Songs of Liberation14
Reem Talhami
EARLY 1987, I applied for law school at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A relative, whose enthusiasm made me suspicious, said, “You have leadership qualities and courage. You are worthy of the legal profession and should not consider any other!” My family wanted me to steer away from art and singing and get an academic degree and have a proper profession. I consoled myself, vowing that if I got accepted, I would follow the steps of advocate Felicia Langer. I would devote my time to defend those who have no voice: Palestinian political prisoners of Israeli occupation.
Langer’s book, With My Own Eyes, caught my attention from the moment I first spotted it in my father’s library, where it sat among countless books of all genres. My father built the library shelves with his own hands and infected me with a passion for reading and a love for books. I remember how my sisters and I would gather around him, with braided hair, in clean pajamas, to compete in a game of “Find that country on the map.” He was never satisfied with only teaching us the location of a country; he would often add his commentary and analysis on world events that shaped it, the wars it suffered, its historical and archaeological landmarks and its language. My father was a man of a few words, except when it came to explaining historic events. I wondered if his obsession for reading might explain his quiet nature, or if reading and silence were his inevitable refuge from the constant setbacks his generation of Palestinians had endured.
When the Zionist entity was established on the ruins of our lands, my family, like other Palestinians, found themselves under Israeli Occupation. Never in my father’s worst nightmares could he have imagined all the restrictions the occupiers would impose on us, under its military government.
I was born and raised in Shafa Amr, northern Palestine. My family roots (Al-Bandak) of the Al-Anaterah branch go back to the fourteenth-century city of Bethlehem. I am the eldest of four daughters. I grew up in a multi-faith town and received no official musical education outside of the primary and preparatory classes, where my teachers paid attention to my voice and performance skills. I attended public schools run by the Israeli Ministry of Education which was subject to the state agenda. I joined all the usual school activities; choir, Dabke and girl scouts. Our principal and teachers were under constant supervision of school inspectors, also known as Israel’s law enforcers, who ensured full compliance with the orders of the Ministry. One of these orders was for all Palestinian public schools to participate in Israel’s official ceremonies. I remember being punished for refusing to raise the Israeli flag and sing on Israel’s day of “independence,” a day that marks our catastrophe and the destruction of our way of life. Even with my simple, naive understanding at the time, I knew perfectly well that something must be wrong if I were to hold the Israeli flag and sing the Israeli “Tikva.”
In the ’70s, I was part of a young generation severed from our natural Arab environment, living in a controlled reality designed to impede our awareness of what it meant to be an Arab-Palestinian, especially as we became known as “Israeli Arabs.”
Identity is not a blue document.15 Identity is a calm certainty that grows through thoughts, feelings and convictions. My identity is part of the spirit of this place; my place of origin, where I was born, and is part of the people I belong to and the language I speak.
My application to law school was quickly rejected and, just as quickly, I was accepted to the School of Social Work. I consoled myself once more: “This too, would enable me to help those who have no voice.” I moved to the big city of Jerusalem, excited to start my academic journey, which lasted not more than two and a half years.
At university, my political awareness grew as I connected with my brothers and sisters in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. The “new” Occupation of ’67 had just reached its twentieth year, and the Palestinian people were about to begin a new phase of resistance, later named the “Intifada of Stones.” Twenty years separated the year of the great catastrophe in 1948 and the year of my birth in 1968. Now, another twenty years later, in 1987, my life in Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories began! It was then that I made the decision that would change the course of my life.
During the years of the First Intifada, I began to explore new ways of singing, similar to, yet distinct from, traditional nationalist songs that were popular in Egypt and the Levant, coming to us through Jordan. These new themes of songs were inspired by protest chants: angry, loud and powerful. The first time I heard Kamilya Jubran’s voice,16 it made me wonder why I had not heard it before. Her voice, and the songs she sang with the band Sabereen,17 touched my heart and soul, and impacted my style of singing for years to come. I was amazed by Kamellia’s unique oriental voice movement, melody and rhythm, which were different from anything I had ever heard before. Moreover, the lyrics of her songs captured the Palestinian Arab experience that belonged to and spoke to us.
