Siba – Dounana By Felix Spitta (MONKyMAN)

Nearly two years after its original release, Dounana (Without Us) by Syrian artist Siba and producer MONKyMAN, aka Felix Spitta, has found its moment. First uploaded as a four-minute landscape video, which of course we like, the track was recently re-cut for vertical viewing and promptly took off across social platforms. Directed in black and white by Spitta, the film is stripped back and confrontational: Siba faces the camera with controlled fury, surrounded by a collective presence that turns the performance into something bigger than one voice. Shot at 90mil in Berlin, and featuring a cast of people with migration backgrounds, the video locates its power firmly in the present while pointing to a much longer history of colonialism, displacement and erasure. Rapped in Arabic, with translation on screen, Dounana takes aim at Western colonial and imperialist structures, but it is not only addressed outwards. As Siba has explained, the song also speaks to those carrying the same rage, turning it into recognition, resistance and a form of empowerment. Its renewed virality says as much about the current moment as the music: a song written in response to helplessness and injustice has, belatedly, become an anthem for those refusing to be silent.