Keeping traditional music alive in Gaza
The Dawaween ensemble
8 March 2016
They come from different backgrounds and have vastly different musical experience. But the 13 members of Dawaween, a newly formed band set for only its fourth concert in Gaza on 10 March, are united around one aim: the preservation and popularization of traditional Palestinian music.
“Our music is pretty lively,” said Abdelraouf al-Bilbeisi, the band’s 30-year-old oud player, who spent the previous nine years performing with a wedding band around the Gaza Strip.
The oud, the fretless Middle Eastern cousin of the European lute, is one inseparable component of this effort, and al-Bilbeisi is rediscovering his love for the instrument after so long on the wedding circuit.
“I stopped enjoying playing,” he said, while practicing the traditional tune “Ya Mahairati” — My Beloved Horse — on stage at the Mishal Cultural Centre in Gaza City. “Then I joined Dawaween. Those traditional tunes bring out some beautiful sounds from my oud.”
The Dawaween ensemble performs at the Mishal Cultural Centre in Gaza City.Shadi Alqarra
Woman on stage
Al-Bilbeisi is also one of the band’s three main singers. Another is Riwan Okasha, 24, a financial management graduate and daughter of locally renowned musician, Atef Okasha. Okasha has sung since the age of three — she had little choice, she said, in a musical family — but never contemplated performing in public.
“I was reluctant to join [Dawaween] at first. Gaza is a conservative society, and it is not common for women to perform on stage,” she said.
With her father’s and two musician brothers’ encouragement, however, she overcame her reluctance. Still, she conceded, her first time on stage was nerve-wracking.
“At first, the audience seemed confused,” she recalled. “Then they cheered and encouraged me, clapping loudly. It was really amazing and that’s why I am continuing.”
