Vocal Heroes: The Female-Led Podcast Network Giving Young Arabs A Voice
Kerning Cultures’ award-winning mix of English and Arabic content is a masterclass in nuanced storytelling…
Recent shows explore personal journeys, social and political stories and cultural investigations into everything from the complexities of wearing the hijab in Egypt, anti-blackness in the Arab world, the region’s obsession with K-Pop, to the paleontological history of the UAE desert and the Middle East’s spiritual links to coffee.
“We started Kerning Cultures six years ago as one of the first networks in the region, when no one really knew what podcasts were,” says Co-Founder and CEO, Hebah Fisher. “Since then, we’ve grown our team across the UAE, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi, Morocco, Palestine, as well as in the US and the UK. We currently have nine original shows underneath our network, that range in genre from daily news, to fiction, to narrative documentaries on love, history, science and more.”
“Our whole team is bilingual and straddles Western and Arabic cultures interchangeably”
Shows produced by Kerning Cultures regularly top the charts across the Middle East and the company is also gaining international recognition. “Our listeners are young, educated, affluent, largely in KSA, Egypt, UAE, and the rest of the region,” explains Hebah. “Our English stories reach Arab diaspora internationally, too, and the majority of our listeners are female.” And this could be reflective of a largely female-centric team at Kerning Cultures. “Thirteen of our 17 team members are women, sometimes, that translates into the genre of content that we produce: love and relationships, mental health, female radio diaries,” Hebah explains. “Being female-led means sometimes it’s a little harder, given gender biases, to do all the things we have planned for KC Network, but I think our track record speaks for itself: we were the first podcast company regionally to raise venture capital, our shows win awards and regularly top the podcast charts, and we’re producing content that’s literally never been made before.”
And that’s across two languages, no less. “Our whole team is bilingual and straddles Western and Arab cultures interchangeably,” says Hebah who runs the business with Co-Founder Razan Alzayani. “Actually, it’s kind of magical when we’re able to tell the same story in both languages across our shows.”
The latest success story for Kerning Cultures has come from their podcast series, Saqr’s Eclipse, a fictional thriller following character Faisal Saqr as he journeys to witness a once-in-a-lifetime solar eclipse in Rob’ El Khali (The Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia), with many emotional ups and downs along the way.
“Our biggest listening audience comes from Saudi, and so we decided to lean into that and produce a Saudi-first show,” Hebah reveals. “Saqr’s Eclipse is the product of a year and a half of original scriptwriting and production. Our scriptwriter and director was Jaylan Auf – an award-winning Egyptian writer, and Mohamad Khreizat, our award-winning Audio Lead at Kerning Cultures Network. They created a visceral, delightful series that listeners can binge like a TV show – but for the ears.”
And it’s been Kerning Cultures’ largest production to date. “Nothing like this has ever been produced before in Arabic; 23 actors – mostly Saudi, and some Egyptian, Lebanese, and Palestinian, all came together to bring this story to life. It ranked number one across 10 countries regionally and ranked number six globally as a trending fiction podcast. Listeners wrote in to say how much they binged the show, and even Googled Faisal Saqr (the main character) because they thought he was a real person from how lifelike the show was.”
Hebah and the team at Kerning Cultures have most recently aired a series of Ramadan podcasts and have some more scripted series lined up for the summer including the first Arabic daily tech news show. So, as the network’s popularity goes from strength to strength, what’s the secret to their success? “We’re just trying to be genuine,” says Hebah. “We believe media should be a two-way channel of communication with our audiences, and so we really show up in our production, social media, and everywhere else, as your (slightly nerdy) friends.”
Scriptwriter, Jaylan Auf penned the successful Saqr’s Eclipse series
Saqr’s Eclipse
Acclaimed Egyptian scriptwriter Jaylan Auf decided to try her hand at podcasts for the first time on this collaboration with Kerning Cultures. She spoke to Bazaar about working on the Saqr’s Eclipse series…
“From the moment I heard the Kerning Cultures podcasts, I knew I wanted to work with them. Their shows are genuine, very well-researched, and Hebah is a true powerhouse – driven, creative, and extremely resourceful.
Saqr’s Eclipse is a young adult thriller series set in the mysterious desert of the Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia. It is an adventure led by celebrity travel blogger Faisal Saqr, who takes us into a supernatural world over the eight episodes, each one corresponding thematically and dramatically with a phase of the solar eclipse. The underlying theme of the series is Faisal’s estranged relationship with his father and their hope for reconciliation through a magical voice recorder that transcends space and time.
The fictional Saqr’s Eclipse podcast series was a hit amonst fans
The writing process for a podcast is very different as you solely rely on audio; you can’t even see the character’s facial expressions. It was a real challenge to translate a story I could visualise in my head to a series that’s only heard – so, I had to tailor the narrative around voice and sound design.
I was very worried about the process of casting, as I was new to the Saudi acting community, and the pandemic meant doing auditions entirely online, yet all my worries disappeared once we started to contact people working in the industry. Even though the cinema and theatre industry is relatively new to Saudi Arabia, the potential is amazing – there is so much dedication and passion.”
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s May 2021 issue
Lead image courtesy Instagram/@sarashakeel
