Salam Music and Arts Festival Vienna

For over 20 years, the Salam Music & Arts Festival has brought artists and audiences together to experience music, art and culture from the Arab world and beyond in all its facets.

From March 28 to April 6, 2025, the festival will present international and local artists who combine tradition and innovation in their own way, think across borders, reflect social developments and open up new perspectives. Salam Music also reflects Vienna’s cultural diversity and offers a space in which people can make new connections through music, art & culture.

It is a very special pleasure that the Vienna-based singer, composer and tanbur player Omid Darvish (Kurdophone, HUUUM), who has accompanied Salam Music for years as an artist and visitor, is part of the festival team this year as a guest curator. Inspiring collaboration has resulted in an exciting and varied program that takes you to the Horn of Africa, among other places.

Salam Music is opening up new spaces and formats again this year. For the first time, the “Salam Club” invites you to the dance floor with DJs ABADIR (Egypt), Hiba Salameh (Palestine), Alias ​​Shay (Tunisia) and Munsef (Syria). With her live performance “Beirut Birds”, the multidisciplinary artist and composer Nour Sokhon presents an audiovisual experience that takes up personal stories of migration, displacement and the cyclical crises in Lebanon.

With the irrepressible “Ethiopian Crunch” by Ukandanz (pronounced “you can dance”) and the visionary music of Sahra Halgan, which combines the Somali musical tradition with funk, blues and garage rock, two bands from the Horn of Africa are coming to Austria whose new albums are currently being enthusiastically celebrated by international audiences. The versatile Kurdish artist Meral Polat presents a progressive sound of traditional Anatolian music with her debut album, which was nominated for the prestigious Songlines Music Award.

The ensemble Zençir, newly founded by Georg Vogel and Karim Othman Hassan, is celebrating its premiere at Salam Music and is exploring the connection between Ottoman and contemporary sound worlds in an experimental way. The trio Terrea is also exploring new possibilities and is creating a completely new interpretation of Iranian and Arabic Dastgah and Maqam music with the claviton specially made by Georg Vogel.

Merging different styles, connecting different cultures, reviving the old and rooting the new are natural processes for the artist Ghalia Benali, who was born in Brussels and grew up in southern Tunisia. With her current project Arak (I see you), the impressive artist, whom the New York Times describes as “a creator of her own myths”, celebrates human connection through music and poetry. And with the celebrated Malian singer and musician Afel Bocoum, Salam Music brings to Vienna one of the last representatives of a groundbreaking generation of African musicians who were the first to combine their own traditional music with modern influences.

Music program:

Meral Polat

Fri. March 28, 2025, 7:30 p.m., Sargfabrik

Ukandanz

Sun. March 30, 2025, 8:30 p.m., Porgy & Bess

Afel Bocoum

Mon. March 31, 2025, 8:30 p.m., Porgy & Bess

Nour Sokhon

Wed. April 2, 2025, 9:00 p.m. o’clock, Flucc Deck

Ghalia Benali

Thursday, April 3, 2025, 7:30 p.m., Theater Akzent

Sahra Halgan

Friday, April 4, 2025, 8:30 p.m., Flucc Wanne

Salam Club – ABADIR, Hiba Salameh, Alias ​​Shay, Munsef

Friday, April 4, 2025, 11:00 p.m., Flucc Wanne

Zençir / Terrea

Saturday, April 5, 2025, 8:00 p.m., Brunnenpassage

Location: Vienna, Austria
Date: March 28 to April 6, 2025, Vienna
Price: 0 – 25 €
Contact: info@salam-orient.at

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