“Some songs are a cry you cannot sing
So if my songs provoke you, be angry
O builders on the ruins of my house
Beneath the ruins a curse will turn
If my trunk is a victim of the axe
My roots like a God in the clod they turn
This is me naked, clad only in tomorrow
Either rest in its show, or be crucified
For his eyes and for the eyes of my brothers
I walk and give the path what it demands
This is me, have saddled all my troubles
My blood is singing on my palms,
So go on and have a drink!”18
“Silence is dishonor, fear is dishonor
Who are we? Lovers of day
We live, we cry, we love
We fight with ghosts
We live in waiting
We keep on digging through the wall
Either we open a hole for the light to come through
Or we die on the wall
Our shovels do not despair… and we do not tire or break
When the clouds of autumn dry up
And the summer train passes by
Our spring clouds are pregnant
With an abundance of rain
And tomorrow will be our victory”19
“Sleep, love of my eyes
This is how the nightingale slept
Sleep son, a good night’s sleep
Are these your milk or your adult teeth?”
“Why be patient my love?
Above the hardships we are
Why are eyes so blind?
When justice is in our hands?”20
These were the songs that transcended their eastern form and refined my vocal skills during the initial phase of my singing career. I found the beauty of the Palestinian dialect as powerful as classical Arabic. I began to imagine protest chants and daily Palestinian street talk, then composed and sang them. This set me off on a quest to find words that could satisfy my hunger.
I met Ibrahim Khatib, a nursing student and a guitar player. Ibrahim was an aspiring writer and composer, who was about to change the course of his life, too. However, my hastened return to northern Palestine delayed my creative quest. I regressed to singing other people’s songs, lyrics that I did not examine or choose, melodies that did not reflect my personal thoughts. Songs I loved and with which I resonated, but they were not mine.
Ibrahim had written Ya Mhajer weinak, “O Migrant, Where Are You?” and that was the first original song I performed. We presented the song for the first time at a celebration held by the Arab Students Committee at the Hebrew University. The reaction of the audience exceeded our expectations. News of our performance spread, and we began to receive invitations from the Arab Student Committees in other universities. This opened up space for us to create our own Palestinian sound, one that is both original and authentic to the experiences of our predecessors. Between Shafa Amr, Tamra and Nazareth, in the north of Palestine, the Gh’orbah band (Alienation) was born. The work of Gh’orbah lasted for only one year, from 1988 to 1989. The vocals, as well as the lyrics, melody and instruments took on new shapes. Our work in Gh’orbah resulted in a collection of original songs, as well as compositions of poems written by well-known Palestinian poets. None of Gh’orbah’s works were recorded due to the scarcity of resources, and the fact that we had no time to complete the journey which ended in its infancy. The band was dismantled and all its members, including myself, moved back to Jerusalem to study music at the Academy of Music and Dance.
Gh’orbah reflected our courageous persistence in creating original songs. The poems we chose were close to our hearts and expressed our sense of alienation in our own homeland; poems like Mahmoud Darwish’s “Soft Rain in a Far Autumn,” “A Stranger in a Far City” and “How Alone You Were.” Being a collaborative partner in making a choice, in owning an idea, and for the ability of that idea to reflect us, both as young individuals, and as part of a collective—that might be called a Nation.
I was accepted into the Academy of Music. The great musician and composer, Khaled Jubran (Kamilya Jubran’s elder brother), led me by the hand on my first visit to the Academy and had me sing to the voice teacher available on that day, who accepted me on her team. It was then that Khaled advised me, on a serious note, to put away all the Arabic music cassettes that I had. “Close the box well, and don’t open it until the day you graduate from the Academy,” he said.
An Eastern classical music education department had not yet been established at the Academy; therefore, western classical music and operatic voice development techniques were my only choice. Years later, I would shy away from the classification of Opera singer, and I would also refrain from restricting my voice to one vocal field.
In any case, I took Khaled Jubran’s advice partly for the first year of study, and I mastered operatic singing and graduated from the Academy in 1996. I did not open the box during the years of my studies, but I did collaborate with musicians and composers, amongst whom was Suhail Khoury. Suhail and I, with other musicians who joined later, established “Washem” (Tatoo) band. In 1993, the band released their first and only album, “Ashiqa” (Woman in Love), written by Palestinian poet, Waseem Al-Kurdi, and composed by Suhail Khoury.
Because he is life
Because he is its air and clouds
Because he is its soil and wheat
Because he is the eternal willow
Giving shade to the spaces
Covering the horizon
With his voice.
“Oh Jerusalem, where is the soul, where is the open range?
This space is desecrated”
“Gaza who is walled by radiant Children
who throw defeat behind and one brother holds the other.”
This musical experience was more timely than others that followed; the lyrics were written during the simmering of the Palestinian street in its First Intifada, and were released as a cassette, almost two years later. Washem and Ashiqa were fundamental blocks in my musical journey. My performances were in their heyday in the years 1992 and 1993.
