20 Years in Sound

Josephine Burton reflects on creating the soundtrack in our latest podcast

Listening to the edit of our new Dash Arts Podcast soundtrack was pure joy. Each track transported me back — to basements in Beirut with our rappers, to the magic of uniting 12 musicians from across the 12 former Soviet Republics for the Renegade Orchestra in Georgia, to wild nights in the Dash Arts Dacha with Sasha Ilyukevich and the unforgettable world of Dido’s Bar. Music carries you differently than words do: it’s immediate, emotional, it pulls you right into the memory.

As I talked through these projects with our brilliant podcast producer, Marie Horner, she'd asked me: so what did you learn? At first, I reached for the obvious — the friendships, the privilege of working with extraordinary international artists, the new ways of seeing and creating they shared with me. All of that is true. But it felt incomplete.

Because Dash Arts has never really been about easy answers. Over the last 20 years we’ve set out on four- and five-year journeys across regions, asking big questions about Europe, the Arabic world, the former Soviet Union, Englishness, identity, history, belonging. And what we’ve always found are not neat conclusions, but oceans of perspectives — layered through music, conversation and performance.

That’s what the soundtrack shows too. We haven’t just made “jazz projects” or “folk projects” or “hip hop projects.” We’ve created the musical projects that emerged from the people and places we were working with. Each one utterly different. Each one utterly right. Together, they reflect the dazzling diversity of our planet and the artists who’ve trusted us with their voices.

I’m deeply proud of that. And I hope, in listening, you’ll hear not just the sounds of Dash Arts, but the richness of 20 years of stories — and our ongoing intention: to challenge the way we see, and hear, the world.

Listen to the podcast here.