As a boy, Ramzi Aburedwan found himself caught up in the first Palestinian intifada, a well-known photo at the time showing him holding stones to throw at Israeli soldiers. He has since become a respected musician and composer, who gives back to children from Palestinian refugee camps, like himself.
Today, he provides musical training to around 2,000 of them through his project called Al-Kamandjati (The Violinist).
Now 38, Aburedwan, who grew up in Al-Amari camp, near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, says he hopes to create a “strong future generation capable of expressing itself” through such projects.
He launched Al-Kamandjati in 2002, wanting to offer youngsters from the camps and other poor children access to expensive musical instruments and music theory classes.
The violinist, who studied music in Angers in western France, began by collecting instruments donated by various institutions across Europe. On his return to Ramallah, he extended the project in 2008 to Beirut’s Shatila refugee camp and Burj al-Barajneh camp.
Aburedwan’s project now counts eight music schools and more than 2,000 students, aged 5 to 18. In March, Palestinian officials named him cultural figure of the year.
The composer thinks back with pride to the old photo of himself as a child in a red jacket with stones in hand, taken in 1988. At the time, “we had to protect our camp from the soldiers,” he said of Al-Amari, one of the refugee camps set up to house Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Nakba – the creation of the state of Israel. With another mass exodus caused by the 1967 War, almost 8 million Palestinians are considered refugees, with most of them still officially living in camps across the Middle East.
The future is bleak for many who grow up in poverty, and that could have been the case for Aburedwan had fortune not smiled upon him. As a teenager, he worked odd jobs to earn money where he could, hawking newspapers and doing gardening work for families in Ramallah. One of the women who hired him “heard something about a scholarship to learn music in France,” he said. “She proposed my name and I landed in France, where I learned music.”
Recently, a group of music students from the Qalandia refugee camp, north of Jerusalem, were training along with musicians teaching violin and cello as part of Aburedwan’s program.
“I started to learn music in the Qalandia camp with the Al-Kamandjati group when I was 7,” said Tayib al-Hamouz, 16. “I played clarinet,” recalled teacher Montasser Jibreen, 25, who started studying with Al-Kamandjati in 2005. “After I finished school I got a grant for music at Angers University and was the conductor in the orchestra.”
Beyond teaching music, Aburedwan decided to spend this year inviting musicians from abroad to perform for Palestinians. Performances have been planned for camps, auditoriums, the ruins of ancient palaces in the West Bank, the blockaded Gaza Strip and Jerusalem.
Dozens of performances were held over 18 days at the ruins of Hisham’s Palace in the West Bank city of Jericho, including colorfully attired Rajasthan gypsy dancers.
At the Haram al-Sharif, the Jerusalem holy site that includes the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and the Dome of the Rock, Mawlawiyya sufis (the so-called “whirling dervishes”) from Turkey performed.
Sufi music and dance did not please everyone, however, and offended worshippers escorted Aburedwan and other artists away from the site. It takes more than that to discourage the kid from the refugee camp. A few hours later, dozens of people gathered to applaud the Turkish dancers at another location on the outskirts of Jerusalem’s Old City.
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