Your Quintessential Iraqi Mixtape

Our May QuarterTones mixtape is a quintessential Iraqi music compilation by shamokamonet, a platform and collective dedicated to sharing stories inspired by Iraq. It’s almost impossible to pay homage to the entire repertoire of Iraqi music in one playlist, even if it was a million-hours long. These 31 tracks only scratch the surface of a body of work steeped in dozens of traditions, languages and histories, some thousands of years old. But if there is one thing that unites music from Iraq, whether it’s a folkloric tune from Baghdad, an oud masterpiece floating across the mountains or the North, a fiery dance track infused by the magic of the South, or the boom bap beats of a hip-hop track, it the poetry that carves out the tongues of Iraqis, at home and in the diaspora.