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Describe the atmosphere and live music at a local pub, restaurant, festival, church or temple, club night.... inspire other people to check it out!
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Musician: Reem Kelani
Location: London
Instruments: voice
Music: Palestinian
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HOW I CAME TO THIS MUSICΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύWHERE I PLAYΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύA FAVOURITE SONG |
  
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 ΜύΜύListen (04'42) to Dalβouna On The Return performed by Reem Kelani with Gilad Atzmon & The Orient house Ensemble from 'Exile', Enja, TIP-888 844 2
Reem was one of the artists featured in the World on your Street tent at WOMAD 2004
For more information visit
'I sat there as a teenager and I said to my mother, who thought I was daydreaming, βWhen I grow up, Iβm going to work on these songs.β'
How I came to this music:
My family was musical, but they werenβt professional musicians. My mother sang in a choir all through her childhood and her teens. Believe it or not, although sheβs a Muslim, she sang with the choir of the Christian Missionary School as a child in Nazareth. My father, also a Muslim but from nearby Jenin, sings beautifully. I learned most of my jazz standards, particularly the Gershwin, from him and he also recites the Qurβan beautifully.
He had left Palestine to study in Alexandria before the Nakbah. (Palestinians refer to 1948 as the Nakbah, which translates as The Catastrophe i.e. they were dispossessed.) He could not go back and it was tough for him, a student stuck in Egypt. He met and married my mother in Jordan where he was practising as a doctor. She had left Palestine in the early fifties - not all the dispossession happened in May 1948, these events took years and itβs still happening β¦now itβs the Christian Palestinians who are leaving. My parents arrived in England because my father came to do his higher medical degree in Manchester which is where I was born in 1963. But we left for Kuwait when I was 2.
Singing was always the thing for me, I started singing semi-professionally on stage from age four. It was at a school concert in 1967 shortly after the Arab-Israeli war. There was a great sense of defeat in the Arab world. I was at this fantastic bilingual school in Kuwait that taught us everything in Arabic and English at the same time. I was asked to sing a very difficult song by Fairuz [the iconic Lebanese singer β listen to her on βThe Legendary Fairuzβ (Hemisphere)] that lasted a good half hour, which is normal for Arabic music.
Its called The Flower Of All Cities i.e. Jerusalem. I stood on stage, taking it for granted that any four year old would sing that song, and sang. After a little while everybody was bursting into tears. So I stopped half way and started sobbing. βMama, they donβt like my singing! They donβt like my voice!β I didnβt realise at the time that they were all shedding tears over the war. From that day onwards, Kuwaiti TV was asking me to do talent shows and I was considered to be a gifted child, you know, being driven around from one show to another.
But Palestinians, as a people, are obsessed with educating their children - you donβt have a homeland so your homeland is your degree β which meant I couldnβt drop everything and just be a singer, it was sing while youβre a student. My parents were extremely supportive of my music then, my father even had a piano shipped from England so that I could have proper piano lessons. When I became a woman and decided to be a professional singer, that was more controversial.
In those days I sang Fairuz and contemporary Arabic music, jazz, blues and pop. But I never did classical and folkloric Arabic music, I hated it. When I used to see Oum Kalthoum sing on TV I would run a mile. It was only when I was thirteen and I went to a family wedding in Nazareth and I saw the women singing and dancing, that I thought wow! If this is folkloric Arabic music, if this is Palestinian music, I love it! Iβm proud to be Palestinian. And I sat there as a teenager and I said to my mother, who thought I was daydreaming, βWhen I grow up, Iβm going to work on these songs.β
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