Music in Conflict: Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Aesthetic Production Nili Belkind Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree Of Doctor of Philosophy In the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Nili Belkind All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Music in Conflict: Palestine, Israel and the Politics of Aesthetic Production Nili Belkind This is an ethnographic study of the fraught and complex cultural politics of music making in Palestine-Israel in the context of the post-Oslo era. I examine the politics of sound and the ways in which music making and attached discourses reflect and constitute identities, and also, contextualize political action. Ethical and aesthetic positions that shape contemporary artistic production in Israel-Palestine are informed by profound imbalances of power between the State (Israel), the stateless (Palestinians of the occupied Palestinian territories), the complex positioning of Israel’s Palestinian minority, and contingent exposure to ongoing political violence. Cultural production in this period is also profoundly informed by highly polarized sentiments and retreat from the expressive modes of relationality that accompanied the 1990s peace process, strategic shifts in the Palestinian struggle for liberation, which is increasingly taking place on the world stage through diplomatic and cultural work, and the conceptual life and currency Palestine has gained as an entity deserving of statehood around the world. The ethnography attends to how the conflict is lived and expressed, musically and discursively, in both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) of the West Bank, encompassing different sites, institutions and individuals. I examine the ways in which music making and attached discourses reflect and constitute identities, with the understanding that musical culture is a sphere in which power and hegemony are asserted, negotiated and resisted through shifting relations between and within different groups. In all the different contexts presented, the dissertation is thematically and theoretically underpinned by the ways in which music is used to culturally assert or reterritorialize social and spatial boundaries in a situation of conflict. Beginning with cultural policy promoted by music institutions located in Israel and in the West Bank, the ethnography focuses on two opposing approaches to cultural interventions in the conflict: music as a site of resistance and nation building amongst Palestinian music conservatories located in the oPt, and music is a site of fostering coexistence and shared models of citizenship amongst Jewish and Arab citizens in mixed Palestinian-Jewish environments in Israel. This follows with the ways in which music making is used to re-write the spatial and temporal boundaries imposed on individuals and communities by the repressive regime of the occupation. The ethnography also attends to the ways in which the cultural construction of place and nation is lived and sounded outside of institutional frameworks, in the blurry boundaries and ‘boderzones’ where fixed ethno-national divisions do not align with physical spaces and individual identities. This opens up spaces for alternative imaginings of national and post-national identities, of resistance and coexistence, of the universal and the particular, that musically highlight the daily struggles of individuals and communities negotiating multiplex modalities of difference. Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………….1 Terminology and its politics………………………………………………………………...…11 Performing resistance, performing coexistence, and the spaces in between.............................16 Music as coexistence…………………………………………………………………..17 Music as resistance…………………………………………………………………….21 In between coexistence and resistance.………………………………………………...30 On the politics of genre………………………………………………………………………...32 Methodology, ethnographic positioning, and their twists and turns…………………………...36 Origins and departure………………………………………………………………….38 Return and methodology………………………………………………………………..41 My Palestinian Family………………………………………………………………….47 Chapter outline………………………………………………………………………………….49 Chapter 1………………………………………………………………………………………..53 Music conservatories in Palestine: a politics of resistance and nation making………………....53 Introducing Al-Kamandjâti……………………………………………………………………..59 One day and three concerts in East Jerusalem: reclaiming Palestinian space………………...68 Al-Kamandjâti Youth Orchestra at the Damascus Gate………………………………..70 Ramallah Orchestra at El-Hakawati National Theater………………………………...75 Al-Kamandjâti Jazz Band at Askadinya………………………………………………...78 The Ramallah Oriental Ensemble in Abu Dis and at Al-‘Amari refugee camp: from the ‘center’ to the ‘peripheries’…………...84 The Palestine National Ensemble of Arabic Music (PNEAM): construction of national symbols……………...