In her work, the Iranian singer and composer Golnar Shahyar combines voice, language and body to establish a politically and poetically charged practice. Together with cellist Atena Eshtiaghi, she creates open sound spaces of traditional, experimental music where vulnerability, resistance and the question of raising one’s own voice can be experienced sensorily.

***

What can a voice be? Ritual, resistance, myth and knowledge keeper? Visionary, memory and healing? The new series Cantadoras brings together outstanding women artists who radically pose this question, each in their own way, tradition and practice. Various vocal techniques meet improvisation and performance, spiritual practice meets political resistance, centuries-old traditions meet progressive sonic art. In the first season, the new concert series by Unlimited combines overtone singing from Tuva, Persian vocal traditions from Iran, music from Karnataka, Ukrainian polyphonic singing and Ethiopian-Swedish vocal art.