Unknown Destination: the first interview

Sarah Brooks from Montgomery, Alabama, interviewed Doc Jazz about his upcoming album Unknown Destination, scheduled for release on March 27, 2026. Read, and check out the useful links below – and a unique video!

Sarah Brooks: Hey Doc Jazz, thanks for taking the time to chat on Zoom. I’m Sarah Brooks, I’m from Montgomery, Alabama, and I have an MA in Communication Studies from Auburn University. I’m excited to be doing this interview! For people who might read this later, Doc Jazz is a Palestinian surgeon living on the Arabian peninsula. He is self-taught on guitar, piano, bass, drums and other instruments. He has composed and released a long catalog of pro-Palestine tracks under the Musical Intifada banner, but from what I have read, it seems his new project, the upcoming album Unknown Destination, is a departure from that. I hope to find out in this interview!

Hey again Doc Jazz, sorry for the long intro.

Doc: On the contrary, thanks for the kind introduction.

Sarah: I’ve been digging into your recent posts on X—the one from February 16 where you first shared the pre-save link for your new album Unknown Destination. I read an update about five months of intense writing and recording. You said this is the first album you’ve ever built as a complete body of work from the ground up, instead of just compiling singles after the fact.

Doc: Indeed. It’s the first time that I decided that I want to release an album, and then started writing songs for that purpose.

Sarah: I also noted that you called it a deliberate choice to exclude any political material, even though you’ve continued releasing political singles like ‘All About The Benjamins’, ‘Free Jerusalem’ and ‘Gaza City Blues’ on X. How were those songs received?

Doc: All About The Benjamins was received fantastically. It reached almost 600K views eventually.

And exactly one year later, I dropped ‘Free Jerusalem’. I didn’t push that one very hard, I just tweeted it a few times. I might have had to push it harder, as reactions, especially from Arabs, were very positive – including great applause from Reem Kelani, the famous UK-based Palestinian singer.

Gaza City Blues didn’t do much. It’s on Youtube. It’s long, clocks at 7 minutes, but it’s mostly me playing blues guitar. I do like the combination of lyrics and video, though.

Sarah: Still, for the album, you decided to move toward more accessible and catchy melodies while keeping your chord progressions original. You tweeted that a mastering engineer from Slovenia named Rok did the audio mastering. Sounds exciting!

I read that the release is set for March 27, and there’s vinyl in the works too. So to get us going a little deeper: what actually prompted you to create Unknown Destination at this moment, after six years since your last full album, and why decide to make it entirely non-political?

“I went into a hibernation from music for almost one
and a half years, until the 2025 ceasefire”

Doc Jazz

Doc Jazz: Interesting question. Let me explain. When the genocide started in 2023, it really turned all of our lives upside down. I couldn’t play or sing a note. Music felt so senseless to me, to the backdrop of children being mass-murdered. It used to make sense to me in the times when no one was paying it any attention. An alternative way to draw attention to crimes against humanity.

But now, everyone knew already. Everyone saw. What good could music do? So I went into a hibernation from music for almost one and a half years, until the short-lived January 2025 ceasefire, when I blasted out ‘All About The Benjamins’. I was stunned, as it went viral, as I said earlier. A real, hard-hitting protest song.

Then, when the fake ceasefire of October 2025 started, I literally dove into my music studio, and started writing and recording songs again. That eventually turned into a bit of a craze: if I was not at work, I was in my studio. That led to Unknown Destination. I’ve done releases of singles on the side, but I was mostly working towards releasing my first entirely non-political album.

No worries, most of my singles were still political, haha. I just consciously didn’t include them in the album.

Why? Well, people don’t really want political music, for starters. When they do, they want the dark, gloomy, aggressive sound that I just don’t do. I wanted to finally have an album that is purely for the sake of music.

Sarah Brooks: That sequence—the total shutdown after 2023, then the viral protest track in January 2025, and finally the all-in studio phase after the October 2025 ceasefire—really puts the timeline in perspective. Not sure if it was on X or elsewhere, but you mentioned updating your sound to be more modern and crisp, with playful elements added in. Can you talk about what that looks like concretely on this album, how many tracks are on it, and what the title Unknown Destination represents for you?

