The end of my trip and coming home

I'm sorry that this has taken so long to post. After all of my traveling, I came straight back to school and have been getting settled. This will be the final post concerning my trip in Israel, but keep your eyes peeled for future updates concerning the growth of this project.

While in Jerusalem, I visited a group called Heartbeat Jerusalem, founded by Aaron Shneyer with financial backing from Fulbright and MTV. They bring together Jewish and Palestinian children interested in music for jams, concerts, and (recently) to produce a music video. I attended a showing of some short documentaries (of all things) concerning the work of Heartbeat and a Palestinian Hip-Hop group they are associated with, G-Town, from Shua'fat, a refugee camp in East Jerusalem. This was the first group I experienced that was able to successfully interact with Palestinians living in refugee camps and as such, they were a little more surrounded by politics. That night, a lot of the conversation was devoted to the fact that they had recently decided to stop instituting political discussions amongst the kids because of the discomfort it caused them, although some of them do so anyway without prompting. At the end of the evening, I had an awesome interview with two of the members of G-Town and two of the folks who help run Heartbeat.

That week I also filmed a high-school theater program in Jerusalem for Jews and Arabs. Not exactly music-related, but very interesting and effective nonetheless. After filming the group, I interviewed the founder of the group, Harold, a South African who came to Israel by way of France (really interesting guy). My Jerusalem adventure was completed by making a day trip to the Dead Sea to visit Ilana Mealem, a nomad who sets up camp right on the beach for the winter where her friends come and go for a day-visit, a night sleeping under the stars, or weekend retreats filled with music and awesome rituals with a peudo-Pagan-Jewish flavor. I went to interview her concerning a project she's involved in called Musaic, a musical project bringing together Israeli Jews and Arabs, Palestinians, Jordanians, and Egyptians. While the interview was informative, the real experience was building a fire by the Dead Sea (while it rained heavily), baking hand-made Pita over it (that was cool), and enjoying a meal all together.

After these experiences, I jumped up north for a couple days again to see a concert in Nazareth that Uri, the head of the Music Center in Mizra, invited me to. The performers were all students of either his program or Beit Almusica, an all-Arab music school in Shfar'am. These students were all phenomenal and the evening was completed with a short speech from Maestro Zubin Mehta, the principle conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (formerly of Los Angeles).

From Nazareth, I went farther north to Amirim to visit Yair Dalal, a pioneer in musical peace efforts. Yair, a Jew who was born in Baghdad, is one of Israel's most remarkable musicians, playing both the Oud and the Violin in the traditional Middle-Eastern fashion, forming bands comprised of both Jews and Arabs, and producing multiple albums. He was kind enough to invite me into his home and allow me to film an interview with him as well as a private performance of the peace anthem he made his international debut with, Zemer A'Salaam (time for peace) before I left and headed farther north to my final filming location, Tzfat.

I stayed for a couple days in Israel's mystical capital and on the 2nd day, I headed over to the town of Jish (called Gush Halav by the Jews in the area) with my translators, Moshe Tov and Andy. In Jish, I arrived at the home of George Samaan, one of my favorite people I had the pleasure of meeting on this entire trip. George welcomed us all in, served us Arabic coffee (the best) in his courtyard, and pulled out his Oud and Saz (a fretted Middle-Eastern instrument), offering answers to questions I didn't ask, interspersed with songs he just felt like playing and singing for us. This was the first and only interview where I never asked a single question. He gave all of the answers I wanted. Finally, I went into his house and grabbed a Darbouka (my Middle-Eastern instrument of choice) and sat down next to him. My only appearance in the movie was a wonderful one where I had the honor of drumming for one of Israel's musical gems.

After Tzfat, I grabbed a three-hour bus back down to Jerusalem, admiring the newly-blossomed almond trees (in February!) to spend my last Shabbat before I finally came back home.

This project is growing quickly. Please keep your eyes pealed for updates concerning my next steps and how you could help this grow. Now that I'm back at school, I will begin editing the film in less than a week with my good friend Andrew Duff, the owner of the camera I borrowed for the trip. It will hopefully be finished by May or June and ready for screenings and presentations this summer.