Assignment: Singing in Gaza

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Amid the rubble, in makeshift tents, children in Gaza are singing - and practising the violin, guitar and traditional instruments such as the ‘oud. The sessions are organised by the local branch of the Palestinian national music conservatory, which still operates, outside its damaged premises, despite the destruction of teachers’ and students’ homes. Why - and how - do they go on singing? And what does music mean to them now? Tim Whewell reported from Gaza in 2015 on the rescue of the territory’s only concert grand piano after a previous war. Now, for Assignment, he finds out how musicians he met then are living and working through this war. He learns about a boy who started playing the violin after he lost his hand in an airstrike. And he finds out about the second near-miraculous survival of the grand piano.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	So this is the piano.
0:02.0	I don't know.
0:04.0	God, still covered in dust.
0:07.0	This is a string
0:10.0	that all rue. Yeah, they're all rusty. Yeah, I have to change everything. Oh, okay. So this is pretty bad condition, really. Yeah.
0:22.0	Really. bad condition, really? Yeah. Nine years ago I went to Gaza to listen to a piano.
0:29.4	At first, that was excruciating.
0:31.8	Everything is dead. That was
0:34.8	Garza's only grand piano, a black Yamaha.
0:38.1	When we swept all the dust off, it grieved.
0:41.9	It had been rediscovered after years of neglect, in the dark,
0:46.0	echoing ruins of a disused theatre hit by a missile in the 2014 war with Israel.
0:52.1	Claire Bertrand, a young French piano tuner, spent 10 days bringing it back to life.
0:58.0	Replacing the strings,
1:04.0	strings, revoicing the hammers,
1:07.0	and then... As Beethoven fills the wedding hall, you can see the pride and enchantment on every face of the families and friends of the music school.
1:39.0	The Gaza Branch opened only seven years before of the Palestinian Music School, the Edward Saeed National Conservatory of Music.
1:42.2	Its star piano pupils were the first to play the
1:45.0	ground at a celebratory concert and teachers such as Hamis Abu Shabbin hoped the
1:50.9	discovery and restoration of the instrument would help music flourish in Gaza
1:55.8	despite repeated cycles of destruction in wars with Israel,
1:59.7	despite hostility to public performances from the territory's Islamist rulers Hamas.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.