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- [00:04]
A
This is democracy now, democracynow.org, the war and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. I've always dreamed of the world without borders. Those are the words of the musician, the artist and scientist Huda as for Born in Lebanon to a family of musicians, Huda Asfoor grew up in Tunis, moved to Gaza at 14, where she joined the National Conservatory of Music, then lived in Ramallah in occupied west bank, where she was mentored by Khalid Gibran at the Edward Said Music Conservatory. She now lives between New York and Egypt. Huda has serenaded audiences all over the world with her oud. In 2009, she released her first album called Mars Back and Forth. In addition to her work as a musician, Huda holds a doctoral degree in biomedical engineering. She taught at George Washington University. In 2019, she left academia to dedicate herself to music. Her latest project is Nakus. Through Oud, voice and looping, she explores repetition as both memory and resistance. As she puts it, what returns, what insists, and what refuses to disappear. Well, for more, we are joined by Huda Aswood herself. Welcome to Democracy Now. It's so wonderful to have you with us.
- [01:34]
B
Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure.
- [01:37]
A
So you were born to a Palestinian family in Lebanon?
- [01:41]
B
I was. My parents met in Lebanon, actually. My mother used to live in Iraq. She comes from a family of Palestinians that were displaced in 1949. She grew up in Baghdad and other cities in Iraq. And my father had been sort of had left Gaza in 67 and also studied in Baghdad actually, and then moved between Syria and Lebanon for a while. And then he met my mother, actually, through the Communist Party in Lebanon, the Palestinian Communist Party in Lebanon that was working at the time.
- [02:17]
A
So you grew up in two worlds in the music world, but you went into biomedical engineering, which is so interesting. First, before you've devoted yourself full time to music, talk about your journey, where you left. You were born in Lebanon and then where did you move?
- [02:37]
B
A month after I was born in Beirut in the middle of the 1982 Israeli invasion, we moved to Syria. The family stayed there for a couple of years and then we moved to Tunis in 84. And I stayed in Tunis for 12 years until I was 14. That's when we moved to Gaze for two years. And then after that I lived in Ramallah. 98 to 2000 were sort of like the golden years, I think. The golden years of Ramallah.
- [03:14]
A
And you were doing music there?
- [03:15]
B
I was doing music. I was studying at the Edward Said Conservatory at the time. It was called the National Conservatory of Music at the time. And then I basically, I mean, I was a high school student and then 2000 I started college and that's when the second intifada started. They were turbulent. Two years to say the least. After which I moved to Alexandria, Egypt to finish my studies there. And the whole engineering thing is a typical Arab story, or I would say even Eastern parents story, where you try to not upset your parents. They have a vision because you're good in math and sciences, so you must become an engineer. For me, it was very clear from the get go that I wanted to be a musician. But actually I really love this detour because it gave me so many useful skills and a perception of the world and the universe that I truly appreciate.
- [04:23]
A
You taught at George Washington University in
- [04:26]
B
D.C. for one year. Yeah, that was so there.
- [04:29]
A
You studied the heart. Now you appeal to the heart in your music.
- [04:34]
B
Maybe healing, it's a healthier tool to deal with heart problems.
- [04:39]
A
Talk about borders and what they mean to you.
- [04:43]
B
You know, as a Palestinian, you grew up with a document that really remind. It reminds you all the time that you're not treated equally in the world. So the idea of moving, reuniting with family that was in diaspora, especially my mom's family, who were really everywhere. I had an aunt in London, I had an uncle in the us. My family used to meet in Jordan regularly for reunions. My grandparents used to come from Syria, at least on my mom's side, on my father's side. It was so much later that I started meeting my family. It wasn't until we moved to Gaza actually that I really got to meet everyone. So the idea of being limited by these political borders has been very frustrating for me as a kid. And then later on you understand how limiting it is even further when you live. When I went back to the home, that felt a little bit strange, I think, for a teenager moving into a new place. All the beauty of the home, but also all the challenges that come with a politically occupied state. So the dream of living in a world without borders has been following me for a really long time. And I really. Sometimes it makes no sense to me that I need a visa to go to Lebanon, where I was born. I mean, all the time it doesn't make sense, this idea also because I was lucky to experience what it looks like not to be actually like sort of limited by these borders. So I realized very early on that the distance between Gaza and Egypt is only a five hour drive, that the distance between Gazi and Ramallah is only an hour and a half by car that I can go from Amman to Ramallah within two hours by car. So even though that period of time where we had some liberty to move was so limited and I was privileged to have this kind of. This privilege which is not something to be taken for granted in Palestine at all, but realizing how these distances can be relative. Like for someone, this trip might take seven hours, but in reality it's only a two hour trip. So I think with the first album, it was this desire to dream of a world without borders. And at the time for me, perhaps maybe leaving Earth altogether towards, you know, Mars, or maybe thinking of Mars as an older Earth that was deserted, was sort of how I tried to sort of piece this idea together and talk
- [07:45]
A
about your instrument, the oud.
- [07:49]
B
The oud is an ancient instrument. It's one of the earliest adaptations of this kind of idea. You see it in baroque music. You see it all around South Asia, North Africa, Greece, Turkey and similar. Similar instruments exist all the way to the Far East. My relationship with the instruments started at the age of 13. I saw my grandfather play the instrument for the first time in a family gathering in Amman. And it's just. I mean, I've heard him play in cassettes. I had heard stories about his beautiful playing all my life. But really the moment that changed everything was experiencing this communal feel that comes with actually having this instrument in the room and what it can do in terms of bringing community together.
- [08:51]
A
Your love of music is conveyed in every song and all you're playing and you're singing, but you stopped entirely in 2023.
