PALESTINIAN MUSIC IN EXILE
Voices of Resistance
by Louis Brehony
340 pp. AUC Press, $59.95
In light of this period of heightened resistance as “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” targets the Zionist state, the publication of Louis Brehony’s Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of the Resistance (October 24, 2023) could not be more timely. The book traces the history of Palestinian music in refugee camps close to Palestine, as well as in Gaza and ’48 Palestine.
“Palestine is itself a site of exile” due to displacement after the Nakba, Brehony states.
Based on fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2021, Brehony began his research in Palestine and then moved to Europe, where half of the contributing musicians now live. More than a standard textbook on music history, his motivation reflects “revolutionary solidarity and advocacy,” (p. 30) along with love for the music itself. From his position as “involved supporter” of “exploited and oppressed masses” (p. 30) around the world, Brehony attempts to fit the mold of “organic intellectual” (p. 2) described by Ramzy Baroud in These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons (2020).
The preface begins with the 2021 Zionist siege of Gaza, important not only because its brutality is being repeated now, but because the Unity Intifada signified a moment of collective struggle, a theme woven throughout the book (p. xiii). Though each chapter begins with an anecdote, a case of history to draw the reader in, Brehony stresses that such experiences spring from a “collective universe” (p. 5) where music reflects resistance to hostility and displacement. Accordingly, he argues that colonialism is both “repressive and productive” with regards to music, reflecting “come on [steadfastness]resistance, and grassroots critique” (p. 6) to overturn the decades-old Zionist Occupation.
In this case, come on does not signify individual endeavor. Instead, it represents communal struggle rather than the kind of hero-worship that is peculiar to Western culture. Rejecting victimhood and Western individualism, Brehony cites Laleh Kalili’s definition of come on as “inherently optimistic, valorizing the nation’s endurance under dire circumstances.” (p. 27) This perspective “reestablishes the leadership of women in come on,” (p. 27) their grassroots status serving as a bulwark against the bourgeois leadership that has flourished since the Oslo Accords.
In the early years of the First Intifada, the music of come on and resistance opened a space in Gaza for young women who inserted gender equality into the nationalist agenda (p. 94). Citing the revolutionary icon Leila Khaled, Brehony repeats her axiom that feminism goes beyond the individual in the freedom struggle (113). Similarly, Erica Caines explains how revolutionary African feminism “seeks to challenge and dismantle structural inequities and power dynamics,” but “when it is liberalized, priorities shift to individualistic perspectives and experiences, focusing on personal empowerment rather than addressing broader systemic issues.” Accordingly, Brehony notes that during the intifada, young women were in the streets facing Zionist state oppression along with men.
While Brehony does not privilege one form of resistance over another, he notes that resistance music generally “rejects the liberal politics of nonviolence,” suggesting that “come on narratives intersect poetics [with] armed struggle” (p.11). Focusing on Palestinians in the ghurba (a place of exile, denoting estrangement), Brehony views musical tradition through “Kanafani’s lens of popular struggle” (p. 21) and the Marxist understanding of culture and imperialism, both tools to examine the “collective roots” (p. 21) of rebellious music.
In this vein, Brehony looks at the music of Saied Silbak, who sought a place for instrumental sounds within the music of resistance. From his roots in Al-Dakhil (the “inside” of historic Palestine, colonized within the borders of the Israeli state), Silbak’s anti-Zionist position led him to reject the politics of “normalization” (p. 154), refusing to work with Israeli musicians despite the potential of damage to his career.
“Pushing for a ‘third way,’ meaning ‘accommodation’ from the Palestinian side,” Brehony notes, “would mean acceptance of an unequal position.” (p. 155) Unlike the “comprador bourgeois” who privilege “moderation” (p. 152) over refusing to collaborate, Silbak reclaimed the oud from Israel’s appropriation of the instrument, thus presenting it as a symbol of “musical indigeneity” (p. 167) in spaces of revolutionary nationalism and resistance.
“Out of its own contradictions,” Brehony claims, “the Israeli regime creates its own gravediggers.” (p. 168) In his “counternarrative to ‘coexist,’” Silbak provides another path: “no to normalization, yes to the liberation” (p. 168), a road that is much needed in these times.
In times of strife, the oud has been at the center of communal gatherings and recorded tapes. Driven from below, music and politics “coexist and frequently coalesce” (p. 7). With the outbreak of the 1987 Intifada, the center of resistance shifted to Gaza (p. 93). In 2021, the Unity Intifada saw a more unified resistance across historic Palestine, and there it remains today.
In Chapter 6, Brehony presents case studies of three musicians — Reem Anbar (oud), Rawan Okasha (vocals), and Said Fadel (keyboard, oud, and vocals) — who exemplify the revolutionary spirit of Gaza City. Recognizing that Gaza has endured multiple bombings, including the war, which started shortly before the publication of this book, Brehony refuses to portray Palestinians as mere victims. Heeding the call of Ramzy Baroud to reevaluate the Nakba as an “impetus for an ongoing resistance” rather than a “celebration of victimhood,” Brehony stresses “motifs of defiance, endurance and grassroots resistance in the face of Zionist oppression,” often “translated under the rubric of come on.” (p. 11)
“Gaza’s energies see young musicians recenter the idea of farah,” he writes, “or joy through music, in dynamic relations with nation and heritage.” (p. 173) Although Reem Anbar has left Gaza to “navigate new situations of exile,” her “stor[y] lead[s] back to Palestine, and to intense formative years of creativity and social solidarity.” (p. 169)
Challenging gender roles, Reem set out to play the oud. She uses it as a personal medium that is embedded in come ona steadfastness that enables “joy amid colonial terror” (208) as well as collective action. She relates that she uses the oud to “speak,” to “write a message” (p. 184): “I’m Palestine and I exist [mawjuda] through my music.” (p. 184) In this way, she writes herself into the story of a country whose existence Israel denies.
“It is challenging to maintain one’s moral compass,” writes Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, “when the society you belong to – leaders and media alike – takes the moral high ground and expects you to share with them the same righteous fury with which they reacted to the events of last Saturday, October 7.”
In addition to its masterful history of Palestinian music, Brehony’s book serves as such a guide, reinforcing already held beliefs with a fresh view of how to create a better world. Like the direction to which Pappé pointsit steers “north — towards decolonization and liberation,” marking a path that cuts through “hypocritical policies and the inhumanity, often perpetrated in the name of ‘our common Western values.’”