Mazen Kerbaj on Music, Politics, and Comics

Lebanese musician and illustrator Mazen Kerbaj (Beirut, 1975) directed a sound performance at MAO Museo di Arte Orientale in Turin on December 14, 2024. The piece, Walls Will Fall – The 28 Trumpets of Jericho, brought together 28 local trumpeters in Galleria Umberto Primo I. Kerbaj is co-founder of the Irtijal improvisation music festival and author of Gaza in my Phone, a graphic novel responding to social media images of Israel's genocide in Gaza. He comes from an artistic family: his father Antoine Kerbage is an actor, his mother a poet, art critic, and visual artist. A self-taught trumpeter, he started at 18 when friend Sharif Sehnaoui gave him a trumpet. He performs solo and with the "A" Trio, pushing the instrument's limits. Political engagement intensified during the 2006 war with Israel when he started a daily visual blog. Since October 9, 2023, he has been drawing reactions to the horrors in Gaza and posting on Instagram, reaching tens of thousands. He moved to Berlin in 2015 for a DAAD residency and now finds the city hostile due to repression of Palestinian solidarity. His performance Walls Will Fall was adapted from a 2018 Berlin-Pankow version with 49 trumpeters in a water tank. Upcoming works include Putinorgel and From One War the Other, premiering at MaerzMusik Festival in Berlin in March 2025, and an ambitious graphic novel blending his biography with his father's and 1970s Lebanese intellectual life.