Liraz

In the organizer's words:

If you want to know what the actress Liraz Charhi, who simply calls herself Liraz as a singer, sounds like live, you should listen to the three tracks that have just been released, which were created last September in a COLLIDE session with the Reeperbahn Festival. You can immediately hear and feel all the elements that make up their music. The groovy electro-pop with its influences from the Persian and Israeli musical tradition and echoes of 70s funk immediately gets into your legs and your heart. The successful actress has released five albums to date, although only three of them are easily available in Germany. Her most recent album, "Roya" (Farsi for fantasy), was released in 2022 and features an intoxicating mix of traditional and modern rhythms, opening a musical gateway to a place of peace, joy and unrestricted freedom. However, it had to be recorded in secret in Istanbul with her band from Tel Aviv and risk-taking Iranian musicians from Tehran. The violin, viola and tar, the Iranian wooden lute, had traveled undercover from Tehran to Turkey. They were the same anonymous musicians who had previously worked with Liraz online, without asking questions and without showing their faces, under the radar of the Iranian secret police. What Liraz does is also deeply political. The tracks are not only danceable and confidently produced. The Israeli with Persian roots first discovered during a stay in Los Angeles that there is a lively community outside Iran. This prompted her to delve into the roots of music and become a singer herself. And with her songs, she gives a voice to the protest in Iran - which in turn has spilled back: People in Iran now dance to her songs, which are banned, and sing along to them. They have become symbols of resistance, for a revolution that you can dance to. Liraz is coming to Germany for two shows in June.