Palestinian studies tends to be determined by the Arab-Israeli conflict in ways that often preclude broader historical questions of the myriad ways in which cultural expression flourishes despite or perhaps because of occupation and dispossession. The first of its kind, this anthology of Palestinian music and song brings together leading native and non-native musical scholars, composers, performers, and educators to tackle these issues. Developed collaboratively through two symposia and a web-based platform for exchange that took place over several years, the volume considers music inextricable from Palestinian history, and documents how musical activity performs, expresses, and challenges the socio-political conditions in which it becomes meaningful. In particular, contributors address the question of politics and aesthetics, that is, whether Palestinian music acquires meaning as acts of resistance that generate political consciousness or as stylistic signifiers of a distinct history and way of life. The volume does not seek to resolve this dialectical tension but rather to further explore its implications for our understanding of Palestinian musical history.

The first of three parts traces the history of Palestinian music from missionary encounters with “the Holy Land” at the turn of the twentieth century up to the first Intifada. In a brilliant editorial gesture that complicates the representational act of writing history, these three essays offer, in chronological order, an analysis of an extant source, an interview with two native scholars, and an historical essay on the period between 1967-1987. Rachel Beckles Willson begins with a detailed analysis of German theologian and linguist Gustaf Dalman’s Palästinischer Diwan. She praises his “almost populist rather than scholarly” (18) tone while also arguing that his work is motivated by a missionary impulse in which he projects European theology onto the inhabitants of the Holy Land and seeks their spiritual transformation. This is followed by the transcription of an interview conducted by editor Heather Bursheh with Issa Boulos (also a contributor) and Nader Jalal in which they discuss the influence of the Nakba (1948 catastrophe) on Palestinian musical life. Before 1948, Palestine was a vibrant and cosmopolitan center of musical activity that cultivated local performers and attracted talented musicians from around the eastern Mediterranean. After the exodus of refugees, this musical life ruptured in ways that still raise questions regarding the loss of musical heritage and the influence of Palestinian refugee musicians within their host countries. Issa Boulos’ historical account of Palestinian freedom songs from 1967 to 1987 concludes the section with a detailed account of how four prominent artists and ensembles negotiated the conflicting discourses of art for art’s sake and art for the people through their aesthetic choices.

The second part explores the question of Palestinian identity in relation to hiphop artists, cultural production in refugee camps in the West Bank, and an interview with singer Reem Talhami. Together these contributions depict how individuals negotiate the challenges of making music and establishing a professional career under conditions of occupation, Islamist resistance, misperceptions and racial stereotypes, and internal debates on the Palestinian cause. In the first of two essays on hiphop, Randa Safieh provides an overview of the issues facing hiphop artists in which she demonstrates how hiphop is a vehicle for asserting otherness as Palestinian in the United States and in Palestine. Janne Louise Andersen contributes an in-depth ethnographic account of how young contemporary artists get involved in the scene. Arguing that Palestinian hiphop is the most segregated scene in the world, she relays stories of the border crossings, checkpoints, visas, cancelled concerts, detainments, and fines that constitute hiphop life. Due to these restrictions on their movement, artists collaborate via online networks and distribute through social media. Andersen concludes that hiphop artists have the “means to defy whatever physical or national borders separate them” (95).

Sylvia Alajaji raises critical points about the politics of representation in her essay that analyzes how cultural production in cultural centers and refugee camps is controversially bound to tradition. She traces the romanticization of the peasant in Palestinian performance traditions and relates this to how musical signifiers of traditional folk are privileged as national symbols. Moreover, she argues that these signifiers have become a “burden of the past” wherein the choice to not integrate folk melodies and dabke dance into cultural production is an act of faithlessness rather than loyalty to the struggle for Palestine. Those who seek to “push representations of Palestinian-ness beyond those determined by the conflict” (110) often face objections by their peers.

The third section focuses on resistance paradigms. David A. McDonald illustrates how music fosters identification and belonging by generating national sentiment and integrating a diverse sociopolitical spectrum. Linking three genres of Palestinian protest song to specific political and cultural formations, he outlines how secular nationalists turned to sha’bi (folk) songs and dances that signified pre-1948 ethos of folk culture and history as a performative response to Israeli efforts of cultural erasure and neglect. Thawri (revolutionary) music produced by the Palestinian Liberation Organization consisted of militaristic songs and martial hymns that espoused socialist ideology and class-based anticolonial subjectivity. Finally, Islamist organizations, which reject music associated with dancing and avoid melodic instruments, produced islami repertoire in which song style, accent, timbre, and declamation emulate the rules of Quranic recitation rather than the local dialect, slang, and idiomatic rhetorical devices that otherwise particularize Palestinian music. Carin Berg and Michael Schulz further investigate this topic in their essay on Hamas’s music production. Seeking to understand Hamas’s music in relation to organizational goals and actions, they account for how the distribution of music through cassettes, CDs, and online music videos presents and circulates political messages. These products draw on the anashid tradition of Islamic devotional song and project the message of holy war while linking the land of Palestine to the greater Islamic community (ummah).

The anthology concludes with two essays that relate the discourse on music and resistance to identity formation. Stig-Magnus Thorsén aggregates the perspectives of fifteen contemporary musicians into the broader themes of artistic intention, education, freedom, genre, and heritage, and concludes that the meaning of resistance emerges out of the shifting relations between music, individuals, and society. Yara El-Ghadban and Kiven Strohm interrogate the tension between nationalist liberation discourse and the creative strategies of Palestinian artists with special attention to the role of humanitarianism and internationalism in disseminating cultural production. They present three frameworks – culture as survival, culture as resistance, and culture as a site for humanitarian intervention and development – to focus on the discourses that surround Palestinian cultural practices. Posed at the end of a volume that relates musical aesthetics to historically shifting identities, their questions challenge scholars and artists alike to consider the implications of affiliating with any particular ideological framework.

This monumental contribution to Palestinian studies bridges the work of practitioners and scholars to make available rare oral histories, offer insights onto contemporary musical life, and redress issues of indigeneity and cultural resistance. Impressive in its scope and depth, the anthology’s organizational structure enlivens debates between scholars while providing an historical apparatus for better understanding conditions of postcoloniality. It is an indispensable resource for those interested in Middle Eastern folklore, music, history, and politics.

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[Review length: 1183 words • Review posted on September 3, 2014]