In 1992, I was thrilled to be invited by the Al-Kasaba Theatre in Jerusalem to perform with the great Greek composer and pianist, Sarandis Kassars; then together, we toured Palestine. Subsequently, we were invited to perform together in Cairo.
That was the first time I visited Egypt or any Arab country. My joy was overwhelming. We presented two musical performances at the National Theater, which were positively reviewed in the media. That same year, I received an extraordinary invitation to sing at the Carthage International Festival in Tunis on the 25th anniversary of the occupation of Jerusalem, conducted by the great Tunisian conductor, Mohammad Al-Garfi.21
I was in seventh heaven, aware of the weight of responsibilities, as I stood on the rocks of Carthage. Behind me, Palestinian children stood on a high stone ledge, carrying Palestinian flags and wearing kuffiyyes. I was told later that they were the “children of Yasser Arafat”; some were orphaned refugees who came to Tunisia with Arafat when the PLO was exiled from Beirut in 1982. Meeting Arafat, himself, was magical. The man’s name and actions preceded him back home and neither the news nor my father could stop talking about him. My tears would not stop while he fed me with watermelon at his residence in Almanzah, Tunis. I was impatient to share this with my father, while my father was anxiously worried about my return and feared my being arrested.
Historical junctures sculpt and shape us. Moving from northern Palestine to Jerusalem held so much meaning; the First Intifada, and the way in which Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip connected to me like we were parts of one Palestinian body. Patriotic sentiments I grew up with were challenged every day in confrontations with the Occupation. Taking part in protests calling for an end to the occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian State. A rebellious love story. Marriage. Graduation from the Academy of Music. Motherhood. Postponed projects. Successive disappointments, both in art and life. Peace negotiations. Signed agreements. Round table. Peace treaties. Pens and papers. Second Intifada. The brutal separation wall. Oppression. Death, hanging over our heads daily at checkpoints. The nightmare of proving residence in Jerusalem. Dabbling in theater. Performing theatrical plays. Touring music and theater outside of Palestine. Awards and honors. New songs. Albums. The siege on Gaza. Continuous bombings. Martyrs. More death. Refugees aching to return. Palestinians in Diaspora. Dispersal. Alienation. And tiny Palestinian dreams.
All of this became, eventually, my inspiration to write new songs. It was important to keep my art away from cliché political discourses and their many profiteers. Tracking and finding the words that would capture reality without falling into the trap of sloganeering was not an easy task.
Songs reflect various moods that need to be deeply explored. That is why I confront the song, and direct it towards areas and details that are not necessarily categorized into a specific genre such as arabesque, classical singing or jazz. I am guided by the text. Lyrics confront events with literary linguistic vocabulary, far from the slogans that characterize them, much like describing a terrestrial event in celestial terms. This idea embodies my work and my partnership with the Palestinian musician, Habib Shehadeh Hanna. Our partnership consisted of special lyrical works, in addition to the songs of theatrical works and films in which I participated as a singer/actress. Habib wrote the musical compositions of “Jidariyyah” (“Mural”) by the poet Mahmoud Darwish, “Ors al Dam” (“Blood Wedding”) by Federico Garcia Lorca, as well as the documentary film Jerusalem Back and Forth by Akram Safadi, where the song “Ya’lou” (“Rise”) described, in summary, the experience between Habib and I, up to this day. “Ya’lou” presents the transition of singing in different vocal spaces: head, chest and throat, and a great sensory accumulation and a prominent escalation in the music.
“He rises, rises in space
He passes by the sun between two clouds
behind the wind
He blinks maddened by love
dances in front of his shadows
Butterflies and dolls make fun of him
Inside a suitcase”22
The same idea was reflected in lyrics also, in 2013, in my album, Yihmilni e leil (The Night Carries Me), ten songs written by Khaled Juma, and composed by Said Murad. The album was inspired by and dedicated to Gaza. The songs did not include words like destruction, bombing, missiles, blood, siege, division or any of the buzz words often heard in news reports about Gaza. The songs used a different language to tell the same story.
