The Palestinian Trio Improvising Outside the Lines of Identity

On a November night in 2018, a casual jam session in Haifa turned into something unexpected. Two school friends, guitarist Michel Totry and violinist Shaden Nahra, were part of that jam session, joined by familiar and strange faces. As the night wound down, only they and one of the strangers, drummer Naser Raed, remained. Little did the three musicians know that a seed had been planted.

“There was this strange, electric ease between us. Even then, before we had a name or a plan or any idea what we were doing, it felt like something bigger than the three of us,” the group explains.

In 2019, they regrouped at Michel’s apartment for another extended jam session, as they pushed each other to their improvisational best. By July 2022, the project had grown enough to warrant a name, which began as a playful, almost nonsensical suggestion, but quickly became central to their sonic identity.

“Each of us is a ‘kalsy’, and together we’re Alkalsaat. It gives us a kind of joyful anonymity, freeing us from our individual identities to tap into our geekiness, goofiness, and deep musical obsession. There’s a rebellion in our work - against musical rules, expectations, and the idea that a band has to look or sound a certain way.”

Although Alkalsaat’s sound is primarily built on a foundation of jazz improvisation, it branches into multiple directions, touching on Arab melodies, funk, and hip-hop, with influences that include Snarky Puppy, Vulfpeck, Louis Cole, Weather Report, Miles Davis, Yussef Dayes, Ziad Rahbani, and even the early 2000s Arabic pop wave that shaped their adolescence. This mishmash of musical influences makes their music feel both familiar and unpredictable, an active dialogue between instruments that continually reinvents itself.

Creating for the trio is less about achieving a predetermined sound and more about responding to their curiosity, going with the flow and trusting the jam. “We usually start by hitting records and start jamming, with no agenda or emotional thesis.” This loose and free-form approach produced tracks like ‘Shele Bele’, a composition built around a repeated phrase that the band says means absolutely nothing, but carries a whole world of feeling. “We just make music seriously without taking ourselves too seriously. And somehow, that has allowed something fresh and new to grow in the process.”

They see the absence of lyrics as a form of freedom. Words carry fixed meanings, but instrumental music travels beyond language. “It can feel like swimming against the current sometimes. But without the filter of language, the music can travel anywhere; it becomes emotion, energy, movement. It lets us ‘speak’ through melody, rhythm, harmony, and improvisation. And in many ways, that communicates our Palestinian experience more truthfully than any slogan could. Simply existing, creating, performing, and enjoying ourselves is already a statement.”

There were periods when even making music felt uncertain, however. As the genocide in Palestine started escalating, rehearsing became emotionally difficult. “We couldn’t play at all. We questioned everything, our timing, our purpose, whether it was okay to create.”

What brought them back wasn’t resolution, but habit and need. “Eventually, the urge to play becomes stronger than the heaviness. Stopping isn’t really an option.”

Each of their studio sessions is a collaborative process, a dialogue and reflection of their vulnerabilities, patience, trust, and the alchemy of three people discovering a voice together. “For us, collaborating together feels like holding up a mirror: the flattering angles and the messy ones, all come together.”

Their debut self-titled album carries the imprint of all this: eight tracks recorded live in a studio with co-producer Raymond Haddad and engineer Jacob ‘beanboi’ Henbest. It’s a mix of lush impressionist textures, rhythmic funk lines and playful yet dark psychedelic tones with dreamy melodic interludes. It captures the spontaneity of their jams, the energy of improvisation, and the evolving identity of a trio learning to play as one. On the album, Michel experiments with building low-end guitar textures to compensate for the absence of a bassist. “The most exciting experiment was realising that we were shaping a sound that didn’t exist before.” That sense of discovery drives every track on the record, giving it a refreshing sound that, although experimental at heart, remains cohesive.

Listening to the debut, the trio’s interplay feels conversational, even improvisational on the recorded tracks. There’s a sense of movement and unpredictability, a refusal to stay in one lane, yet the compositions always feel deliberate. ‘7 at Man’, their second-ever composition and one of the lead singles, plays like a moment of calm and serenity amid the storm, a piece that requires emotional grounding from the trio and offers a gentle, almost meditative contrast to the more rhythmically intense tracks.

Yet for all of their technicalities and range, Alkalsaat refuses to be defined by their identity or conform to the expectations of the industry. “We’re tired of the idea that Palestinian musicians must always perform their identity or explain it. If we could erase one big misperception, it would be the expectation of constant victimhood. Other artists around the world get to just…. Be artists. We want that too.” They make music that is joyful, human, playful and slightly complex, music that dances, smiles, and simply exists.

And so, their upcoming project, a collaborative EP titled Alkalsaat & friends, extends that idea, bringing artists from Palestine, the SWANA region and beyond, to craft sonic conversations that explore different threads of Arab musical heritage, maqams, textures and chemistry, irrespective of the lines of identity.

For Alkalsaat, music is a space for exploration and growth. They envision expanding their sound through collaborations, mentoring other artists, and continuing to develop their approach to composition. Their music asks listeners to engage, to imagine, and to experience something that isn’t defined by words.