Music in areas of conflict

Good intentions, confusing messages

It was not because of conflict that I decided to create a concert at two sides the buffer zone that separate Greek and Turkish Cypriots. It was because of the beauty and wonder that I felt, sitting on a Greek terrace hearing the sounds of a mosque from the other side of the derelict buildings that mark the forbidden zone.

The people I spoke about the situation of division often started to tell me about the atrocities of the civil war and the evil of the other side. I told them that I never would or could really understand that story. It would not be wise to let me judge or react on such a sensitive and incredible history. But I could perceive the actual world freshly, and observe the beauty of it. I therefore proposed to celebrate the present. 

A year later, I positioned 400 musicians, students, singers and children on rooftops, balconies and in the streets of both sides and created a music event that flew freely over the minefields, barbed wire and checkpoints.

The people told me that this music performance confused their logic. They were used to have a fixed and persistent opinion about the conflict and their neighbors. Now it felt open again because the rhetoric was absent. They used to think about the buffer zone as an ugly place. Now they listened to the flutes, the birds and children’s voices that crossed the narrow divide. In this openness, everything was possible, and it was up to them to use the moment, to act.

A few weeks before I had learned to abandon the word “Peace” from my vocabulary. In Holland, peace means something. It implies for example a better world. It’s about the end of misery.

In Cyprus peace means failure. It means people from abroad telling their truths, it means politicians promising things that won’t work out, false hope, hypocrisy.

So I decided not to talk peace, but just to focus on making good music on an exceptional place, and not spending more money in one of the two communities.

It worked out. The concert was great. The virtually forgotten conflict was on CNN again, and this time not because someone died.

 A year later, I travelled to the Holy Land, committed to bring Palestinians and Israelis together in one performance. Another wall, another concert, why not?

A staff member of the Palestinian Conservatory in Ramallah told me: “I played many concerts with Israelis. After the Oslo talks and the promise of a roadmap to a Palestinian state, there was optimism and many cultural projects were organized to bring the two cultures together. But a few years later, there was no progress. Actually, the settlements and the roadblocks had more than ever expanded, our situation had deteriorated. Our songs with Hebrew and Arab lyrics were used to create a positive image to Israel, the land of peace as politicians used to call it.”

I talked with more people about the success of Cyprus and the idea to do it again across the wall of segregation. But it appeared that there don’t live any Israelis close to the wall. For a large part, the wall is built on Palestinian ground “to accommodate natural growth” of the Israeli settlements. To do anything artistically with the wall and the two peoples, would strengthen a false idea that this wall actually separates the Palestinians from Israel where in fact many Palestinians are separated from their own families and land.

I didn’t want the message of my music become political. In the Holy Land it’s hard to even breath without becoming actively involved in propaganda or complex manipulation.

All music carries a message. This message cannot be explained in words. But words will explain the music, and in a controversial place there will be a lot of words that will radiate around a music project, and as a composer you might not be able to control them all.

Therefore I am looking for symbols that survive bad journalists and malicious rumor.

Peace fails for this. It doesn’t fit in a context where one party is stronger than the other, when there is no equal position to negotiate. Freedom is better. It is universal and I don’t know of anybody that doesn’t value it. But freedom is also not more than a dream if you live in the Palestinian areas. A freedom concert could be the next well-intended project that will not have any concrete effect for the people more than releasing some emotions. It can be a nice statement, but it’s also a cry of the helpless, a confirmation of the subordinate position of the participants versus the oppressor or even versus myself as the guy with the magic passport that brings me everywhere.

To enter the Palestinian Areas as a European, you will usual be part of 30 old ladies talking Italian and visiting just the Nativity Church before departing for Israel right away. If you don’t follow that description, you must be a representative of an NGO, the UN or some other institution. You will be welcomed because the whole economy of the Palestinian Territories is built on your money. Well, I looked like such a guy, maybe a bit young but still convincing enough to raise expectations for jobs or funding.

I did not come to bring anything, instead I wanted something from them. I wanted their music, their participation and their input for my composition. This was different. Now the poor and oppressed met someone who was convinced that they were rich in some way. That their culture has things that are valuable to learn about, to share and to bring to a large international audience. This changed the mood. They sung for freedom, yes. But they also expressed their richness, and showed that they needed nothing from the other side. On the contrary, they gave their music and songs to the other side. To give means to have value. They proofed the wall to be an obstruction for their gifts to the world, for their dignity.

Merlijn Twaalfhoven – Version March 13, 2009