“My homeland is in the empty plains
And I am estranged from myself
And I call out to you,
But the echo returns to me”23
“Walk on my eyelashes
Drape the sound of a flute and my madness over you
Sleep in the warmth of my gaze
On my shore
Your footsteps are the melody of night
And whispers of a star that sing to me
It softens the cruelty of darkness
Inscribes a word across the morning
My chest is filled with papers I write
And my blood is ink to my writing.”24
“Strong like hope
Thoroughbred like a mare
Between sleep and drowsiness
Her eyes dream of the ways
The sun shining on her
When it kissed her, shy … she melted.”25
Looking back, I wonder what value was accomplished. I think of the young woman from the north of Palestine with a burning fire in her soul, her ideas and dreams that were waiting to be fulfilled and her intense passion for stage. What did that strong urge to sing on the stage before an audience mean? How ready can one be for this exposure? And what power does the exposure have? Is it just a group session for venting? Or a one-person sensory therapy, with a few short interventions by others? Sometimes, I wonder about the fine line between a heavenly gift and a satanic curse! There are those who produce wars and those who produce songs! Which category would one prefer?
The thought of the price I pay as an artist who had chosen her path a long time ago, when I tirelessly decided, time and again, to produce a new song, or to take part in a new theatrical production, even when I know that it would only be staged five or ten times at most—and I think, maybe, that the whole thing is a curse. Despite the constant bleeding in art, the restlessness, the anxieties, the sweat and the few visible scars, they lead into the joy of launching new works and the ecstasy of a premiere! People’s attachment to songs, the way they memorize them by heart, their glorious attendance at live performances and their awaiting new works, their observations and impressions, these are all heavenly gifts! Exposure makes you as vulnerable as if naked, but yet powerful; you take on the art of disclosure, of speech and movement and relieve the audience from the arduous task of speaking for a while. All they need to do is watch, observe and listen in order to feel liberated.
Here and now, the artist is the maker of joy, the speaker of words, and the proprietor of ideas. That is a force to be reckoned with! You own the stage, so you own the world.
Songs bring us together as if we are one, accompanied by our applause and the movement of our bodies. Songs free us from burdens we can no longer bear. They make us lighter and fill us with life.
Those who know the Palestinians well know the extent to which they relate to traditional songs. If you see the tight-knit Palestinians stuck together in a Sahja or a row of Dabke, you will know beyond doubt how free they are. No one can resist the temptation and the infectious joy, courage and ecstasy that are transmitted to Palestinians when they hold a vigil or protest against their occupiers. With songs, we wage wars without shedding a single drop of blood. A battle, whose weapon is beauty, language and music, and in which we do not mourn a single martyr! How can anyone think this could be a curse?
Once I settle into texts that speak to me and express my feelings and ideas, I begin to explore the theatrics of sound and space. Theater plays a very important and influential role in my psychological and artistic formation and voice. The characters I play on stage are a part of me. Theater opens new doors and outlets for my voice. The songs are dramatic scenes, and the hero of each song is a character in their own right. Since 2004, I have wandered the dynamic space between singing, theater and voice. My voice reached into areas that I once feared and refrained from, thinking I could not belong there. Theater contributed to the liberation of my voice far more than any vocal lessons I received at the Academy of Music ever could.
My artwork reflects Palestinians, wherever they are, with poetics and renewed vocabulary, despite the risk of rating scales and reviews. I deliberate on finding new angles, sometimes small ones, within the great and unending conflict on the ground.
The Palestinian reality demands resistance and freedom fights on a daily basis, while the Occupation with all the tyrannical power that they have, is quick to provoke, escalate and sow oppression and death in our land. On the other hand, with every disappointment, ongoing frustration, lack of vision, loss of direction, the alienation status of Palestinians grows wild and legitimate fatigue afflicts the steadfast in their own country.
We, Palestinians, are caught between daily resistance and steadfastness, and the hammers of the executioner multiply and branch out. It feels as if the Palestinian people have been abandoned to face their fate alone.
“When your lamp lights your night
When you rise above your wounds
When your madness pulls your fear
When your voice falls from you,
Strengthen your heart and get angry”26
“Where is your neighing, mare?!
