This is the third release on Tread On Our Spring Water, a label run out of a former munitions factory in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Established by local activists who appreciate the organic and ecological values of Palestinian culture, Tread On Our Spring Water has been instrumental in mobilising a broad coalition of grassroots activists, including a number of musicians based in the West Bank.

The headliner on this release is Shallot, the pastoralist sisters of the name of their mother, who appears in a traditional Bedouin dress, with a slightly modified version of the traditional Sufi song “Kamal Bala”. The track is a nod to the ancestral Bedouin tradition, where the family “takes its food from the spring around the mountain, and that is where it is boiled”. The track showcases a combination of traditional Bedouin singing and an instrumental drone reminiscent of the Sufi tradition, while the vocals hint at more radical articulations.