“If you stand for nothing, then who are you?”SWANA Club Culture in London.
Clubbing is often described as healing, rejuvenating, cleansing and energising - amongst many other adjectives. At the end of February, Habibti Nation and BODUR created a night that encompassed those words and more. Hosted at Ormside Projects in Southeast London, they brought a real sense of community, as is Habibti Nation’s ethos. The exceptional lineup included DJ sets from both Luma, BODUR, Yasmine, Alaia and Persiajoon and the iconic Jyoty as their special guest. As interludes between sets, drag artist and dancer Body Illusion performed live on the dancefloor, mesmerising the audience with their seamless movements.
Luma, a London born DJ of Iraqi descent, founded Habibti Nation as a collective and club night that aims to platform women, gender non-conforming and trans artists. Through their events, they bring SWANA music and sounds from the Arab world into Western mainstream spaces in the UK and beyond. Luma’s collective is an imperative community space for SWANA and Arab club-goers in the UK, and allows them to feel seen and safe during uncertain times. Luma’s personal sound is one that fuses Arabic pop from the noughties with UK club music, to create a combination of her own roots.
Collaborating with BODUR was an obvious choice – the Turkish-Sri Lankan artist blends her vocals with alternative electronic sounds, to highlight her heritage in complex and intricate ways. I was personally introduced to BODUR’s music by a friend in 2021, back when her artist’s name was Chloe Bodur, and her music could only be described as ethereal and transcending. I was instantly hooked, and her vocals become the soundtrack to my tube journeys to university in the city. Surrounded by the chaos of London, (the then) Chloe Bodur’s music transported me to a different world, one in which I felt distanced from life’s stresses. Her rebrand was a joy to witness, she came into her SWANA identity, owning her heritage and platforming her roots and her background as the priority of her new image. Such ownership is always a contested issue for SWANA artists in the UK – for fear of being labelled ‘too loud’, ‘too much’, ‘too different’. BODUR is a prime example of someone who has fearlessly done this – successfully pushing forward with her mission to make herself authentically known in such a saturated industry. Speaking on their collaboration, BODUR said, “I don’t always feel club spaces are the right place for me specifically, but Habibti Nation events, the music they play and the people that attend feel like my kind of people, so I was really happy to be involved.”
Clubbing has always been a way for minority communities to come together in underground spaces and unite in their uniqueness. Historically, it’s always been black, queer, POC etc. communities that have founded such spaces for one another to dance and express themselves, regardless of who they are or where they’ve come from.
More specifically, for the SWANA community, this has looked like dabke circles at family gatherings, oud performances on street corners in the Middle East, mothers singing Fairuz melodies to put their children to sleep etc. SWANA music has been at the forefront of our culture for centuries, and reflects the diversity of the region. We’ve expressed ourselves through our sound throughout several wars in the Middle East, our political views reflected in our lyrics, our pain felt in our sound, and the complexity of our emotions seen in our intricate melodies.
The work that Habibti Nation and BODUR do both separately and now together, reflects this unity. Their event at Ormside fostered this safe space in several visible ways, and the audience’s embodiment of this was reflected through their behaviours and their personal styles. All round me I saw Palestinian keffiyehs draped around hips and shoulders, kohl eyeliner beautifully lining dark brown eyes, gold bangles and dangly earrings, to name a few. Arabic was spoken freely around the room, strangers conversed with one another at the bar, and nods of respect to signs of solidarity for the Palestinian cause were given. It was an entirely judgement-free zone, and everyone was safe to be themselves, no matter what form that took.
The significance of SWANA music can be seen in its role in supporting the Palestinian cause. Take Sherine’s songs ‘Sabry Alil’ and ‘Kalam Eineh’ for example, both of which were trending on TikTok internationally in 2024. Videos with the audio to these tracks were made across the globe, over montages of Palestinian protests, flags waving in the air and people marching across cities. Neither of these songs are about Palestine, they’re love songs to their core, but they very quickly became the soundtrack to the Palestinian resistance.
The SWANA community has long been protective of our music, so this sudden surge in popularity for such an iconic Egyptian singer as Sherine, truly came as a shock. We’ve been silenced for so long that now global acceptance of part of our culture seems almost unbelievable. Such songs have pushed us into the spotlight, platforming both our traditional and newer artists and allowing us to finally be seen for what we truly are: creative humans. Luma explained that dismissal of female Arab singers runs on a deeper level, because “these artists are facing a double discrimination of being Arab and also being a minoritised gender”.
The challenges faced being a politically outspoken SWANA artist in the West are endless and multilayered. BODUR expanded on this saying, “Western politics has a certain narrative - it’s what we’re fed in the media, what we’re taught in school etc. If you’re from the SWANA region, you’re raised on different news channels at home and have learnt a slightly different history from your family. Challenging that narrative in the West – because music is a type of media - so challenging news stories that are also part of that media means you’re making yourself a target. You’re not that marketable compared to someone who doesn’t stand for anything. Finding people that want to be associated with you is much harder.”
Thinking about rising challenges within the industry surrounding funding and budget cuts, I spoke to both artists about what it means for the diaspora to have these spaces to collectively come together to unite in community. Luma rightly said that “coming together and putting on these nights is a form of protest in itself, and is a way of expressing grief for some.” On the importance of events like those run by Habibti Nation, BODUR said, “I get to be around people that look like me and reflect myself back. I don’t feel so alone or like an anomaly. It’s really nice to feel that sense of community, and musically to experience the music of where I’m from with other people that are from similar places. To all have that experience together is beautiful and rare to find, so these spaces are vital.”
To finish our conversation, I asked them both about how we can preserve and protect such community spaces and venues, to which they both had similar sentiments. Luma laughed whilst she exclaimed, “Keep going clubbing! Keep partying, and support local grassroots venues. Think about what other spaces can we use to host events if clubs are shut down. I’ve been running DJ workshops in libraries which has been amazing. London’s got so many spaces that could be used to put on nights out – it’s all about repurposing.”
I’ll end with some particularly effective words from BODUR, which I personally found imperative to remember. “It’s always important to weave politics into music. Music and art is there to reflect the world that we live in, and to try and make sense of it. I think any artist that doesn’t have some form of political messaging in their music is not a real artist.”
Although these words may seem a bold statement to make, it’s important to keep in mind that music is the glue that often holds marginalised communities together. During war, conflict, discrimination and more, music and art has the power to heal - something we are too quick to take for granted.
Written by Mouna Madanat