“ORCHESTRAL” is a sonic exploration of life in Jaffa’s Ajami neighborhood, tracing the shifting perspective of a Palestinian trans woman navigating an uneven landscape of coexistence. Moving between past and present, the track examines the intersection of identity, visibility, and the reality of pinkwashing. By sampling Haifa Wehbe’s “Wawa” and utilizing Jaffa’s local Arabic dialect, the artist bridges childhood intimacy with the paranoia of modern surveillance. Through the symbolic motif of the Jaffa orange, “ORCHESTRAL” weaves personal history into a broader narrative of displacement and social reality.
Artifacts
“ORCHESTRAL” reflects my early life within Palestinian society in Jaffa and how my perspective has shifted over time. The track moves between past and present, tracing my relationships with my neighbors and life in Ajami, the neighborhood where I grew up—an area often portrayed through tension and fragmentation, most notably in The Ajami film.
The work engages with the ongoing negotiation of identity as a Palestinian artist living within Israeli society, in the heart of the Tel-Aviv metropolitan area, where proximity does not equate to safety and coexistence remains deeply uneven. As a Palestinian trans woman, my lived experience is shaped by heightened visibility and vulnerability, as well as by the effects of pinkwashing—where narratives of LGBTQ+ inclusion are mobilized to mask broader structures of violence and exclusion impacting my community.
The second verse is performed in Jaffa’s local Arabic dialect, foregrounding the everyday, paranoia-inducing dynamics that shape my relationship with my neighbors as a trans woman. Language becomes a sonic marker of closeness and threat, intimacy and surveillance, reflecting how identity is continuously negotiated in shared yet contested spaces.
The track samples “Wawa” by Haifa Wehbe, a song deeply embedded in the soundscape of my childhood and widely popular in the neighborhood. Its presence invokes collective memory and domestic intimacy—music heard through open windows, shared streets, and everyday life—contrasting innocence and familiarity with the tension that later emerges in the same spaces.
The recurring orange motif, referencing the Jaffa orange, functions as both a personal and political symbol: a marker of inheritance, labor, and displacement, carrying collective memory into the present. Sonically and conceptually, Orchestralexplores how identity is negotiated through sound—how private histories resonate within shared spaces, and how personal narratives intersect with broader social realities.