Over 20 musicians honour BDS anniversary with powerful album for Palestine

More than 20 musicians supporting the Palestinian cause released a 13-track double album titled 'Unboundable 'on Tuesday, marking the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

The release, the third in the Amplify Palestine series, comes as Israel's brutal war on Gaza continues, with human rights experts warning that the military campaign, alongside the ongoing starvation and suspension of aid entry, amounts to genocide.

These include the 2023 cancellation of a concert by Unboundable contributor Gabby Fluke-Mogul by the Fuse Factory, and Cornell University's recent cancellation of concerts by singer Kehlani.

Amplify Palestine, founded in 2023 as a campaign and production platform aimed at building cultural power for Palestinian liberation, said its BDS Mixtape series was inspired by Sun City, the 1985 anti-apartheid album that supported the boycott of South Africa.

"As repression intensifies against Palestinian solidarity, it’s our duty as musicians to raise our voices. We reject fear, silence, and complicity in genocide," musician and co-curator Sonny Singh said.

Violinists Trina Basu and Arun Ramamurthy dedicated their piece 'Roots in the Sky', inspired by Mahmoud Darwish's poem 'The Second Olive Tree' to "the Palestinian people, whose lives are marked by destruction, yet whose spirit remains unbroken".

Sami Abu Shumays, director of the band Dikrayat, said he wrote the poem 'Ya Walad' ("Oh Boy") following Israel's 2024 torching of refugee tents in Rafah, where many children were burned alive.

Though he used mawwal, a traditional form of Arabic vocal music, he chose to sing the song in English over Arabic.

"Though I’m of Palestinian origin, I grew up in the US not speaking Arabic, so English is the language I express myself best in," he said.

Musicians Alia Hajjo and Ziad Abdel Aal said their contribution was inspired by "the children of Gaza, who continue to fly their kites in the face of brutal aggression".

'Unboundable' blends improvised jazz, Indian classical, Arabic music, and electronic sounds across its 13 tracks, with proceeds from the sales going to support Palestinian cultural efforts.

In a statement, BDS said artists and musicians endorsing the cultural boycott are part of a growing global current defying "attempts to silence solidarity in the arts", with tens of thousands of cultural figures and institutions refusing to collaborate with "complicit" Israeli events.

The movement, inspired by struggles such as South Africa's anti-apartheid fight, has created what it describes as a "global, Palestinian-led anti-apartheid network across some 120 countries", and insists that true solidarity means ending complicity, not charity, and "doing no harm".

Despite the devastation in Gaza, BDS said it was "too grieved and too enraged to celebrate" the milestone anniversary but remains committed to "march on until Israel's regime of oppression is entirely dismantled".

Editor's note: This article was updated on 10 July 2025 at 17:45 to correct a paraphrasing of a BDS statement, which had incorrectly implied that BDS directly referenced the artists featured on the album.