- [09:01]
B
In 2023, it was really a moment to rethink what I'm doing. So for a few years I was not really comfortable singing. I needed a break from singing to try to figure out psychologically why this is not the way I wanted to experience my art. And then in 2023, it became very obvious to me that we have to bring songs back, that the word became more important right now, that there is a whole repertoire of language that is related to steadfastness and what we call sumud and the reality of things. You know, it's like small things that didn't make sense. All my life started making sense. How my parents talked for during my childhood, a lot of this language became relevant. All of a sudden after the genocide, it's like, how are you doing? Well, I mean, I don't know how to answer that question. How am I doing? I'm going to. That's. I keep Going, that's the only answer I have is that there's no room to give up or be tired or. And these are things that kind of became important. And also I got to a point where I felt a little bit jaded by the world. I think it's like all the values that I thought still had importance kind of became completely irrelevant. We're looking at a world system that doesn't work at all, but keeps pretending to be efficient and functional. So it was time to sort of face this reality for me to be able to survive the situation, but also because I wanted to give. I hope that I'm able to give voice to people who are not able to express these feelings right now.
- [11:05]
A
So you live between New York and Egypt, and you're part of something called the Palestine Expo. Can you talk about this space and what it is?
- [11:15]
B
Yeah. So the Palestine Music Expo is an organization that focuses on creating spaces for Palestinian musicians to be visible. I just. I joined as a volunteer last year to help work with musicians who had left Gazi to be in Egypt that are now in Egypt and are working on their music. It's a space that really is trying to bring musicians from all over the world that need this type of platform and to sort of brainstorm also, as musicians, the infrastructure that we need to be efficient and to make a difference in these times.
- [12:04]
A
And can you talk about your collaboration with Sunny Singh, who we've had in the studio, has performed here to talk about what you did with Unboundable?
- [12:15]
B
Yeah, Unboundable started as an idea from Amplify Palestine. Shalva Wise came to me in 2021, I think during. Right after the Sheikh Jarrah events in Jerusalem. For me, what the Sheikh Jarrah events meant was that there's still hope in uniting the Palestinian front. I think that was that glimpse of hope into really understanding that despite all of it, Palestinians in 1948 and Palestinians all around historic Palestine still had the desire to unite. So at the time, Shilva suggested that we. They had already launched two volumes for the BDS mixtapes. It's basically called for people to boycott the state of Israel, the institutions that work with the state of Israel, and a movement to create cultural pressure on this Zionist entity.
- [13:40]
A
Basically talk about the different collaborations that you've been involved with.
- [13:46]
B
It's been very important for me to remind people that all our struggles are connected. It's really solving the issue of Palestine will require us to work together and to really dismantle this colonial mentality that we've been sort of forced to Use and I think so this last year. Two years ago, I collaborated with Al Sara. We launched Naama, which is from the Sudanese archives of the 90s, a song by Agdel Jalal, which is a Sudanese band that was a bit of a leftist leaning band. And also Sunny, Unboundable, Amplifying Palestine. And more recently also, we're working on a production through PMX for 10 musicians from GAZE who are now in Egypt. 10 original songs that we're really excited to put in this world. In the world. We don't have a name for that one yet, but we're still working on the production side, so we haven't really figured out those details.
- [15:00]
A
So as we now move into your three songs, tell us why you chose these particular three.
- [15:08]
B
The first piece is very special for me because it was my first collaboration with a dancer writing a piece for performance and it was a result of a collaboration with a Syrian flamenco dancer. It's very important for me to bring this pan Arab sort of collaboration into the light because I believe that we're kind of fragmented, because we forget with distance it becomes hard to connect, it becomes hard to remember what we have in common. The second piece is a reflection on the theatrics of politics. Currently. It's a bit of a sarcastic take on all the talk, all the. The preaching. People who call for change but are not changing. People who are calling for a boycott but are basically, you know, creating wealth and have their priorities differently, even though what we hear is not that.
- [16:26]
A
So what does naqus mean?
- [16:29]
B
Naqus is the. In Arabic, it's the. The big bell. Usually used either in churches, but also signifies war. So they usually run when there is war. So.
- [16:47]
A
And does Nakus encompass these songs?
- [16:51]
B
Nakus was the name that I chose because I felt that there is need for people to sort of start paying attention. So Nakus really implies this urgency. So it's like ringing the bell in emergency.
- [17:10]
A
And as we move into these songs, Huda Asfoor actually tell us what asfoor means in Arabic.
- [17:16]
B
Asfoor means birds.
- [17:18]
A
And so we take flight with Huda Asfoor's songs. This is Democracy Now. Thank you so much for joining us. Huda Asf.
- [18:37]
B
Ram. So the second song is a bit of a maybe satirical observation of our current state of affairs. The theatrics of politics, things that don't make sense to me, things that I've been hearing that have been a bit illogical. It's called Haki. It's basically just the gist of it is talk, talk, talk. Keep talking. Resolution after resolution keep passing. And for those who have never bought in, may your curiosity be driving you. And then it goes on to say, basically, what is change anyway? But changing yourself, you calling for change. This last one is a trilogy that sort of I wrote, inspired by Hadra, which is a form of spiritual trance in the Arabic and Islamic repertoire. The first song, there are three songs. The first song is called Khatar Danger. The second song is Tama Greed. And the last song is Derwish or Derweesh or Derwishes. So I think the arc explains itself. Sam house. Hazar, hazar.
- [26:53]
A
Katar.
- [28:17]
B
La. K.
- [30:42]
A
My.
- [32:30]
B
Rahamir. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.