Your echo used to travel far
You used to jump carefree
Trample on the borders of the guards
Where is your neighing, mare?”27
“I heal in him the neighing of the horses,
I heal him after he stopped talking
I pour him into the cupboards of the night
I pour him into my weeping eyes
I give him clouds and feathers,
Come back
Bring him to me,
I’ll hold him in my bosom
and he will come back to life.”28
“When our homeland chants, its people join in chanting
When our homeland falls into fatigue, its people stand guardian
A starry soul is jubilant, a loving heart with feeling thumps
The teary-eye wells with a longing, on heartache it stomps
Should our homeland make a wish, we grant its wishes
We embrace its breeze as by nightfall it swishes
How beautiful is its crazy breeze! This homeland is not to be forgotten.”29
I got married to Kamel Al-Basha in 1995 after a stubborn battle that lasted four years because of mixed religions. We have three daughters, Mona, Mariam and Marwa. I chose to live between Jerusalem and the West Bank. This prompted some of my friends residing inside historical Palestine to ask, “Why did you choose the hardest life where there are daily confrontations with Occupation, when you could have lived in a house overlooking the coast of Haifa or the coast of Acre?” “The uprising of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the 2021 Unity Intifada, confirmed that they are part of the Palestinian people, and that efforts to integrate them into Israel and to erase their identity have failed. The uprising showed a deep and strong commitment to the cause of Palestine. Israel will double its efforts using the carrot and stick approach and will re-evaluate its methods in order to subjugate or integrate them, but this only means that the uprising of 2021 will not be the last, nor was it the first.”30
With every new Palestinian outburst, new songs are born. Contemporary political and artistic Palestinian songs that reflect the dreams of Palestinians. The song is an instrument and a language. It is a tool, like all other tools Palestinians have invented, to confront their occupiers who have usurped their souls, their sky and their future, their land and their sea, and who think they can determine their fate.
In choosing this strenuous, rebellious, revolutionary path, songs, music, theater and all kinds of art carry in their folds important and great messages to describe a people and a homeland, each with its own style, method and choices. Purposeful arts vs commercial art. Thrust of words that are honest, real, which reflect us with all the diversity of Palestinian society.
I am reminded of a question a friend once pointed to me: “To what extent do you think that Palestine and the cause has become a burden on songs, poems and novels?” I was amazed at the sincerity of the question by my friend, writer Ziad Khadash. The question was deep and complicated. Yes, it is a dilemma but it is a choice as well! I would think of myself as more of a rock star than an opera singer, and I would find the way to speak up about Palestine and its people in any music genre that I would choose, or in any sound, but I would also go far and switch on and off between all genres and sounds—but what really matters are, those thrusts of words!
Art for the sake of art, or art for a purposeful cause? My answer was simple and short: There is no other way for me but this way! Purposeful art.
14 This essay was originally written in Arabic and was translated by Samah Sabawi.
15 The Israeli official identity card certificate that was given also to the Palestinian citizens inside Israel. The colors of identities given to the Palestinians vary according to their geopolitical position.
16 Kamilya Jubran is the lead singer of the Palestinian group Sabreen. Born in the village of Rama in the Galilee in 1966
17 The Sabreen group was founded in Jerusalem in 1980 by composer Said Murad, in an effort to develop the modern Palestinian song.
18 Palestinian poet Samih Al-Qasim, featured on Dukhan al-Barakin (Smoke of the Volcanoes) album (Sabreen, 1984).
19 Yemeni poet Abdulaziz Al-Maqaleh, featured on Dukhan al-Barakin (Smoke of the Volcanoes) album (Sabreen, 1984).
20 A mother’s lullaby by the Palestinian poet Dr. Husein Barghouti, featured on Dukhan al-Barakin (Smoke of the Volcanoes) album (Sabreen, 1984).
21 Tunisian Maestro Mohammad Al-Garfi conducted Voices of Freedom (singers and orchestra) at the Carthage International Music Festival, 1992.
22 Lyrics from “Ya’lou,” written by Akram Safadi for the documentary film, Jerusalem Back and Forth (2005), Habib Shehadeh (Composer), Reem Talhami 2015.
23 Khaled Juma (Poet) and Said Murad (Composer), “The Night Carries Me,” title song of the album, Reem Talhami 2013.
24 Khaled Juma (Poet) and Said Murad (Composer), “Step on,” The Night Carries Me album, Reem Talhami 2013.
25 Khaled Juma (Poet) and Said Murad (Composer), “Samra” The Night Carries Me album, Reem Talhami 2013.
26 Arafat Al-Deek (Poet) and Ibrahim Najem (Composer), “Rebel,” Reem Talhami 2014.
27 Arafat Al-Deek (Poet) and Basil Zayed (Composer), “Where is Your Neighing, Mare?,” Reem Talhami 2017.
28 Khaled Juma (Poet) and Moneim Adwan (Composer), “I Heal in Him,” Reem Talhami 2018.
29 Waddah Zaqtan (Poet) and Moneim Adwan (composer), “Elna Balad,” Reem Talhami 2021. Translated originally by Alice Yousef.
30 Quote of Anthony Shalat.