After Without Warning and DYKONIC, this year, our celebration of bold music, pride, and radical visibility belongs to Gazelle L'Hafla. And the category is: Shata Mata
Shata Mata is a Moroccan term for women who are loud, fierce, and unapologetic about the space they take. This edition will be a night built as a loving tribute to trans women of North African and Arab origins who wear the term as a crown. Women for whom public space has too often been denied, policed, or erased.
The incredible line-up is led by artists who embody this through their music, their movement, their presence. Here's who you'll encounter on 15 May.
Lalla Rami
Cheikha-rapper from Kénitra, now based in Paris. Her universe pulls from R&B, aïta, chaabi, raï, and reggaetón, and yet somehow, she makes it feel like a single, coherent world. She built her project the old-school way: performing live, letting the music travel before it was ever officially released.
Habibitch
Multidisciplinary artist working across dance, music, and performance, rooted in ballroom and club culture. Her one-woman shows are raw, political, and explicitly centered on Arab queer bodies. Her commitment to the struggle for Palestine runs through everything she does. On stage, she doesn't ask for space. She takes it.
Noise Diva
Dutch-Syrian producer and DJ with a practice rooted in left-field sound design and a longstanding obsession with Arabic pop and the electronic production techniques of its golden era. Her project Carwash explored exactly that. She has worked with Ableton, Sonic Acts, Le Guess Who?, and Rewire, and released on Banoffee Pies and Rare Frequency Transmissions.
ZOBAYDA
Egyptian DJ and multidisciplinary artist based in Amsterdam. Her sets are guided by rhythm, percussion, and a disregard for genre boundaries, drawing from the Global South and its diaspora. Her practice extends to photography, audio-visual work, archiving, and cultural programming.
Diva Beirut
Lebanese drag queen, costume designer, and cultural ambassador. Her performances channel Umm Kulthum and Fairuz while celebrating Lebanese and Arab heritage in all its extravagance. She has been featured in The New York Times, Vogue, and L'Orient-Le Jour, and has spent years bringing Lebanese drag to international stages.
Anira Orlando
Copenhagen-based DJ of Moroccan origins and a trans artist. House, afro, and electronic: sets that are sensual and powerful, shaped by the crowd and driven by feeling.
Sherine Falasteen
Palestinian drag queen and resident artist of Gazelle L'Hafla. She performs in traditional thobes and serves radical realness. Culture, queerness, and resistance woven into every look. Loud on purpose, always. As long as zaatar and olives thrive, so do we.
Prncjdg
Palestinian DJ based in Brussels, also a resident of Gazelle L'Hafla. Trancy, groovy beats layered with Arabic pop and electronic textures. Born in Bethlehem, he carved out rare underground spaces in Palestine before finding refuge in Haifa’s hidden scene, where he honed his sound. For him, a DJ set is a radical political act.
Nazanin Yalda
Iranian musician and composer based in Brussels, known as part of the duo Floèmee. In her solo work she plays the setār, an Iranian string instrument, with sound modifications that expand its acoustic range into ambient, immersive, and deeply nostalgic territory.
The House of Gabbana
The Belgian chapter of the legendary international ballroom house, led by European Mother Raeesha Gabbana and chapter leader Destiny Gabbana. Representing with BB Gabbana and Jhaya Gabbana, whose work as a choreographer, performer, and (since 2025) DJ, brings vogueing, Ivorian rhythms, and underground queer energy into the same space.
Mona Felah
French-Swiss-Tunisian dancer, sound composer, and DJ based in Brussels. Her selections are built around percussive patterns from the Global South, introduced through online encounters, club practice, and conversation. DJing as a playful way of finding connection through the parts of yourself that erasure wants to destroy.
