The Qalandiyah checkpoint, which over the years has become increasingly fortress-like, had yet to witness such a sight. Young people streamed toward it from both sides, armed with suspicious black cases and metal poles. The cases turned out to be for musical instruments, and the poles were folding music stands.
The youth belonged to the Ramallah Orchestra, whose musicians are from across the city, Palestinians and foreigners, who operate under the auspices of the local Al-Kamandjati (in English: the violinist ) Conservatory.
Beneath a corrugated metal awning set up at the checkpoint, which abuts the Qalandiyah refugee camp and serves as a filter for entering Ramallah, the musicians opened their stands, took out their instruments and played a slew of classical segments - from Bizet's "Carmen" to works by Grieg and Mozart.
The tremendous tension at the checkpoint, where huge crowds seek to cross, never knowing if they will get it, dissipated for a moment. The crowd surrounded the orchestra and smiles spread for a long time.
The protest concert, which brought the music from Ramallah to the point where it is possible to encage and block people - but not the sounds - served as the finale for the second two-week summer festival of Al-Kamandjati. This was the sixth time it coincided with the international Music Days Festival, which marks the first day of summer, on June 21. This year, the festival got bigger and featured many musical groups, including the Ramallah Orchestra, the Jenin Orchestra, the Camps Orchestra and the Al-Kamandjati Choir, as well as Arab music ensembles from Ramallah and Jenin, and jazz, hip-hop and percussion ensembles. At cultural centers and schools from across the Palestinian territories, in Hebron, and Qalqilyah, Tulkarm and Abu Dis and in the Qalandiyah, Shuafat and Jilazun and Al-Amari, Balata and Nur Shams refugee camps, people gathered to listen to concerts.
In the orchestra, in the first viola chair, and also in the chamber music ensembles, one can always spot a young man playing intensely, and when he is not playing, he is directing and encouraging. This is Ramzi Aburedwan, the founder of Al-Kamandjati and its director. His story has been told many times - "the child with the stones" from the first intifada who used to lead kids in a run on IDF jeeps, stones in his hands, and who was injured several times by live fire from the soldiers. He stopped his violent behavior when he became a classical musician playing strings.
Aburedwan, who was born in 1979 in the Al Amari refugee camp and discovered music at weddings in the camp, dreamed of becoming a musician. In an almost fantastic sequence of events, he met a violin teacher, began studying and after receiving scholarships for study abroad, became a viola player and founded the music conservatory in 2002.
"The theme for this year's festival is 'Come to Palestine,'" said Aburedwan, very emotionally, during the concert at the checkpoint.
A chance to play for every child
A few days later, last Thursday, in the tranquil Talitha Kumi school complex in Beit Jala, where Al-Kamandjati was running its sixth musical summer camp for children from the territories, Aburedwan elaborated a bit more on his dream: "that every Palestinian child will have a chance to play."
Dozens of children from across the West Bank come to this camp, and a visit to the vast rehearsal rooms there reveals extensive activity. In the main auditorium, there was a rehearsal of Beethoven's third symphony, the "Eroica" - a considerable challenge, and actually not completely surmountable for the young children. "We intend to perform all of Beethoven's symphonies, all nine of them, by 2015," promises Aburedwan.
The conductor, from Boston, Eric Culver, instructs and guides the children, with reinforcements, their teachers, adult European musicians. "It won't help if you play loudly and powerfully," he says. "The focus of the note is what is important, the separation between the short notes, the stresses, the attention we pay to each other - this is what makes the music." Accordingly, the young players alter their tone, including oboe, flute and clarinet players and of course string instruments.
"I learned this from my mother, who was also a musician," Culver later said.
In another hall, young string players performed sections from Handel's "Water Music," also conducted by an American teacher. Next door was a rehearsal of a string ensemble under the guidance of a young French musician.
It seems that most of your teachers are foreigners?
"The isolation we have been suffering from for so many years prevents development of a musical culture here," says Aburedwan. "Because of the occupation, for 60 years musicians and teachers have not come to the territories - not from Arab countries, to perform and teach Arab music, and also not from Europe. For example, from Eastern Europe, where there is tremendous teaching potential and we also have something to offer financially to teachers. It's a terrible cultural vacuum. We could have taken off - were it not for this. I am amazed to discover the tremendous thirst for music studies that exists among our children.
"While it is true that as a matter of course we, too, neglected the issue of music for 60 years - supposedly we pushed it aside because of other things that were deemed more serious - but that's a mistake. Culture is not a luxury that you make time for after you resolve what is really important. It is a truly important thing in and of itself."
The lack of teachers is not the only problem, but also the high rate of turnover among those who do come. "Al-Kamandjati offers a fair salary, but even if you offer teachers $100,000, we wouldn't be able to keep them for a long time," says Peter Sulsky, a viola teacher who is part of the orchestra, also an American and a former member of the London Symphony Orchestra, explaining the troubling question of music instruction in the territories. Coming to teach means giving up a career in the United States or in Europe. "That's why the teachers come for a short period, sometimes as part of their studies or during their gap year before university studies. Beyond that, the teachers' lives are hard. Israel many times bars our entry. Most of us have only one-time visas, and that means leaving every few months and going abroad to renew the visa, which is expensive and not always a sure thing. Moreover, sometimes a teacher has to return home for a short visit - a family matter or for a vacation, and then he risks being refused entry upon his return."
Sulsky was Aburedwan's first teacher: "I never think in terms of a conflict, Israel against Palestine," he says. "I have many friends who play in orchestras in Israel, and I myself auditioned to be first violist with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra." Sulsky came to the region in 1997 and taught all over the territories. He regrets the lack of consistency in the teaching. "In music studies, a child needs one teacher over the course of many years. A figure who is like a musical father, with whom you develop, to whom you turn to - and the children here don't have this, because their teachers change, sometimes every three months."
Still, the situation seems to be improving. "During the first intifada, it was forbidden to play and sing and to own instruments," says Aburedwan. "It was also forbidden to study our history in the schools, because of Israel's control over our curricula. We learned it here in an improvised manner, from parents and grandparents, and that's not a way to study. Academic studies enable conclusions to be drawn, and provide tools for searching for additional information and to consider solutions. Israel is wrong in its approach that keeping studies and knowledge from us is to its benefit. The opposite is true."
Lack of understanding
The music teachers, before returning home to Germany, France, Italy and the U.S., meet in a Jaffa restaurant. Some of them are finishing a year of teaching in Ramallah and refugee camps, others came just for the summer camp; some are post-high school volunteers, mostly students or musicians early in their professional careers. Javier, a cellist and teacher, originally from Puerto Rico and now a Boston resident, says he's exhausted but also invigorated "because teaching takes on a totally different meaning here. The kids don't see music lessons as a given, and their enthusiasm and dedication, along with the talent we find in every corner, are tremendous. I am not a politician or an activist, but include others in music - in teaching, performing and learning. I also learned a lot from the Palestinian kids, for example, from their playing and singing during our many bus trips. And when I come to Israel, on the way there and back, I always encounter a lack of understanding on the part of my Israeli friends," he says. "They say to me, 'Are you mad? They'll lynch you there." And they ask if there are any restaurants and hotels in Ramallah and find it hard to believe that music is being played there. Do we have to explain here that on the other side there are people just like them?"
