Donia Jarrar in Composer Quest 2017

“Donia Jarrar is a Palestinian-American composer, pianist and multimedia artist whose work spans the genres of classical, electronic, experimental and pop music. As a former refugee of war born to a Palestinian father and an Egyptian-Greek mother, who grew up between Kuwait, Egypt, the West Bank, and the United States, her personal experiences have strongly shaped her compositional voice, leading her to explore the universal themes of memory, identity politics, exile, displacement, and cultural narrative. “

That’s straight from her own website’s biography page. I found her just by searching “Palestinian composers” in Google, which led me to an article written in “This Week In Palestine” titled “Young Palestinian Composers.” Admittedly the initial reason I was interested in her was because she studies at the University of Michigan. Even though I didn’t go there, the connection to my home state sealed the deal. But after doing more research on her, she was a perfect fit for this project because of her interest in identity politics and cultural narrative. In creating this project for myself, I wanted to explore I wide range of backgrounds and see the result.

So getting on to the music.

I’ll be honest, I have found that if music is not tonal I am generally not a fan. I can appreciate it from an academic stand point, but I don’t enjoy listening to a non-tonal compositions more than a few times. They just don’t evoke really much of an emotional reaction to make me invested enough to return to them.

This was the case with a few of Jarrar’s compositions. Her piece “the dictator balances on his inside edge” is an electronic art piece that uses sounds that sounds like to me the creepy sound of wind rushing past in a horror film and distorted sound train tracks going off the rails. It fits the title of the piece perfectly honestly and I think it’s a super interesting auditory representation of someone’s mind, but it’s not pleasant to listen to for me – which I suppose is the point and in that respect succeeds. Still not something I was a huge fan of.

However, I loved “بطن الهوى” Google translate was not helpful with the translation of the title telling me it means “Belly Fancy.” I think I am safe in assuming this is not the true meaning of those words.

Not sure what to say about it other than it just resonated with me. She writes in relation to this piece “Life exists beyond what we see, even if it seems to be fading before us, or far off in the distance. When you look west standing in the valley of Batn el Hawa, you can see the sea sparkling in the distance. “

For whatever reason listening to this piece evokes a sense of longing and this sort of quiet struggle of life. I am not sure what she used to make the underlying pulse, but that constant plucking underneath the lovely piano melody made me think of the eternal struggle we all have in the back of our mind. I don’t know what that struggle is and I think for every person it’s different, but we all have that on loop of unrest that plays in the background of our lives. Even when things are great. Or maybe it’s that underlying drive we all have that just out of reach, like the sea sparkling in the distance.

In any case, I really enjoyed this piece.

I fell in love with “You don’t know her at all” when I heard the lyrics “And though angels have wings/they just drown under water.” That line just gutted me and the first time I heard it i had to stop the song immediately and start again from the beginning. The recording isn’t the best but I really enjoyed the layers to this song. I also think she is the voice singing, but I am not sure. It gets really busy after the first minute. It feels to me like it’s part of a larger work, or at least it doesn’t feel like a stand alone piece, like it should be part of a song cycle or is maybe part of a set, like Brahm’s Orphelia Lieder. And I love just how robust and rambunctious the last 6 minutes of the piece is, hammering home this idea that the woman in the piece is not who her father thinks she is.

Perpetual Dance (Hijaz Kar Theme & Variations) is an aptly named solo for piano that I enjoyed, if only because I am not familiar with what Hijaz Kar is. I think is an arabic mode of music, but I am not totally sure google is leading me to the right answer on it. It’s hard to tell in the beginning of the piece if she is playing the full mode or not. My initial assumption was that it was a Palestinian Folk song, but if it’s a mode then she could have just written the theme herself. In any case, it’s a fast paced and lively piece that has some parts that remind m of jazz improvisation. It’s featured on the CD Letters to Palestine, which you can buy on iTunes, if you’re interested in owning a copy.

She also had a grant grant to complete her song cycle “Seamstress” which I am interested in following to itscompletion. As from her website “Seamstress is a documentary song-cycle based on the collected oral histories of Palestinian women and girls. Blending audio interviews, photography, and raw footage with live chamber orchestra and dance performances, Seamstress aims to create a moving and powerful portrait of love, strength, and resistance in the face of injustice and misinformation.” One song is posted to her sound cloud which is “What God Has Written Will Be” from Seamstress . I am not sure if I like the song honestly, but I am super curious about the work as a whole.

And lastly, I’ll close with some thoughts on “Tahrir Squares # 1 (2011).” She writes “I composed the piano part of this as improvisation over some of the most powerful voicemails I had translated from speak2tweet during the start of the Jan25 revolution. The rest of the material comes from my cousin’s wedding in Cairo the weekend of April 22-24 and other field sounds taken from Tahrir Square that I recorded as well as Khan El Khalili and Naguib Mahfouz Cafe. The zaffa at the end… hope for a new Egypt. I love you Egypt. The sounds here all come from voice mails from speak2tweet, Tahrir Square, Khan El Khalili and other Cairo noise.Piano improv by Donia Jarrar.” I’ll admit I have no idea what the voices are saying, but I definitely got a sense importance as I listened to this. The quiet piano improvisation underneath it all gave it sense of reverence.

Links

• Donia Jarrar’s website and bio
• My Sound cloud playslist of Jarrar’s music
• Donia Jarrar’s Youtube channel
• Jarrar’s Twitter account

Last updated January 21, 2017