Girls! Music! Palestine!

[donsu]

http://counterpunch.com/cantarow09152007.html


"It is my right to study an honorable career,to choose my partner, to build our life. It is my right to work any jobWe must protect women’s rights.The rights of the womenand the rights of the childrenare hidden in the shadow of the law".

(From the lead song, “Ala Dal’ona,” on the CD, “Needle in the Groove.”

“It’s very important to be here, because where there is darkness it’s nice to make light.” – Fatima Khaldi, co-founder, Women for Life, northern Palestine.

-snip-

It takes us 45 minutes to reach Bidya, a hot, dusty little place, its main drag flanked by homely shops. The back of the building housing Women for Life’s offices gives onto a lot reminiscent of poorer sections of Bedford Stuyvesant in New York City -- two small battered-looking grocery stores flank the building. Centuries-old traditional Palestinian architecture was low, made of regional stone. It had lovely features among which, gothic-arched living quarters. You can still see it in Jerusalem’s Old City, in East and West Jerusalem, but it has all but vanished from most of the West Bank. Because Israel has confiscated so much Palestinian land, new Palestinian construction is often vertical, adding third, fourth and even fifth floors to already-existing structures. The effect is ugly and out of harmony with the surrounding landscape. Exhausted with the heat, we cart keyboard, amplifier, keyboard stand and mike to Women for Life’s suite of offices on the fifth story. Fatima’s 17-year-old daughter Mayisa, one of the two a cappella singers on “Needle in the Groove,” bounds up to me. "So,” she says in perfect English, grinning, “you are going to teach us?"

Piling out of group taxis, thirty 12-to-18-year-old campers arrive daily at a local boys’ school in the early morning sunlight, dressed in full cover, seemingly oblivious to the August heat wave that muffles the region. The school’s students have cleared out. The camp’s social code is simple: girls and women can’t perform in front of boys and men so the camp is gender-exclusive. The dress code is honored by girls and women alike. We teachers wear long-sleeved shirts when we’re in public. In the school everyone sheds cover-up. The girls emerge in T shirts, Indian over-blouses, jeans and trousers, running shoes and sandals, and an occasional pair of stiletto heels. Some wear baseball caps turned backwards. They overflow with energy, intelligence and wit, and they’re hungry for everything we show them. When their exuberance gets really high we “ride on two wheels,” as one of us puts it, trying to teach while still giving the girls room for fun. My own students punctuate our class sessions by crowding around the Roland “Oriental,” playing it from all sides, hands collapsing from correct “piano position” into stabbing forefingers and waving wrists as they simultaneously program and play the keyboard. Omar has given us a lousy power cord that keeps falling out of the back, so several girls take charge of reconnecting it and getting us back into drum-and-organ mode. They’re like endless popcorn: their energy keeps bursting from nine till three while their teachers wind up every day wet with sweat and aching with fatigue.

-snip-

“No one in this area supports music. Especially for girls. So this will be our way of struggling against the occupation. Next year I want eighty girls! I promise myself, we will sing and we will dance."
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has anyone heard the CD Needle In The Groove?

may it be 80 students next year and may they sing and dance.

[EFerrari]

1. What a great subject line!

:)