Far from home, Middle Eastern band finds rhythm in Germany

BERLIN (AP) — When Eden Cami closes her eyes and begins singing historic tunes in Arabic and Hebrew, Jewish-Israeli bassist Or Rozenfeld performs the contrabass, and Syrian band member Wassim Mukdad creates glowing sounds on his 12-string oud, they take their viewers on a musical journey by the Middle East.

Yet the three musicians all reside far from there — in Germany. Back in their native area, they probably can be unable to carry out collectively attributable to long-standing hostilities between their governments and societies.

“It took us 3,500 kilometers to be able to meet, although it’s like a two-hour drive by car,” says Mukdad, 37, referring to the theoretical driving distance between their properties in neighboring Syria and Israel — as a result of in actuality folks can’t legally cross from Syria into Israel or vice versa.

“The borders in the Middle East are places to separate people,” Mukdad added.

Mukdad got here to Berlin in 2016, a refugee who says he was tortured throughout Syria’s civil battle. Cami, 35, who’s Arabic and from the Druze minority in northern Israel, got here to the German capital in search of freedom and tranquility.

Rozenfeld, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, got here in search of an inexpensive, cosmopolitan metropolis the place he didn’t need to tackle a second job to make a residing as a musician. Borys Slowikowski, the drummer who joined the group extra not too long ago, is an immigrant from Poland.

Cami initiated their band, the Kayan Project, in 2017.

Kayan, the Arabic phrase for existence, can also be the theme of their music and togetherness. In creating and enjoying songs, they frequently find out how a lot they’ve in frequent and the way shut the roots of their cultures and languages are regardless of all of the hatred they grew up with.

“As musicians we are all very similar,” says Rozenfeld, 32. “I wouldn’t even call us a mixed band because ‘mixed’ is only a concept if you put ethnicity first — but we put our music first.”

Cami, who grew up talking Arabic and Hebrew, says it was pure for her to make use of each languages for her songs.

“I definitely dream in them and sing in them and think in them and feel in them,” she advised The Associated Press earlier this week in Berlin, the place the band was performing aboard a docked boat on the Havel river.

“I find it a very interesting way to live an identity that is complex, that is not just one thing,” she added. “And I feel very happy to express it in art.”

Back in the Middle East, Syrians are nonetheless preventing a civil battle, Israeli Jews and Palestinians have been battling over their land for many years, and relations among the many neighboring international locations are overshadowed by previous wars. In Berlin, the artists can rejoice what unites them as an alternative of bemoaning their divisions.

“The idea is that we can make culture together, although we don’t share 100% of the political views, of the backgrounds,” stated Mukdad, an atheist with Muslim mother and father. “We can start communicating with each other. We can start a dialogue.”

On Sunday night time, Cami, sporting a dark-green costume and grey stiletto boots, opened the present with a tune in Hebrew referred to as “Ahavat Neurai,” or “First love,” adopted by an Arabic tune referred to as “Ghesh,” or “Cheat.”

Many of the songs the band performed have been well-known Israeli or Arabic tunes; some they wrote themselves.

“Language, literature, religion, culture, music, food, climate, geography — we bring all of those memories and images with us,” stated Mukdad. “And then to put it into music, it will be like a garden full of flowers from a lot of colors.”

“Dancing for No One,” which was written by Rozenfeld, is the title observe of their first album. It was launched in April. The lyrics — the one tune in English — are each melancholic and hopeful.

“Walking to a place I long to be, I hear the river flow to the sea, I feel the waves come back to me … My thoughts are clear, heartbeats are slow. Stones mark a path to the unknown,” Cami sang as Mukdad hid his face behind black curly hair enjoying the oud. Rozenfeld, whose bald-shaved head was coated with a flat cap, moved to the rhythm whereas enjoying the contrabass.

“They’re all fantastic musicians,” stated Jonas Berndt, a Swedish musician residing in Berlin, who’d come to see the band.

The band had been invited to play through the opening week of the “Jewish Theater Boat MS Goldberg” — one other distinctive Berlin creation.

The thought of presenting artwork associated to Jewish tradition — theater, music, literature — on a ship was conceived by a gaggle of artists calling themselves “Discover Jewish Europe” a number of years in the past. Due to the pandemic and monetary challenges, the present boat solely opened final week.

The boat, which in the previous was used to ship gravel throughout Germany’s rivers, might be docked on the Havel all summer time, then transfer to the Spree river in Berlin’s downtown space in the autumn, and in the longer term tour Germany on numerous waterways.

Max Doehlemann, one of many creators of the Jewish Theater Boat and a musician himself, defined the venue’s mission.

“It’s about dialogue, intercultural dialogue, the fight against antisemitism and racism,” he stated. “We just hope that with our diverse program we can represent a lot of what constitutes the Jewish existence in all its facets .”