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Jisr-Gesher: Bridging cultures in conflict through Music
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Dalal's family came to Israel from Baghdad. Much of his output reflects his strong affinity for the desert and its habitants, interweaving the traditions of Iraqi and Jewish Arabic music and invoking Moroccan, Persian, and Bedouin styles, though singing in Hebrew. On this tour, Dalal performed a piece he played for the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize gala and the first anniversary of the Oslo Agreement, as well as four new compositions.
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Naser Musa taught a voice workshop at the Arabesque's annual Heartland Seminar—an Arabic music seminar in Racine, Wisconsin. Director Chami was struck by his great musicianship and his warm spirit.
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“As musicians, we cannot negotiate what territories and frontiers anyone should have,” explains Chami, whose tour included Puerto Rican, Japanese, Israeli, Italian, Syrian, Jordanian, American, Moroccan, Palestinian, and Russian musicians. “There are people who are trained to do that. We are doing it from a musical angle. We are playing from the same score; we experience the same difficulties on our instruments. And more importantly, we have to sit and listen to each other. Putting the best musicians together does not guarantee a good performance. They have to add willingness to feed from each other and humility to allow for give and take. If you can’t listen, if you are not willing to tweak your playing to accommodate other musicians, how good of a musician are you? This is how we do it in music. And maybe people in other fields can do the same.”
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