[Baltimore Sun] From throwing stones at tanks to plucking a viola’s strings; Palestinian-based ensemble visits Maryland for three concerts
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When Ramzi Aburedwan was a 6-year-old boy living in a Palestinian refugee camp and throwing stones at Israeli tanks, his favorite toy was a teddy bear that his grandfather salvaged from the trash.
When Ramzi pulled a plastic string, the bear played an excerpt from Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” Every night from then on, the boy tugged on that string again and again. It calmed his mind and helped him sleep.
The 45-year-old Aburedwan’s journey from the the al-Am‘ari camp outside Ramallah in the late 1980s, to concert stages that he shared with the renowned Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and to the music school he founded in his native land were chronicled in the journalist Sandy Tolan’s 2015 book, “Children of the Stone: the Power of Music in a Hard Land.”
Next week, Aburedwan will appear with the Dal’Ouna Ensemble, the Western-Arabic fusion band he founded, at three concerts in Maryland: on Sunday at a benefit concert for Gaza musicians at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ in North Bethesda; on Monday at An Die Musik in Baltimore and on Wednesday at McDaniel College in Westminster.
Five musicians will perform a mix of traditional music and Aburedwan’s original compositions on such traditional Arab instruments as the bouzouk and the oud and on such familiar Western instruments as flutes and an electronic keyboard. Two singers will accompany them.
“Our music jumps from one style to another,” Aburedwan said. “There are elements of Arabic music and of classical, African and jazz. There is a beautiful harmony between East and West, between the past and the future.”
Aburedwan recently set aside a half hour from Dal’Ouna’s 10-concert, cross-country tour to talk to The Sun about his life and music. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity:
Ramzi Aburedwan is a Palestinian composer, educator and viola and buzuq player. He is the founder of Ensemble Dal’Ouna and the Palestine National Ensemble of Arabic Music. (photo by Majdi Hadid/Courtesy)
Q: Where are you living now?
A: I spend four months of the year in Palestine to run my school and the rest of the time in France. I had to move my wife and kids to France because I wanted them to be safe. When I was growing up in a refugee camp in Palestine, most of my childhood friends were shot by soldiers. The first time it happened, I was eight. A classmate was killed right in front of me.
Q: Why is it important for you to combine Arab and Western music?
A: Because I don’t belong to just one culture. I grew up in Palestine, and Arabic music was the first music I heard on my grandfather’s old radio. When I was 17, an American chamber music ensemble visited our camp. For the first time, I heard four melodies at the same time. It was beautiful, and so mysterious.
I went to France at age 17 and trained on the viola. Later, after I returned to Palestine, Daniel Barenboim invited me to join his West Eastern Divan Orchestra, and we played together many times.
Today we have many, many kinds of music in the world, just as we have many different cuisines. I try to bring all the ingredients together to create a new kind of music, to combine the melodic style of Arabic music with the Western harmonic tradition.
Q: Many of the musicians in Dal’Ouna live in Palestine. Was it difficult to bring them to the U.S. for your tour?
A: Our singer, Oudai Al Khatib, was stuck for one week in Jordan before he could join us. Things are very bad now in Palestine. The West Bank is completely barricaded, and people really can’t move. It’s really dangerous, and most flights are being canceled.
When we started our concert in Sacramento, he had still not arrived in the U.S. and we were very worried about him. But he made it. He jumped right from the airport onto the stage.
Q: How has the Israel-Hamas war influenced the music you compose?
A: I don’t just write music about conflict. I also write tributes to the mountains in Palestine, and to the shepherds who are having a hard time moving about in a free way.
But when you’re living under occupation, it affects every detail of every day. For instance, my sister lives in Jerusalem. But, I can never see her because I can never get a permit to visit her there.
My music has many lyrics that talk about love and suffering and oppression. One of my songs is a prayer for stopping all of this.
I don’t choose the music. It chooses me.
Q: Tell me about your school.
In 2005, I started a school for Palestinian children that teaches Arabic and European classical music. It is called Al-Kamandjati which is Arabic for “the violinist.” We bought musical instruments in France — violins, double basses, percussion, a harpsichord — and shipped them to Palestine.
Musicians came from all over the world to help. A violist quit his job with the London Symphony Orchestra, partly to work with me and the school.
Since then, we have opened 10 music schools in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon. We have 40 teachers and we teach almost 500 children a year.
Music saved my life, so I want to give that opportunity to as many Palestinian children as I can.
If You Go
Dal’Ouna will perform a free concert at 3 p.m. Sunday at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ, 1 Westmoreland Circle, Bethesda; at 7 p.m. Monday at An Die Musik LIVE, 409 N. Charles St., Baltimore (tickets cost $10-$35 for tickets); and a free concert at 5 p.m. Wednesday at McDaniel College, 2 College Hill, Westminster. For details, visit westmorelanducc.org, andiemusiklive or mcdaniel.edu/about-us/event-calendars.
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