Music In Exile

Alex Ebsary / 2019

The Project

Music in Exile is a nonprofit that documents the songs and stories of displaced people, with a mission to preserve cultural heritage and tradition of communities that have been impacted and affected by war, sectarian violence, and regional instability—as well as to humanize refugees as the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two unfolds.

The Team

Alex Ebsary finds musicians from diverse ethnic backgrounds, secures access to refugee and IDP camps, and produces all field recordings of performers for Music in Exile. The idea came to him after hearing a Syrian refugee play a nearly stringless saz during a trip to Domiz refugee camp in 2013. He began to wonder how he could share the music of refugees with the wider world.

The Goal

To document the humanitarian crisis in Syria and Iraq through music and to raise awareness of the musicians who used music to cope during difficult times. We helped Music In Exile create a webpage dedicated to the project and circulated films that documented musicians in IDP camps. You can learn more about the project here.