Monday 09 January 2012
It is late afternoon and in a room
darkening by the minute because of an all-too-familiar power cut, Shaden
Shabwan, just 10 and a study in concentration, plays a Czech folk tune on an
upright Yamaha piano as her teacher wills her to avoid mistakes. It is test day
for piano students at the Gaza Music School, where Shaden is in her second
year. Across the corridor, her classmate Abdel Aziz Sharek, also 10, is just as
focused. Accompanied on ouds and tabla, he dexterously picks out a mesmerising
classical longa on the qanun, the zither-like instrument that has been central
to Arab music for a millennium or more. Abdel Aziz takes his regular studies as
seriously as he evidently does the music. "I want to be a doctor," he
explains. "But I will keep playing. I will be in a band at the same
time."
Back in the piano room, Sara Akel plays two
études by the Austrian composer Carl Czerny and a Bach Polonaise, with such
confidence that you would never guess, if you shut your eyes, that she was only
12. Sara prefers music to academic subjects at school. "I really love it
here," she says. "The teachers are so nice and talented. I'm really
looking to be a professional musician." In Gaza? "Why not?"
It's a fair question. This centre of
artistic excellence may conflict with Gaza's popular image. But it is already
nurturing a young musical generation worthy of its peers elsewhere. Each of the
52 boys and 73 girls come three times a week after school for two sessions of
learning an instrument and one for theory. While many have never touched a
musical instrument before, they have all passed competitive tests of ear and
rhythm to get in.
Among several Gaza prizewinners who
performed in the last national Palestinian music competition by video link –
because students cannot leave the territory – a seven-year-old qanun player,
Mahmoud Khail, came first in his age group. This April the school will become
the fifth full branch of the Edward Said National Music Conservatory – the
leading Palestinian music institution named after the nationalist writer and
music lover who died in 2003.
But the school is also a powerful symbol of
Gaza's resilience. It was founded three years ago at Palestinian Red Crescent
premises in Gaza City's Tel el Hawa district with finance from the Qattan
foundation and the Swedish government. The first crop of students gave their
first concert on 23 December, 2008.
Four days later, Israel's military
onslaught on Hamas-controlled Gaza opened with an aerial bombardment which
landed a direct hit on the Preventative Security HQ and damaged nearby
buildings including the school. Director Ibrahim Najar, a music graduate from
Cairo University and a maestro of the qanun, was in the building at the time.
He suffered only cuts and bruises and came back two days later to store the
instruments in the school's innermost space, the bathroom.
But then on 14 January, Israeli troops
entered Tel el Hawa. The PRCS building was hit, and the school and several of
its instruments, including the precious piano, were destroyed. Thanks to the US
NGO Anera, replacements were brought across the border despite the
Israeli-imposed blockade, including two brand new pianos, and the school was up
and running in new premises.
That the school offers European as well as
Arab classical music is thanks to a group of musically qualified east European
women among the sizeable number who married Gazan men travelling to the former
Soviet bloc for study. Yelina Lidawi, a North Ossetian, graduated from Rostov
Conservatory and taught music in Vladikavkaz before coming to Gaza with her
husband in 1999. Yet, having no piano, like her pupils (unlike Abdel Aziz, who
has a more transportable qanun) she depends at home on a digital keyboard. In all
of Gaza, with its population of 1.5 million, she estimates there are probably
only half a dozen pianos. Gracefully acknowledging the talents of her charges,
she points out that "we make a very strong selection. Last year we had to
choose 40 pupils out of 250 who applied".
Although tuition is at present free, many
pupils are middle-class by Gaza standards – often with professional or academic
parents. But beside running a scholarship programme in its existing centres to
ensure that no talented pupil is excluded by poverty, the Conservatory has a
growing outreach to more deprived, or culturally conservative areas.
Suhail Khoury, director of the Edward Said
Conservatory, tells of an encounter on a recent trip to Gaza. At a school in
Bureij, chosen for one of the network of choirs the conservatory also runs in
Palestinian refugee camps across the region, the headmaster told him about two
11-year-old boys whose behaviour and academic achievement was so poor they were
on the point of expulsion. "They both happened to have nice voices and
joined the choir," Mr Khoury says. "The head said their personalities
had changed; they had something to show for themselves. He said: 'I want to
thank you for that.' That made my day."
Musically speaking, Edward Said's name is best
known for the West-Eastern Divan orchestra he formed with Palestinian and
Israeli musicians in 1999 with the conductor Daniel Barenboim. But the
conservatory that bears his name doesn't work with the orchestra, believing in
a cultural boycott of Israel until the 44-year-old occupation ends.
Acknowledging that he differs both from Mr Barenboim and the late Said about
this, Mr Khoury asks: "What is this orchestra telling the world – that
Palestinian and Israelis can play together? We know that."
The stance did not stop the
conservatory-run Palestine National Orchestra playing an inaugural concert in
the mixed Israeli city of Haifa last January. The target audience was Israeli
Arab but Jews – and Israeli TV – were welcome. Mr Khoury had declared: "Today
an orchestra, tomorrow a state." After all, Israel's birth in 1948 came 12
years after the formation of the orchestra which became the Israel
Philharmonic.
Back in the Gaza Music School, 20 or so
young voices resonate from a lecture room this chilly winter afternoon,
softening to near inaudibility before rising to a crescendo as they run through
their scales. Ibrahim Najar is at the piano coaxing his solfège class to extend
their vocal range. Afterwards the pupils talk music. "I used to like the
piano but I preferred the qanun," says Adnan al Ghalban, 11, from the
southern city of Khan Yunis. "It talks better than the piano."
Feras Adas, a café owner's son, explains
how he first started to play a cousin's guitar. "I learned from him but I
made lots of mistakes before. Now I want to be a big musician in guitar."
Asked if, with talk of a fresh Israeli invasion, he fears the music school
could be bombarded again, he has his own nine-year-old take on the power of
music to transcend borders and battle lines. "I think it will not be
hit," he says cheerfully. "The Jews like this kind of thing."
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