Musiqa - the journey has begun
Salam, Schalom and Hi together,
I hope you are all doing fine. It is over a month now since we started with the musiqa-workshops.
We meet every week on Friday afternoon in Bayt Lahm (Bethlehem). (Un)fortunately the bagpipe-player did not join us yet, but currently the band consists of 2-3 singers, a broad rhythm-section with drums, darbuka and bongo, and a whole wind-wing with clarinet, saxophone and trumpet.
Most of them show up regularly and are motivated to play music. Some of them are already quite advanced so it makes a lot of fun to practice with them.
Besides that I found a local musician from Hebron, Ahmed, who plays the Oud and helps me a lot to split, teach and conduct the group.
As our first song we chose "ya qissas" by Julia Botros, you find a video recorded during the band-rehearsal below:
Our next attempt will be a mash-up of English Pop-Music and Arabic Folklore. We are curious if this will work out.
All the best and stay tuned,
Philipp and Sawa-Band