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 Popular Art Centre, Ramallah - El Fanoun dance studios. The message of the El Funoun Troupe evolves with the changes that take place in society. The original message when Funoun started was to preserve the heritage and to protect it from obliteration and loss as was programmed by the Israeli occupation. We now have a heritage, we have an identity andthe evidence isthat our heritage has been here for thousandsof years, which means that we have been on this land for thousands of years,when there were Zionist claims in the ‘40s that this was a land without people and a people without land. We see art or dancing not as art for the sake of art, but we consider that art or dancing or music carries a message, and this message can contain many embedded messages. KHALED KHATEMESH.......Director El Fanoun LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES OF INTEREST PALESTINIAN NATIONAL THEATRE (PNT) is a Palestinian non profit cultural institution which strives to create and to develop a unique cultural life in Jerusalem, by way of producing and presenting artistic, educational and entertaining programs that reflect the aspirations of the Palestinian people. www.palestineonlinestore.com This on-line store sells work by many of our featured artists - Rim Banna, Rim Kelani, Iron Sheik. There is an excellent selection of Palestinian films, art, music and products available for purchase. LIBERATING SONGS: PALESTINE PUT TO MUSIC JOSEPH MASSAD Abstract: Journal of Palestine Studies Spring 2003, Vol. 32, No. 3, Pages 21–38 Posted online on December 4, 2003. (doi:10.1525/jps.2003.32.3.21) This article surveys the history of songs about Palestine from 1948 to the present, examining how the changes in musical style and lyrics correspond to the changes in the exigencies of the Palestinian struggle itself. Tracing the primacy of revolutionary Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s, the central role of Fayruz and the Rahbani brothers in the wake of the 1967 war, and the emergence of Palestinian groups and singers as of the late 1960s, the article provides historical and political analyses of these songs as central features of how Arab popular culture has dealt, and continues to deal, with the Palestine tragedy. MARCEL KHALIFE is a UNESCO Artist for Peace who is a master composer and performer of the oud. On his journey, Marcel Khalifé invents and creates original music, a novel world of sounds, freed of all pre-established rules. This language elevates him to the level of an ambassador of his own culture and to the vanguard of Near Eastern music in search of innovators. TRIO JUBRAN - Nazareth-born Samir Jubran is not afraid to say his ‘oud (the Oriental luth) is his weapon, used to counter Israeli prejudice, racism and occupation. The articulate Palestinian artist, now between France and his home town of Ramallah, has been forging acoustic compositions for as long as he knows. Indeed, he was originally nurtured on the ‘oud at the bosom of one of Palestine’s best-known musical families. In 2005, Samir brought in his brothers, Wissam and Adnan, to form a unique trio. That same year their album “Randana” marked the inauguration of what Samir claims is Palestine’s first record label, of the same name. In 2006 the trio were invited to perform at New York’s prestigious Carnegie Hall. SUHAIL KHOURY, General Director of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music at Birzeit University in Ramallah is a practising composer and musician. Suhail Khoury’s music is deeply connected with his personal experiences. It talks about freedom, victory, Jerusalem and love. Some of it was composed during Suhail Khoury’s six-month imprisonment in 1988 for producing a tape of music, and is a manifestation of his experience in the Israeli jails. KHALED JUBRAN, older brother of KAMILYA JUBRAN, is a performer and teacher/mentor to a group of young performers learning to master the oud. We met Khaled Jubran in Jerusalem where he holds regular informal music nights in the basement of an East Jerusalem hotel. He began these sessions, where musicians can just drop by to jam, during the second Intifada in 2000. Khaled Jubran said he wanted to create an oasis of music amongst the chaos, to see life continue despite the fear and isolation people were feeling during those times and suggests that resistance music is that which is played under occupation. He arranges these evenings to give young performers an opportunity to meet and play together. Because an occupying army governs the country, it lacks an appropriate infrastructure that would have an interest in providing support and venues for cultural activities. Therefore there are no venues for musicians to perform and gain experience in Palestine and they are not invited to perform in Israeli venues. Subsequently, musicians rely on invitations to perform outside Palestine, in Europe, Egypt and other Arab countries. REEM TALHAMI, popular solo vocalist, opera singer and actress performs contemporary and traditional songs in concert with various groups and as a solo artist. She graduated from the music academy in singing and voice training, and started her artistic journey at the beginning of the 1990's. Reem Talhami was the lead vocalist for some well-known Palestinian groups like Ghurbeh and Washem. In cooperation with the Greek pianist, Sarandis Kassaras, Reem Talhami has prepared a distinctive program of solo singing with piano, which was performed in Egypt and Tunisia. In addition, she has been part of an Arab Orchestra in Tunisia gathering a large number of Arab artists and musicians.
