Gaza's young musicians sing and play in the ruins of war

GAZA CITY (Reuters) -A boy's lilting song filled the tent in Gaza City, above an instrumental melody and backing singers' quiet harmonies, soft music that floated into streets these days more attuned to the deadly beat of bombs and bullets.

The young students were taking part in a lesson given on August 4 by teachers from the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, who have continued classes from displacement camps and shattered buildings even after Israel's bombardments forced them to abandon the school's main building in the city. 

"When I play I feel like I'm flying away," said Rifan al-Qassas, 15, who started learning the oud, an Arab lute, when she was nine. She hopes to one day play abroad.

"Music gives me hope and eases my fear," she said.

Al-Qassas hopes to one day play abroad, she said during a weekend class at the heavily shelled Gaza College, a school in Gaza City. Israel's military again pounded parts of the city on August 12, with more than 120 people killed over the past few days, Gazan health authorities say. 

The conservatory was founded in the West Bank and had been a cultural lifeline for Gaza ever since it opened a branch there 13 years ago, teaching classical music along with popular genres, until Israel launched its war on the Mediterranean enclave in response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks.

Before the fighting, Israel sometimes granted the best students exit permits to travel outside Gaza to play in the Palestine Youth Orchestra, the conservatory's touring ensemble. Others performed inside Gaza, giving concerts in both Arabic and Western traditions. 

After 22 months of bombardment, some of the students are now dead, said Suhail Khoury, the conservatory's president, including 14-year-old violinist Lubna Alyaan, killed along with her family early in the war. 

The school's old home lies in ruins, according to a video released in January by a teacher. Walls had collapsed and rooms were littered with debris. A grand piano had disappeared.

Reuters asked the Israeli military about the damage. The military declined to comment without more details, which Reuters could not establish. 

During last week's session, over a dozen students gathered under the tent's rustling plastic sheets to practice on instruments carefully preserved through the war and to join together in song and music.

"No fig leaf will wither inside us," the boy sang, a line from a popular lament about Palestinian loss through generations of displacement since the 1948 creation of Israel.

Three female students practised the song Greensleeves on guitar outside the tent, while another group of boys were tapping out rhythms on Middle Eastern hand drums.

Few instruments have survived the fighting, said Fouad Khader, who coordinates the revived classes for the conservatory. Teachers have bought some from other displaced people for the students to use. But some of these have been smashed during bombardment, he said. 

Instructors have experimented with making their own percussion instruments from empty cans and containers to train children, Khader said. 

A BROAD SMILE

Early last year, Ahmed Abu Amsha, a guitar and violin teacher with a big beard and a broad smile, was among the first of the conservatory's scattered teachers and students who began offering classes again, playing guitar in the evenings among the tents of displaced people in the south of Gaza, where much of the 2.1 million population had been forced to move by Israeli evacuation orders and bombing. 

Then, after a ceasefire began in January, Abu Amsha, 43, was among the tens of thousands of people who moved back north to Gaza City, much of which has been flattened by Israeli bombing. 

For the past six months, he has been living and working in the city's central district, along with colleagues teaching oud, guitar, hand drums and the ney, a reed flute, to students able to reach them in the tents or shell-pocked buildings of Gaza College. They also go into kindergartens for sessions with small children.

Teachers are also offering music lessons in southern and central Gaza with 12 musicians and three singing tutors instructing nearly 600 students across the enclave in June, the conservatory said. 

Abu Amsha said teachers and parents of students were currently "deeply concerned" about being uprooted again after the Israeli cabinet's August 8 decision to take control of Gaza City. Israel has not said when it will launch the new offensive.

HUNGER AND FATIGUE

Outside the music teachers' tent, Gaza City lay in a mass of crumbling concrete, nearly all residents crammed into shelters or camps with hardly any food, clean water or medical aid. 

The students and teachers say they have to overcome their weakness from food shortages to attend the classes.

Britain, Canada, Australia and several of their European allies said on August 12 that "famine was unfolding before our eyes" in Gaza. Israel disputes malnutrition figures for the Hamas-run enclave.

Sarah al-Suwairki, 20, said sometimes hunger and tiredness mean she cannot manage the short walk to her two music classes each week, but she loves learning the guitar. 

"I love discovering new genres, but more specifically rock. I am very into rock," she said.    

Palestinian health authorities say Israel's military campaign has killed more than 61,000 people, including more than 1,400 going to aid points to get food. 

Israel says Hamas is responsible for the suffering after it started the war, the latest in decades of conflict, with the October 2023 attack from Gaza when its gunmen killed 1,200 people and seized 250 hostages according to Israeli tallies. 

MUSIC THERAPY

In a surviving upstairs room at Gaza College, the walls pocked with shrapnel scars, the windows blown out, three girls and a boy sit for a guitar class.

Their teacher Mohammed Abu Mahadi, 32, said he thought music could help heal Gazans psychologically from the pain of bombardments, loss and shortages. 

"What I do here is make children happy from music because it is one of the best ways for expressing feelings," he said.

Elizabeth Coombes, who directs a music therapy programme at Britain's University of South Wales and has done research with Palestinians in the West Bank, also said the project could help young people deal with trauma and stress and strengthen their sense of belonging. 

"For children who have been very badly traumatised or living in conflict zones, the properties of music itself can really help and support people," she said.

Ismail Daoud, 45, who teaches the oud, said the war had stripped people of their creativity and imagination, their lives reduced to securing basics like food and water. Returning to art was an escape and a reminder of a larger humanity.

"The instrument represents the soul of the player, it represents his companion, his entity and his friend," he said. "Music is a glimmer of hope that all our children and people hold onto in darkness," he said.

(Reporting by Dawoud Abu Alkas; Additional reporting by Abir Al Ahmar, Saleh Salem and Sinan Abu Mayzer; Writing by Angus McDowall; editing by Frank Jack Daniel)