‘We left the club and soldiers were pointing guns’: Musicians fight back in war zones | US News

On November 2, 2024By Karl

“You either hold a gun or you hold a guitar,” says Raji El-Jaru, Gaza’s biggest rock star.

Months before the outbreak of war last year, hundreds of people packed a concert hall to hear his band perform its distinctive blend of powerful guitar riffs and passionate lyrics.

“We will cry out our pain; can you hear the call?” he sang to the enthusiastic crowd. “Knock, knock, are you even listening?”

Shortly after this demonstration, Israeli airstrikes rained down on Gaza City, destroying buildings and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

The five members of Osprey V, believed to be Gaza’s first rock band focusing on survival rather than music, began to think about whether they would ever play together again while dreaming of performing in Europe.

Founded in 2015, the band is all self-taught and they mention Metallica and Linkin Park as among their inspirations. Raji, 32, explains that she has always seen rock music as the obvious way to resist oppression. “We are the voice of the voiceless, spreading love instead of hatred and violence.”

“It’s only a matter of time now,” says Volodymyr, talking about when his name will be called up to the Ukrainian armed forces.

A DJ using the pseudonym Lostlojic was flying around Europe playing his brand of electronic music before the massive invasion in 2022, but now he’s back. Kyivhis hometown is demonstrating to raise money for his friends on the front lines.

Volodymyr, 35, says there were discussions in the first days after the invasion about whether club nights should continue, but people, especially soldiers on leave from the battlefield, need to take a break from thinking about the war.

“Most of my musician friends work in the armed forces. They don’t have time to do what they love most. Every few months they prepare some pieces, send them to me, and I play them.”

Last weekend there was a day to celebrate the Ukrainian language, and to mark it Volodymyr included samples of Ukrainian speech in his songs; it is an assertion of a threatened identity.

“It’s all about politics, you can’t be an artist without politics.”

“One of the things music can do is unite people,” says Ruth Daniel. “It’s a way to give people a space to share what they’re going through.”

He is president of In Place Of War, an organization that helps foster music and creativity in conflict zones. He believes that music can be a form of escape and creative resistance when bombs are falling all around you.

Speaking to Sky News at the recent WOMEX (Worldwide Music Expo) conference in Manchester, he explained how smartphones and social media have made it easier than ever for those in conflict zones to write songs and find audiences.

“I saw people setting up music studios on the edges of checkpoints, making their own instruments, performing hip hop on street corners, making music with car audio systems.”

He says that concerts can be held anywhere and gives an example from a club night he went to. Ramallah, West Bank city of Palestine.

“It was in a house, they had turned the kitchen into a club. I remember leaving and there were rows of police and army (soldiers) pointing guns.

“For me, the best music comes out of difficult situations. It’s not just art for art’s sake, it’s art with purpose and meaning.”

Mo Aziz once performed in stadiums for tens of thousands of people. Sudan as part of the popular group Igd al-Jalad. However, the band’s music criticized the government at the time, and they were banned from performing due to the crackdown on expression.

He came to the UK as a refugee in 2017 and this year released an album calling for peace in his home country and hoping to raise the profile of Sudanese music, traditionally a blend of African and Arab influences.

More than 20,000 people have been killed in Sudan since a power struggle between the army and a large militia group erupted into armed conflict in April 2023. There are clashes and humanitarian crisis on the streets of Khartoum.

Mo’s mother and brother escaped SweetcornHe made a two-week journey to escape the conflict as the conflict caused the displacement of millions of people.

“I was devastated,” he said. “I lost three friends as a result of the bombing in Khartoum, among them a member of Igdal-Jalad.”

This came about while Mo was working on his album and studying for a master’s degree at Liverpool Hope University.

“In addition to showing what is happening in Sudan, I hope to revive Sudanese music and bring it to the international stage,” he said. “I will always dedicate my work to peace and human rights.”

Meanwhile, British-Sudanese folk singer-songwriter Saeed Gadir described the music scene in Khartoum as a “ghost town”.

“A really big part of it is gone, there’s no one there. That’s a big part of my writing,” says Saeed, known as The Halfway Kid, who describes growing up in a Sudanese immigrant family in his new album Myths In Modern Life.

While he hasn’t always seen himself as overtly political, he says his music becomes political because of the stories it tells and the emotions it tries to share with its audience.

“Even if you’re in London, you can get an idea of what it might feel like if there was a coup in your country.”

Sometimes there’s no safe way to explore music in a dangerous place, sometimes even with amplifiers plugged in and microphones set up, bombs are falling all around you.

This was the case in 1994, before the internet gave musicians the power to appear in front of their fans virtually. At the time, legendary metal singer Bruce Dickinson and his band Skunkworks were smuggled into Sarajevo while the city was under siege during the Bosnian War. The concert they played instantly went down in history.

“I have never seen such destruction in a modern city. There wasn’t a single building that wasn’t a burnt shell,” Dickinson, known as the lead singer of Iron Maiden, said in the 2017 documentary Scream For. I am Sarajevo.

The siege of Sarajevo, which lasted nearly four years, was the longest siege in modern history. More than 11,000 people were killed, including more than 1,000 children.

“I went there and thought, how can I be as big as their lives need me to be for them?” I remembered Dickinson.

“You could give it your all and you felt like it would never be enough.”

Around the world, the tradition of music building community and resistance in some of the world’s most dangerous places is thriving, thanks in part to social media and the ability to reach audiences around the world through livestreams.

“Especially in places where people can’t go out or come in,” says Ruth. “And that becomes the most important way for people to share their culture and identity.”

Still unable to return home, Raji continued his work on Osprey V. A new video shot in the Gaza Strip will be released soon and he hopes it will be a wake-up call for the West.

“We are normal people like you,” he says. “We have families, we drink coffee, we wear Adidas. But we suffer from endless wars.”