By: Juhaina Khalidiah

Translated by: Adib S. Kawar

“I use the international language to speak to the whole world and tell my homeland’s story”

Hanin Al-Umary was born 18 years ago, she shall be a different child, with a special perception with the manner of her touching an instrument that produces a musical resonance. When others feel this difference, she will be twelve years old. Her mother shall see that her daughter is searching for the source of any note “sneaking” from here or there. Actually, Hanin shall not tire much to find what she is looking for, she lives in Palestine, it is not easy for notes to fly around in that sad land. The dream shall materialize and she shall play the piano in  school, and later for three years in the institute, and later to be one of the younger students in the Edward Said National Institute of Music. Later on she  shall be a member of The Palestinian Youth Orchestra, and shall take part in three successful performances in Germanythat took place late August.

Hanin Knows how to explain her dream, loves and plans for it. And she knows well how to choose her words to say: “I use the international language to speak to the whole world and tell my homeland’s story”. This language could take different forms, but playing classical music with a Palestinian orchestra means for her: “Is to use music in the right way to give the right picture”.

Hanin is one of forty young Palestinian men and women living in Palestine and the diaspora whose ages vary between 14 and 27 years old, they play under the middle aged German musician, Walter Mick, with the University of Bonn Orchestra,who did a great work of "melting together" young talented Palestinian musicians from both Palestine and the diaspora, particularily from Syria. Thus the total number of players is seventy men and women performed a trial recital and attended a some 12 days of workshops under Walter Mik's leadership in the Musik-Academie in the beautifull romantic south-German town of  Weikersheim near Frankfort. Then another official fully booked recital took place in Berlin. The audience in the Radio-Music-Hall applauded enthusastically to the symphonic music of Issa Boulos: Manfa and Longa, Marcel Salvador Arnita: Oriental Sketches and Anton Dvorak: Symphony No. 5, F-Major, opus. 76. After this great event the musicians headed for the Westphalian City of Gutersloh where another melomane public was waiting for them. 

Everybody in the orchestra, and everybody in the BerlinHall, wishes these young Palestinians to perfect their art in Jerusalem, where they have been invited next year for a festival to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the Palestinian Youth Orchestra! Great thanks to the musicians for this wonderful evening, thanks also to the Maestro Walter Mik, who's devotion for music and young people is equal to his devotion for mutual understanding and peace. 

Palestinians gave the world great medical doctors, teachers, lawyers. academics and poets. They have enriched many countries since their forced exile, but one day they shall come home to their beloved land and build up a heaven of peace and culture, a culture between occident and orient in the Landof Palestine. These musicians will be among of them! 

Guenter Schenk
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The Here and There

A lot is to be said about the “here” and about Palestinethe “there”. Before any of the performances is presented  Assafir  interviewed some of the Palestinian players and organizers, “Here”,they meet a cultured diplomatic audience and a number of the members of the Arab community there. “There” the homeland can hardly breath, and thus it doesn’t breath music. And they are here where they find themselves between their instruments that help them to convey there message. Those say that they have no other way for that.

This is what is in my hand now… and this is what I master”, Ibrahim Najem (24) studied development and economics. But in spite of that the future for him is still unclear, but now he doesn’t think of emigrating from Palestine. As he says he is one of three “counter bass” players there. His music is not his source of income: “But it is a mean to prove my existence as a human being… I chose to speak music”.

Palestinians got marginalized in every field. Today, Khalil hopes, that he will be heard by somebody, Ad he hopes the name of Edward Said, after whom the institute was named two years ago, shall be of help for him.

Ibrahim’s music means for him an un-marginalized idea and expresses his patriotic feelings: “Palestineis not present on the map, neither does the West Bank, and the wall eats our homeland… But music is a small window that tells  me as a Palestinian musician holding a musical instrument is existing”.

Ideas do not come in this assortment in Ibrahim’s head, but you find him repeating them then every time reshaping them in a different manner. You ask him about his feeling while playing, and at the same time sounds of bulldozers come from the background demolishing our neighbor’s house, or a mother wailing for a martyred son, Ibrahim thinks in a loud voice: “I ask myself: ‘Is it too much for as a Palestinian to play music after all of that? No. Music is not a luxury, neither it is entertainment and not even a source of income. This is my right, or it is imposed on me to keep my head bowed?”

Ibrahim never forgets his friend crossing an Israeli barricade with a smashed instrument. But he simply continues playing to dream. There, music taught them how to dream. As he expressed it: “The matter is simple I am a Palestinian from ‘Beit Sahour’ I love music and love to play it, I don’t forget others sufferings, and I have my own sufferings too… Even this they consider to be too exorbitant for us to ‘enjoy’?”

He speaks with enthusiasm, as if he is afraid that time shall end before he finishes expressing himself in full. He adds: “No body has the right to judge and convict others. Some play for pleasure, and others play for a professional aim, to prove himself then to emigrate... Some to relay a message... All of this is true”. Those know and do not claim that they are all resisting, they also do not claim that they are lecturing every foreigner who play with them about Palestine, and they do not claim that they are able to solve the social, artistic and political problems of the Arab homeland: “We don’t claim that we can for example correct the trajectory course of Arab singing, we are an orchestra that has a garden, that is open for any body that can plant rose in it to plant it... We don’t do miracles... Music is simpler than that”.

The Palestinian youth orchestra accepted Mick’s invitation to come to Germany, and they reciprocated by inviting the University of Bonn to participate in a festival to be held next year in Al-Quds (Jerusalem), in the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Palestinian Youth Orchestra, as said by the general manager of the institute and its patron, who looks forward for similar arrangements with France, Belgium and Venezuela.

It is the first time that the orchestra plays in the presence of Suheil Khoury as he was denied entry to Ammanfor years. The orchestra this year is privileged with a new dimension, it is playing with the University of Bonn Orchestra, and outside the Arab homeland. Previously (since 2004) all its performances were made in Jordan.

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