………..91 i Introducing the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music (ESNCM)…………………….99 Christmas Concert for Life and Peace in Bethlehem; culture against normalization………….102 Today an Orchestra, tomorrow a State……………………………………………………........117 Chapter 2………………………………………………………………………………………..124 Arab-Jewish music making and cultural policy in Israel: a politics of coexistence, multiculturalism and inclusive citizenship……………………………………………………..124 Musical Projects of the Jaffa Arab-Jewish Community Center (AJCC)……………………….134 The Voices of Peace Choir (VOP)……………………………………………………………...142 Performing multicultural Israel………………………………………………………...142 Recording pluralistic citizenship…………………………………………..…………...149 The Shirana Choir……………………………………………………………………………...158 Singing against violence: socio-political context……………………………………....163 Singing against violence: aesthetic context…………………………………………….167 …And back to multiculturalism in the Israeli context……………………………………...…..177 Postlude: in between Israel and Palestine……………………………………………………...185 Chapter 3………………………………………………………………………………………..189 Music and the politics of spatiality and temporality in Palestine…………………………........189 Mozart at Qalandiya checkpoint: the politics and aesthetics of a Palestinian musical intifada…………………194 Bureaucratic control, the making of space and time, and musicking in Palestine......................208 Ramadan: “the mental, it’s our liberty.”………………………………………………….........220 Concluding thoughts on music as an agent in Palestinian (re)making of time and space……………………….227 ii Chapter 4………………………………………………………………………………………..231 Israel’s J14 social protest movement and its imaginings of ‘home:’ on music, politics and social justice…………………………………………………………………………………………...231 From housing to home, to different kinds of home…………………………………………......233 From the Rothschild ‘center’ to the Jaffa ‘periphery’………………………………………….242 From discourse to music: System Ali “builds the house anew” at the Jaffa tent city.…….……250 The art of being ‘Yaffawiyeh:’ the home that is the contact zone………………………….......270 And so, between the Jaffa ‘periphery’ and the Rothschild ‘center,’ where did the social protest go?.........................274 Reflecting on the social protest…………………………………………………………………279 Chapter 5……………………………………………………………………………………......282 On the lives and musics of Palestinian citizens of Israel: ‘betwixt and between.’......................282 Amal Murkus……………………………………………………………………………………293 Amal at the Zababdeh Culture and Arts Festival, 23 July 2011..…………...………….303 Art as shared space, art as battleground: Amal at the Jerusalem International Oud Festival and the JICC’s Speaking Arts Conference………………..314 Jowan Safadi……………………………………………………………………………………322 Jowan in Beer Sheva……………………………………………………………………334 In between the universal and the particular……………………………………………………339 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...343 References..……………………………………………………………………………………..355 Appendix 1.……………………………………………………………………………………..394 iii List of Photographs * Unless specified otherwise, all photographs are by the author 1. Poster of Ramzi Aburedwan as an eight year old and as an adult violist……………..p. 62 2. The Ramallah Orchestra in rehearsal………………………………………………….p. 66 3. Christmas Concert for Life and Peace at the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem…….p. 113 Photograph by Fares S. Mansour 4. The Voices of Peace Choir Performing at the diplomat’s reception…………………..p. 145 5. The Shirana choir performs at Abu El-‘Abed’s restaurant…………………………….p. 170 6. Poster depicting the distance to Palestine’s non-existent International airport………..p. 189 7. Social protest iconographies of ‘home:’……………………………………………….p. 235 8. Banner at the Jaffa tent city: “the Tel Aviv municipality is destroying Jaffa!”………..p. 247 9. Partial view of System Ali at the Jaffa tent city………………………………………..p. 253 10. Amal at the Zababdeh Culture and Arts Festival……………………………………...p. 306 11. Jowan Safadi and FishSamak at Beit Aneesha, Ramallah……………………………..p. 325 Photograph by Fares S. Mansour iv Acknowledgements It is my great pleasure to thank all who have facilitated my research, taken part in it, or otherwise helped me in the long process of research and writing of this dissertation. I am extremely grateful for the support that I have received from a number of institutions and countless individuals along the way. First and foremost, this work would not have been possible without the institutional support that was extended to me. Preliminary fieldwork, conducted in the Summer of 2010, was supported by Columbia University’s GSAS and Middle East Studies summer research travel funds. The first year of fieldwork, 2011, was