DOHA, Qatar — They walk Doha’s waterfront prom and sing softly about youngsters who at the moment are “birds in heaven,” gliding separate of the ache of the conflict in Gaza.
For the Palestinian crew Sol Band, it sort of feels surreal that weeks in the past they had been hiding from Israeli shelling.
“I just want the war to end,” mentioned Rahaf Shamaly, the band’s primary vocalist and simplest girl. “I want to return to Gaza, walk and clean up its streets, hug my family, and sing with the band in the place where we started from.”
5 of the band’s seven musicians returned to Gaza in August to paintings on their after booklet.
“We had a lot of music and performances planned,” mentioned Fares Anbar, the band’s percussionist.
However on Oct. 7, Hamas, together with alternative militants, attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 public and taking 250 others hostage. Israel retaliated with an army marketing campaign that has to this point killed greater than 35,000 public and leveled massive swaths of Gaza.
In April, the 5 bandmates had been ready to let go Gaza by way of Egypt to Qatar.
The band — which shaped in 2012 and performs each conventional Arabic songs and their very own trendy pop songs — has lengthy served as a shelter for its contributors who grew up in Gaza amid grinding poverty and alternative hardships. Their house, a 360-square-kilometer (140-square-mile) enclave, has been blockaded for years via Egypt and Israel. Its family of two.3 million Palestinians has suffered thru earlier rounds of conflict between Israel and Hamas, which has dominated the strip since 2007.
“Living under a siege, an occupation, and living through very difficult circumstances … music was my only escape since I was a child,” the band’s founder and percussionist, Stated Fadel, mentioned.
Song formed Fadel’s day. His grandfather was once one of the vital first percussionists within the segment and his grandmother performed the oud, a lute-like stringed musical device habitual within the Center East and Africa.
Of Sol Band’s songs, “Raweq Wa Haddy,” or “Chill Down,” is their most famous. The lyrics that promise “great days coming back,” now seem a lifetime away for people who are moving from place to place, hiding from airstrikes.
After returning to Gaza in August to record, the five members of the band filmed themselves surviving the attacks and shared the videos online whenever an internet connection allowed. Music remained their lifeline and their main hope; they created songs, often amid the rubble, with sounds of explosions in the background. They filmed music videos from where they sheltered, urging people not to lose hope and remain resilient in the face of adversity.
Some songs touched on those killed by Israeli airstrikes, particularly children.
“My children are birds in heaven, lucky is heaven to have them,” one song goes. “All my life I hoped to raise them and see them grow up before my eyes.”
In shelters and camps across Gaza, Sol Band’s five members held activities for displaced children to keep their minds off what was happening. Anbar, the band’s percussionist, even taught some how to keep a beat as a drummer.
They posted videos of themselves in tents, playing the guitar and drums, with smiling children who sang along.
“The children’s interaction with the music, and how they forgot everything that is happening around them … it proved to me the importance of music in our lives and the effect it has in the Gaza Strip,” he said.
The five band members who left Gaza via Egypt to Qatar had been scheduled to perform on the first stop of their tour “The Journey Begins” at a Palestinian culture festival in Doha. Though the band has achieved fame internationally, like other Palestinians they hold travel documents that often involve complicated requirements, and at times they face outright visa rejections.
“Our passports are Palestinian, (and our) birthplace Gaza,” Anbar said. “This made it very difficult for us to get visas.”
With pending shows in Belgium and Tunisia, there is little guarantee that they will make it there. And if their visa situation is not sorted out in Qatar, the five will eventually have to return to Gaza — and an uncertain future.
“Would the plans we had before the war still happen?” requested Hamada Nasrallah, a vocalist. “We have no clear answers.”
