant, but the music and visual presentation do not repeat in the same way, and it avoids fixed documentation or a settled recorded version for many years.

Radwan Ghazi Moumneh

Moumneh is a Lebanese musician who spends much of his adult life in Quebec and is part of the Montreal independent music scene. Before Jerusalem in My Heart, he appears in several notable 1990s punk bands, and he also works for many years as a sound engineer, producer, and co-owner of Montreal’s Hotel2Tango recording studio. He is also active in Beirut’s experimental music scene, where he spends part of each year.

Core line-up and recordings

The project later develops into a core trio with French musician and producer Jérémie Regnier and Chilean visual artist and filmmaker Malena Szlam Salazar. Their collaboration leads to the debut album Mo7it Al-Mo7it, issued on Constellation. The record brings together melismatic singing in classic Arabic styles, electronic composition and contemporary production. It also uses distortion, tape echo and delay, along with Moumneh’s acoustic buzuk and zurna, to create a dense and emotive sound. Szlam’s visual work also shapes the album’s imagery, including cover artwork made from hand-processed 16mm filmstrips arranged into a lunar sequence.