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LINKS TO PERFORMERS, WEBSITES AND MUSIC PERFORMERS EL-FUNOUN PALESTINIAN POPULAR DANCE TROUPE is a Palestinian dance troupe based in Ramallah who perform traditional dance both inside Palestine and around the world. The group perceives its works as artistic articulations of Arab-Palestinian heritage, present and future ambitions. The Troupe aims at developing and promoting contemporary Palestinian dance through reviving Palestinian folklore, deriving from it, building on it and adding to it El-Funoun’s unique dance style. RIM BANNA is a Palestinian singer, lyricist and composer who was born and currently lives in Nazareth in The Galilee. She presents the Post-Modern Palestinian Arab song, which is inspired by the Palestinian people's conscience, sentiments, culture, history and folklore. Rim is committed to performing her music to children in the refugee camps. She tells stories of crawling through barbed wire barriers with her husband Leonid Alexienko, her young daughter and her twin babies to get into the camps to perform for the children. Leonid Alexienko and Rim Banna compose and perform their music together. JAWAHER SHOFANI is Palestine’s most beloved and demanded singer of traditional Arabic folk music. She is a grandmother in her seventies and is called upon to sing whenever there is a wedding, a funeral or when a newborn baby is going to be baptised. During the most difficult times in the refugee camp of Jenin and in Bethlehem she made a lament based on a lullaby, with her own improvised lyrics, which she performs for public audiences. This lament has been collected on the CD, LULLABIES FROM THE AXIS OF EVIL, recorded by Erik Hillestad. MUSTAFA AL-KURD is a pioneer of Palestinian political songs, performing as early as 1967. His music is based upon and reflects the culture and history of Jerusalem. His compositions emanate from the old universal cultural heritage of the city; and the spirit of cultural and philosophical creativity inherent in the three monotheistic religions that inhabit Jerusalem is integral to his work. He is currently music director for the Palestinian National Theatre in East Jerusalem. SABREEN was a popular music group that formed in 1980 and has since disbanded, although their music continues to be played in Palestine. They focused on the development of the Palestinian modern song and reflect the humanitarian and cultural reality and the suffering endured from the political situation. Their recordings remain imbued with a sense of hope; yet reflect the frustrations and longing associated with the Palestinian experience. Sabreen's music blends traditional instruments like the kawal, oud, qanoon, buzuq and hand drums with modern classical instruments; the contrabass, cello and violin. Together with carefully chosen lyrics, the result is rich, experimental music. WISSAM MURAD is the younger brother of Sabreen’s Said Murad and is a singer/songwriter who plays the traditional oud. His music represents a youthful approach to resistance. Although he sings specific songs pertaining to the political cause, he also sings of love alongside global issues that condemn the destruction of the planet. He says it is assumed that as a Palestinian he will sing only of resistance and he feels the limits of that supposition. There are a number of performers living in the Diaspora who also make music that re-iterates the protest. Of these we are working with REEM KELANI, musicologist and performer living in London and Hip Hop DJ IRON SHEIK in the United States. REEM KELANI |