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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 MUSICÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýWHERE I PLAYÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýA FAVOURITE SONG |
  
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 ÌýÌýListen (04'42) to Dal’ouna 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
Where I play:
In 1989, 1 year before Sadaam’s invasion, I left Kuwait and came back to England, to do my post graduate degree in Aquatic Resource Management. But it was hell, I was miserable, I missed singing. As a marine zoologist in Kuwait I had been working by day, gigging every night and throwing myself into learning Palestinian song and dance whenever I could.
But over here I was studying all the time. I told my professor I had to leave , I wanted to be a professional singer and he replied that you must do what you want in life. So I did.
I didn’t know where to start, but I saw a poster about a Palestinian costume exhibition at the Museum of Mankind in Burlington Gardens, the Ethnography department of the British Museum.
 I met the people who ran it and they said ‘My God! We’re actually looking for someone who can sing Palestinian music and talk about it in English to non-Palestinians and non-Arabs. You’re exactly the person we are looking for.’ And that’s how I started singing professionally, in workshops at the museum for adults and children and in special Palestinian events I organised there like a wedding and Eid over the next two years. It changed my life, connected me with Palestinian music big time and put me on my ethno-musicological route.
Many Palestinians came from Palestine to work there and I learned from them and interacted with them and I realised I had to keep developing my Palestinian repertoire.So I subsidised my music with income from teaching, from making programmes for 91Èȱ¬ World Service and later Radio 4 and even from working in shops.
That enabled me to make visits to Palestine and Lebanon to record women singing, so that I could learn songs from them. Once again, I started in Nazareth. I recorded my late aunt singing this fantastic love song about a cameleer who will not take a woman on the caravan with him. After that every time my husband Chris was in Palestine or Lebanon on business, I would take my DAT recorder and go with him.
In Lebanon, most of the refugees come from Galilee, now part of Israel, and I think theirs is the richest and most beautiful of the Palestinian repertoires and also the most endangered, because their area has been swallowed by Israel. They live in squalor with no status whatsoever, and I was shocked by their total lack of self pity, their resilience and defiance in spite of their poverty (see ‘Songs of Pain and Pride’ on)
I’ve performed at festivals, concerts in the London parks, events within the Palestinian community, the British Museum, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, on soundtracks for TV and Radio documentaries plus concerts in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, United Arab Emirates, Germany, Sweden, Canada and the USA …but not clubs or jazz clubs.
I’ve always had a hesitancy to perform in those places where they serve alcohol because of my religious beliefs, but now, since I’ve been gigging regularly with Gilad Atzmon and the Orient House Ensemble, I’ve realised I’d better play those places . Otherwise I can’t really perform anywhere. So with them I’ve been playing at jazz clubs and festivals here and in Norway, Germany and Austria, Pizza Express, Purcell Room etc.
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