A celebration of culture in Palestine

The opening night of the annual Palestine International Festival coincided with a free concert performed by “Arab” Idol winner Mohammad Assaf, in downtown Ramallah.“It won’t affect us, as this is our 15th festival and we are still confident of a full house,” Eman Hammouri, festival director, donning a traditional Palestinian dress and with a warm smile, said.

And a packed audience was entertained by two culturally different music and dance performances, the opening act by El-Funoon Palestinian Dance Troupe and their popular “Dabke” (a local dance form) followed by Spanish ballet and flamenco of Murcia.

In 2000, returning home after completing her masters from London School of Economics in “social policy and planning in developing countries”, Hammouri took charge of The Popular Art Centre, which organises the Palestine International Festival. The organisation was in debt but she nevertheless accepted the challenge, with the attitude, “I won’t harm it any further, because it is in a bad shape anyway!”

She had worked there before, as a volunteer, from 1993 to 1998, and was au fait with it, but the socio-political situation was indeed very tense and volatile. It was the time of the Second Intifada.

Hammouri recalled with a sense of achievement, “Within five years I was able to get the Popular Art Centre out of debt, although the festival was not staged from 2000 to 2004 because of the Intifada. Nevertheless we still had many outreach programmes for children, a small cinema in Ramallah as well as folkloric music and dance groups in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, all in response to the oppression caused by the Israeli occupation and steadfast resistance.”

“Working with community-based organisations throughout the West Bank and Gaza, a partnership was created with various outreach programmes, with the belief in empowering them as they dealt directly with their beneficiaries”, Hammouri said, adding that “we built arts and cultural units in community-based organisations which previously focused only on sport resulting in the exclusion of females, which we then rectified. International donors later lent a hand to help our quest to preserve our cultural heritage with performing arts, folkloric groups and music, in refugee camps and remote villages.”

Hammouri pointed out some of the notable achievements of The Popular Art Centre: “We recorded 220 hours of traditional Palestinian music, the only archive of its kind, and we shared this with Birzeit University for academic purposes.”

Today, the centre has an active cinema club for the youth, but its major focus of late is the Dabke Dance School, with various outreach programmes across the West Bank — and occupied Jerusalem has recently been included.

Elaborating on the latter aspect, she said: “We partnered with a school in the Old City of occupied Jerusalem in 2011, as the place is undergoing rapid ‘Judaisation’, and obtained a dance hall to accommodate 260 children in one semester with graduating classes, every two semesters. The numbers have increased substantially as Palestinian youth have a thirst to maintain their cultural identity.”

Meanwhile, a the Popular Art Centre in Ramallah, “the graduating classes have increased in number and especially with parents attending the event, the indoor Cultural Palace has become too small,” she said. “This year we linked the graduation ceremony with the Palestine International Festival and made it a feature of one of the nights.”

Talking about the International Festival, Hammouri said, “We have been experiencing many financial difficulties, but we labour on. Our achievements are attributed to the hundreds of volunteers who not only give us a professional edge but make it a success each year.

“Previously we brought international acts and staged them with our own home-grown stars, providing cultural and uplifting entertainment for locals and those Palestinians coming home for the summer as well as visiting internationals, but since 2005 we have added themes to our festival. Last year, it was ‘learning’, which included disability, and we highlighted with a Chinese dancing group made up of the deaf, blind and mute, who made an impression on Palestinians.

“This year, our theme was ‘recycling’, as the Israeli occupation with its illegal colonies burdens us with their excessive garbage besides our very own, and we need to raise awareness. We had a group from Paraguay, ‘The Orquestra de Instrumentos Reciclados de Canteura’ [Orchestra of Recycled Instruments from Canteura], which is made up of youth who come from humble living conditions close to a landfill. Their defining characteristic is playing musical pieces with instruments made from trash found in that landfill. Most importantly, they engaged in a three-day workshop with Palestinian students from the Edward Said Conservatory of Music, which also included a joint performance.”

On their night, the Paraguayans, captivated the receptive, mostly Palestinian, audience, with renditions of classical music, South American tunes and even Beatles songs, as their “made from trash” instruments did the talking.

Many regional Arabic superstars have graced the stage of the Palestine International Festival, and this year was no exception. On the second night, two young Moroccan singers, Murad Bouriki and Fareed Ghannam, enthralled the locals with riveting performances. The audience recalled that Bouriki was a winner of The Voice Arabia competition in Beirut in 2012 and Ghannam known affectionately as “Farawla” (Strawberry) also propelled his career with participation at that event.

In a sense Palestinians were able to not only enjoy the show but to also reinforce their belief in their inherent talent, manifested in Mohammad Assaf, the reigning Arab Idol.

Another inspirational regional performer was Emel Mathlouthi from Tunisia, who with her jazzy lyrical style had the entire audience up on its feet with her song, “Kelmti Horra” (My Word is Free), which the revolutionaries sang in the streets of Tunisia, ushering in the Arab Spring.

A Friday night witnessed Maize Williams, the sole member of the Boney M, who continues performing their international hits with some new renditions of her own, although the British band has long broken up.

The linkage of the graduating ceremony of students from the Popular Art Centre with the festival was not only long overdue but a huge success, and according to Hammouri, “we believe that the local, regional and international acts of the festival shall inspire our graduates into achieving their dreams which our constant struggle under the occupation fights to realise”.

The Palestine International Festival also provides a host of local music and dance groups — some of whom, such as El-Funoon Dance Troupe, have performed at many notable festivals across the world — a platform to showcase their talents side by side with all these regional and international stars; the festival is not restricted to Ramallah, and concurrently travels with performances in Jenin, Tulkarem, Nablus and even to occupied Jerusalem.

At the culmination of another successful festival, a tired but satisfied Hammouri philosophically noted: “We showcase our musical and cultural talent annually with all these singers and dancers from around the world to show us and them that we Palestinians are here and we are not going anywhere and our struggle continues with art as an instrument of resistance”.

Rafique Gangat, author of “Ye Shall Bowl on Grass”, is based in occupied Jerusalem.