CHRISTINA HAZBOUN
Palestinian Women’s Voices in Music and Song – 2025 version
Cover Image. Nabil Anani | Harvesting – Sewing – Reading – Resisting, International Institute of Social History 1990.
This audio-capsule is an interwoven selection of Palestinian songs, sung, composed or both by Palestinian women starting in 1924 and ending in 2025. The “Palestinian Women’s Voices in Music and Song – 2025 version” guides listeners through Palestinian history, with invocations of justice and hope, while “crossing” into your own time-spaces, whenever you chose to listen.
The audio-capsule was originally a 90-minute radio show also titled “Palestinian Women’s Voices in Music and Song” broadcast on Stegi Radio in 2022, which I updated upon the invite of dear Atiyyah Khan to include works (and events) from the last three years.
As our heritage, knowledge and lands are slowly being taken away from us through a military-industrial complex, what better means of preserving our voices and combatting amnesia, than through music and song?
Tracklist
00 Christina Hazboun – Birds cockerel and sheep around olive groves (field recording in Bethlehem)
01 Thurayya Qaddoura – Kam Ba3athna Ma3 Alnaseemi Salaman
02 Jawaher Shofani – The Iqrit Files In 1948 بسنة 1948 – Checkpoint 303
03 Zeinab Shaath زينب شعث – The Urgent Call of Palestine
04 El-Shate’ Band – Se3at
05 Sabreen – On Wishes
06 Rim Banna – Fares Odeh
07 God of Revolution – إله الثورة – Tamer Nafar, Marwan Makhoul, Terez Sliman
08 ميساء ضو – بكفي عاد Maysa daw – Enough
09 Maya Al Khaldi – عالم تاني – Other World – 01 الضوء – Al Daw’ (Nothing Comes Back the Same)
10 Rola Azar – Cast off Your Sandals, Moses إخلَع نَعلَكَ يا موسى – رلى ميلاد عازر
11 Sol Band – Palestinians
12 Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme – The song is the call and the land is calling (Give me your scarf to wrap my wound)
Under the barbed wire and amidst the coniferous trees
A bird tweets a long song of freedom
“Come here”
Says the soldier
“Open the door
And wait there”.
We all wait
for an unknown duration
As time takes on punitive dimensions.
Inside those walls,
Life flourishes still,
And outside those walls,
Life proliferates;
Whether under the barbed wire
Or in the shadows of trees,
Our cacti ornament the horizon
And the olive trees’ leaves whisper.
The land itself remembers,
Despite the erasure,
And the endless wait.
Dancing between the shadows
Assemblages of air twist and twirl
While the ants go about gathering crumbs
The bees savour the pollen
And the air turns into and aria
filling the space, our lungs,
and ears,
Equally.
I would also like to share a music video that provides a timely visual and aural representation of Palestinian women’s struggle, through the story of Naila Ayash. The music video, which is a “tribute to all women” (I may add womxn) was created by Tania Feghali and is inspired by the 2017 film “Naila and the Uprising”. The music video provides insights into the women’s movement in Gaza specifically, and Palestine in general in the 1980s, while also displaying the story of our struggle through simple and direct footage. The music for it was written, arranged and mixed by Dario Bassolino and Paolo Petrella, with vocals and lyrics by Marzouk Mejiri.
More information about Palestinian music is here.