Anthony and Sandy from SANAM Talk Omar Khayyam Poetry and Recording Across Three Countries

Transmission 262: Interview with Sanam

SANAM is a Beirut-based sextet whose music confronts and reassembles multiple traditions. In their compositions, they address displacement, the texture of memory, political realities, and the elasticity of language itself. Their second album, Sametou Sawtan, was recorded across Beirut, a medieval house in Byblos, and a Paris studio, with each location embedding itself in the recordings. The lyrics are drawn from modern Arabic poetry and historical works, such as those of the 12th-century poet Omar Khayyam, in addition to original compositions by singer Sandy Chamoun.

Title: Sametou Sawtan
Artist: Hans Joachim Irmler
Genres: Avant-garde, Experimental Music, Krautrock, Psychedelic Rock
Label: Constellation
Description: Lebanese sextet SANAM interview: Omar Khayyam poetry, recording in medieval Byblos house, and new album Sametou Sawtan on Constellation Records.

The group initially formed from improvisation sessions with Hans Joachim Irmler in preparation for the Irtijal festival. According to the band members, their fusion of genres emerged organically rather than being a predetermined goal. Sametou Sawtan (Arabic for: ‘I Heard a Voice’), is scheduled for release on September 19, 2025, on the Constellation label. The record addresses the themes of distance and dislocation, in reference to the social context of Lebanon.

Featured image: Karim Ghorayeb

Could you take us back to the beginning? What was the shared vision or common ground that first brought the six of you together, and when did you realize your collaboration could produce such a distinct and cohesive sound?

Anthony: The beginning really was improvised sessions with Hans Joachim Irmler preparing for the irtijal festival. We didn’t have much sessions (3 in all) so we had to make sense of what kind of music we were going to present pretty quickly and Joachim would be a guide in silence, and would get upset if we started talking and kind of steer us back into just playing and not talking / thinking too much. That definitely was the building stone on which the project started. However, what we wanted to do really came together after the six of us spent around 10 days in a remote house (really distant from anything) and recording the first record.

When you first came together, was this fusion of different music genres an intentional goal, or did it emerge organically from the six members’ individual influences?

Anthony: That happened organically, we didn’t set any goals really, we didn’t even know what we were doing at the time. But we’re definitely not the kind to force anything, we’d rather sway with the flow of things.

Could you elaborate on the nature of the “voice” in your album title Sametou Sawtan (“I Heard A Voice”), whether literal, spiritual, or metaphorical, and explain how that concept guided the record’s creation?

Sandy: I prefer the meaning of this sound to remain ambiguous, without being confined to a single mold, so that it can encompass all its possibilities. For me, the image that comes to my mind is as if we were sitting in a long, ancient silence, and then I heard a sound from afar and kept trying to get closer to hear it.

You’ve described the album as processing “distance and dislocation,” specifically referencing the feeling of people leaving Lebanon. How do you translate such a socio-political reality into your soundscapes without being overtly literal?

Sandy: All the sounds, the feelings, and the words create this sense of distance, as if the album’s voice is something close yet at the same time unfamiliar. And it’s not only the lyrics that articulate this socio-political condition, but also the composition of the music and the way the songs are arranged. You can sense something uncommon, something not widely familiar, which brings a sense of renewal, while certain sounds might remind you of something intimate or close. I feel that playing between these two states, the near and the distant, the strange and the familiar, creates a mixture that can express this condition.

The album was recorded in three distinct locations: Beirut, a medieval house in Byblos, and a studio in Paris. How did these vastly different environments influence the sound, mood, and final shape of the tracks recorded in each place?

Anthony: The Byblos house acted like a gateway to the record, we started properly digging into the ideas there. You can even hear some birds and some room tone in one of the tracks if you blast the record pretty loud. We spent a week there with Radwan, it’s an incredible house really, located on the 12th century Byblos Wall, and it’s really right by the sea. We knew we wanted to write next to the sea this time around. The record however definitely came together at La Frette in Paris. The space has such an energy to it, so many secrets in the walls of this house. There’s a big staircase in the middle of the space that I feel is kind of what the record is, if that makes any sense. Also being around the nicest staff there also is stamped on the record. And Beirut being our home, won’t let us have any record out without sweeping its way through the recordings somehow hahaha, even if meagerly.

How do you decide which words will fit the musical world you are building? What is the process for adapting the texts from different eras?

Sandy: In the first album, I would be reading texts while the band was composing the music, and then I’d feel that certain words fit perfectly with a melody. It was a very spontaneous process. In this album, with some of the songs, it happened the other way around: I had written and composed the words first, and then we built the songs together. Another part of the process still resembled that spontaneous state of the first album. I’ve always had favorite poets and texts I love, and working with them has also been an exercise for me—to gradually become able to write my own words more fluidly and quickly.

For the title track and “Sayl Damei,” you turned to the 12th-century poetry of Omar Khayyam. What is it about his centuries-old words that resonates so strongly with the contemporary feeling of “not a clear path”?

Sandy: These words transcend history and time. There’s something that makes me feel very close to this kind of text, because it sparks my imagination, things that may be real or may not be. When I read these words, I find myself wondering: where was the writer when they wrote them, what were they wearing, what was the weather like? The text starts to carry many more meanings for me, being so contemporary yet belonging to a distant time. That tension adds to its poetry and its power to inspire imagination.

Beyond music and poetry, what non-musical inspirations, such as cinema, visual art, political philosophy, or architecture find their way into your work?

Anthony: Not to sound too pretentious but the strongest influence for us is food, we discuss food a lot, be it when we’re rehearsing / recording or even when we’re on tour. It’s very important that we all sit down and eat together, and, when we can, cook for each other. On a different front, we all share a common political footprint, we kind of think alike when it comes to the matters of the world, and that a huge part of us as SANAM. Nothing is separate from politics and all our expression is inherently political. Of course architecture plays a huge role in our sound, but more from a technical perspective. We choose the rooms where we record and we always record live, so the room is another instrument really.

As a sextet, how do you manage the creative process? How are musical ideas introduced, developed, and arranged to ensure every member’s voice is heard in your dense and dynamic sound?

Anthony: No one overplays, if someone has nothing to say, they just don’t play. Silence plays as much of a role as sound does. We also listen deeply to each other, be it in the literal sense (when we’re talking) and in the musical sense. In some sense it’s really easy to manage the creative process with 6 people. All the egos are in check and there are plenty of ideas to go around, it solemnly gets boring. We rarely worry about a voice not being heard in the mix, because we compose in a manner that moves around intention and not around frequency or dynamics. Sometimes it’s intentional that a specific voice isn’t heard but felt.

Now that the work on Sametou Sawtan is complete, how has the process of making this album informed the band’s direction for future projects?

Anthony: I think it’s still a bit too soon to talk about this. There are definitely a lot of feelings flying about concerning what to do next and what not to do next ect. But it will take a bit to settle for sure, and we’re never really in a rush or treating anything too precious. We’d rather sit with our feelings for a bit and wait to see where things take us next organically.

Photos courtesy of Saman

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others