
Hamed Sinno (H/they/she/he) is a writer, musician, and social justice snowflake born and raised in Beirut, and currently living in New York. They have an MA in Digital Musics from Dartmouth College, and a BFA from the Department of Architecture and Design at the American University in Beirut, where they founded and fronted Lebanese indie band, Mashrou Leila. Their song-writing leverages rhetoric, poetry, and social justice to weaponize popular culture. Equal parts sequined boi-band and activist group, over the 14 years since the band’s inception, they have been at the forefront of conversations around freedom of expression, gender justice, and the Arab Spring, performing around the world to audiences upwards of thirty thousand, and attracting the ire of religious and political authorities across the Middle East. With a fatwa and multiple bans under their belt, H moved to the US, and is currently exploring narratives of estrangement, while centering their research on vocality, and voice synthesis as sites of political negotiation.