Yasmine Hamdan

Venue:

Club Volta, Cologne

Date: 21/02/2026

Yasmine Hamdan is a Lebanese singer who first cashmere to attention in her early 20s as part of an Arabic electronica duo, Soapkills. Later she had a cameo in Jim Jarmusch’s 2013 film Only Lovers Left Alive.i first heard her when I was doing a scrape of a much Arabic music as I could find in 2023.

I was in two minds about going. I haven’t been to a live gig with a crowd in more than a decade (kids, you see). It was in the burbs of Cologne and a good 15 minute walk from the nearest train station. Did I really like the album I’d heard tracks from? (I Remember I Forget)

My daughters persuaded me to go, and was i pleased they did! The support act, The Shift, a German Australian art pop act, were whacky and tremendous fun, with enough beats to get me wigging out with a couple of women next to me.

Yasmine herself, when she came on, exuded enormous confidence and assurance, and was cheered loudly by an expectant crowd. She did not disappoint. With a band of drummer/percussionist (manhandling his toms with his bare hands), an able keyboard player (confident enough to gently accompany Yasmine on her closing torch song ‘Beirut’, and wig out with the others when needed), and guitarist (doing a bit of a Bill Frisell ambience, but also fishing out a bow for some Page-lite antics), Yasmine was in good hands.

The music was passionate, the lyrics (I’d looked them up before) often intense and anguished about recent Palestine torments and the earlier explosion in Beirut port. It was a performance charged up and feeding off the enthusiasm of the crowd. Beautiful singing, wild thrusts of electronica almost reaching Swans levels of intensity at times, and great rhythms. I think I’m most definitely glad I went.

The audience:

My age and younger, on the whole. A few older. Dreading being alone at a gig, I went up to purple and talked to them, and they were without exception, very friendly. One guy was from Naples, based in Cologne for 4 years, working for an European level musicians advocacy organisation – he’d been to Womexs and gigs all over Europe. A couple had come down from Bremen specially for his birthday present – they were 7 feet tall and he has hair like Anton Chigurh. Because they were so tall, I could dance behind them with nobody getting in the way. There were a pair next to me from Syria, who of course could follow the lyrics, and inner girl behind me, dancing as wildly as I was, also singing the words back to Yasmine in perfect pitch – I think I had a crush on her.

It made me think..

I should get back out to see gigs again, if they’re this fun. Mind you, I’m still on the train home, and I’m coming down with a throat infection. But it was, WORTH it!!

2