In the nineties I did some research about music practices among Sephardic Orthodox communities in Mea Shearim, a strict Orthodox quarter in West Jerusalem on the border of East-Jerusalem, and in Pisgat Zeev, a West Bank settlement. I met a teenage singer of religious and wedding song, from a Moroccan Jewish family. The mother made mint-tea for us, and was fully covered and their practices forbade her to shake hands with men. We spoke in mixed English and Arabic. The songs the son would sing were in Hebrew, all the melodies would be coming from songs made famous by Feiruz, Farid Al-Atrash, Shadia and others. The people I met mostly were not very much radicalised yet. Pisgat Zeev was still under construction and the labourers were Palestinians. Mea Shearim housed a lot of Orthodox who would not follow the media at all. No newspapers, no radio, no TV. Internet was not an issue at all then. One day with this singer and his father I went to a traditional celebrative commemoration in a suburb of Tel Aviv of a Jewish almost Sufi like saint who lived in Morocco, named Baba something.. Everybody was dancing on live Oriental music, my friend the young singer accompanied by a Yamaha keyboard which had all the instruments in it, and added to the drums from the keyboard a darbuka player. Men and women were dancing, in separate sections divided by a curtain. By the way they stayed there and I had to to back to East-Jerusalem, which was very easily done through hitchhiking. In the same years I cooperated with a music and theatre training school in Ramallah. One day we were going to Gaza with the students. Not everybody had the right ID papers to pass through the green line Israel zone on the way to Gaza, but no problem, people could either hide under the seats of the bus or could get out and walk through a by pass and join later. I only dont remember how they passed into Gaza, where there was only one entrances, Eretz. Anyhow all the time the kids had been making music all along the way in the bus. At the Eretz border crossing it took some time to get the group through. (At one moment Hanan Ashram was coming from the other side, and there were warm exchanges of thoughts, while she was doing her habitual chain-smoking.) While the kids kept on playing their instruments and singing their songs, the Israeli border guards joined. It turned out that one of the guys parents were from Egypt and another guys parents were from somewhere in the region as well, and these were the songs he had heard at home. Everybody spoke Arabic. In the mood of Oslo I thought this was a moment were peace glimmered through the dark skies (it was night). But rightfully still the Ramallah kids assured me that this was not it, as the border guards however nice they may be were still living on stolen land. In general in those days however on all sides there was a mixture of resignation and optimism in the hope that Oslo would bring something. However the day I saw the construction of the Har Homa settlement being started I knew the hopes were dashed. By the way the Western press then duly followed the Israeli PR narrative of naming Har Homa (Jebel Abu Ghneim) at the East side of Jerusalem, while geographically very clearly it is a hill next to Bethlehem. All the land between Har Homa and Talpiot the furthest extension of West Jerusalem to the East was still empty. Both in the West Bank and Gaza Hamas in those days was almost nowhere.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 14:12:28 +0000
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