Fairuz from Lebanon
Umm Kulthum from Egypt
Cheikha Rimitti from Algeria
Googoosh from Iran
These artists from the SWANA (Southwest Asia & North Africa) region were amba(da)ssadors for their countries’ popular riots. Within their own sociopolitical contexts and with different levels of commitment, they’ve provoked, sung or spoken about women’s resistance, pro-independence identities and anti-colonial rebellions.
In the West, these four women are often reduced to “divas” in a maternal and exotic representation of their home countries, but they were fierce cultural catalysts who used their voices as weapons.
Their sound – from Tarab to Raï – was filled with a sense of community, and their rebellion wasn’t focused on the global, but instead on the local, representing what we now worldwide need the most: unification.
These are Gildan, SOL and Fruit shirts, screen-printed using black and red water-based inks.
