Palestinian Cultural Resilience Through Musicking under Israeli Military Rule 1948-1966

In June 2018, I met Marwan Darweish at a conference, he is a professor of peace studies at the University of Coventry. Marwan was researching Palestinian cultural resilience under Israeli military rule between 1948 and 1966 and he was surprised to discover how important music was to the core Palestinian group identity. I knew very little about this field at the time, but I was happy to help Marwan make sense of his data. He invited me to return to Israel/Palestine with him to collect further data, focusing on music, and for me to experience the place and what remains of military rule there, namely, the occupied territories. Gaza Strip was deemed too dangerous right now, so the occupied territory I focused on was West Bank.

The trip was very short (five days), but very illuminating and interesting. We met some fantastic people who were eager to share their stories of music and identity in this time period. Many of the people discussed have passed away but their children were happy to discuss their memories and artifacts at length. Marwan and I will be presenting at a Middle Eastern Studies conference in Leeds in June and, in turn, publishing one or two articles from this trip. I won’t go on at length here about it, other than to summarise a few things that I learned from the trip and post a few pictures. If you wish to more, please feel free to ask me in person. Or wait for the articles!

In short, the importance of traditional wedding singers for the maintenance of Palestinian identity during this period cannot be overstated. Palestinians were forbidden from publicly congregating at any other time than weddings. They possessed no public spaces in which to meet or share ideas. Weddings became sites not only of celebration, but also for the sharing of news and even coded political dissent. The melodies were largely from the Arabic diaspora, especially Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, while the wedding rituals themselves and improvised lyrics were very much Palestinian in nature. Palestinians are a much more diverse group than is widely reported, consisting of a variety of religious affiliations or even no religious affiliation. Politically, they had aligned themselves in the 1950s to the Communist Party, although most claimed that was only because the state had effectively dismantled the other opposition parties. Only one interviewee claimed to have any lasting affiliation with the Communist Party. While the military rule of Israel itself ended in 1968, military occupation of the occupied zones continues today, and many of the concerns from then likewise continue. In this era of internet and media access, however, the reliance on wedding singers for news and dissent has lessened considerably, although they still exist and are well-respected in their communities.

This work is not directly related to music therapy, although it is clear how therapeutic music has been in this case in terms of social and cultural integrity and identity maintenance. There is a strong case to be made for how music therapy could be of benefit to this population as well.

 

This is Habib, a 96 year old Palestinian Greek Orthodox Communist, proudly displaying his tree.

 

 

This is Badea, a traditional wedding singer and son of perhaps the most famous wedding singer in Palestine, Attallah.

 

 

Some of the border wall in Bethlehem. 

 

 

A bit of Banksy in Bethlehem. 

 

 

Soldiers guarding the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where Jesus was supposed to have been born. This was Christmas Eve on the Orthodox calendar, and the Bishop of Palestine was in attendance. He had been accused of selling church property to illegal Jewish settlers in Jerusalem, and protesters were amassing for midnight mass. Merry Christmas!

 

 

It was also Coptic Christmas and there were a lot of Ethiopians who made the pilgrimage in clothing not suitable for the mountain winter.

 

 

The seventh station of Christ in Jerusalem, with soldiers with guns at the ready. No idea why.

 

 

One example of an illegal Jewish settlement, heavily defended, smack in the middle of the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem. Cozy.