Doc Jazz: I was trying to give my already existing sound, developed over the years, a new, modern, more crisp format. I wanted to introduce more playful elements. Like: I used to try to make sure that a song stays interesting by introducing an additional track (say, for instance, percussion). But I realized non-musicians most likely barely hear that. So I’ve been doing things like interesting interjections, suddenly removing the drums, played with backing vocals a lot. And I guess it did make my sound more modern!

So yes, it is still my mixture of pop, funk, soul, rock, and a touch of jazz, but done differently. Hopefully better.

There are 9 tracks, most of them mid- to uptempo, with two gentler songs, ballads, so to speak. I think the title reflects the uncertain times we live in. The title song is about that too, even if not in a very direct, and more allegoric way. I think the theme is ‘reclaiming yourself’ or something like that. I mean, it could be. But it doesn’t have to be.

“Nine tracks, most of them mid- to uptempo, with
two gentler songs, ballads, so to speak.”

Doc Jazz about the upcoming
album Unknown Destination

It depends how you relate to the songs. I think they evoke different things in different people. But then there is that positive vibe in the music, and that kind of knits it all together. I want it mostly to be a unity in a musical sense. Reflecting who I am musically at this point in my life.

Sarah Brooks: So, Doc: that’s nine tracks, mostly mid- to uptempo with two ballads, a positive musical thread tying them together, and the title carrying that allegorical nod to uncertainty. Sounds intriguing! Which track are you finding yourself returning to most often when you put the album on these days?

Doc Jazz: That’s a very hard question, especially as I worked hard on all of these songs. But the one that I quickly switch on lately whenever I check my album, is ‘Get Real’. Maybe because it has a little less of that positive feel, the chords are kind of deliberately unsettling, and with that brass section emphasizing that feeling. It was one of the last ones I recorded. So, you could say, I was in my recording routine, you might say, perhaps even at the top of it.

Sarah Brooks: Interesting that “Get Real” is the one you’re gravitating toward lately, especially with its more unsettling tone and the brass making it feel heavier. How did you approach recording the brass section for that song?

“In Get Real, the chords are kind of deliberately unsettling,
with that brass section emphasizing that feeling”

Doc Jazz about the upcoming album
Unknown Destination

Doc Jazz: In that song, I multi-layered separate horns, trumpets, and saxophones, as MIDI. I did play each line separately, which is easy once you really have your arrangement in mind. I avoided quantizing. When you approach it that way, it makes it sound much more natural, and also fuller, and also helps you to much easier increase realism during the mixing stage.

Sarah Brooks: Layering them by playing each line individually definitely helps keep it from sounding synthetic, I would think. What are the lyrics in “Get Real” really driving at—what’s the core point you’re making?

Doc Jazz: Many people are pursuing irrealistic goals, which can be alright, but not at the expense of others. Being self-centered is not a good thing, but it is celebrated in these times, and people might be taking that way too far.

Sarah Brooks: That’s a pretty unvarnished take on how selfishness gets glorified and how far it can go. Where can people pre-save the album right now or get the vinyl when pre-orders open? And after March 27, do you have any sense of what’s coming next?

Doc Jazz: Let’s first see how things go with Unknown Destination. Marketing is never my forté. I have this weird and wrongful notion that if the music doesn’t pull you in, no marketing can affect that. But in reality, exposure plays a huge role in music. People rarely realize that the main reason they like a song is because they’ve (maybe partly subconsciously) already heard it 5 times on the radio today.

So, no plans yet after Unknown Destination. But it’s the first time in my life that I was actually writing in order to release an album. Before, I’d just say after a bunch of singles, you know what, let me combine a few of those into an album. And this was a great experience. A huge job, especially to combine it with my work, but I actually think that maybe that’s my thing. Yeah, I hope people grab the vinyl! I would love that.

Sarah Brooks: Thanks for the straight, detailed answers, Doc. It’s been really insightful to hear how this album emerged from that long pause, and what makes it different. Now I really can’t wait to hear it!

And hey, everyone: pre-save the album at DistroKid, and follow @docjazzmusic on X or visit Elastic Stage for vinyl pre-order information starting March 21—full release March 27.

Thanks again for your time. Take care and best of luck with the drop, Doc Jazz!