Palestinian jazz singer to share rich musical heritage in Edinburgh

The National

2 days ago

The Manchester-born Palestinian singer Reem Kelani is set to play The Queen's Hall in Edinburgh on June 21 as part of this year's Refugee Week and is aiming to showcase the rich heritage of Palestinian songs.
Considered the unofficial musical cultural ambassador for Palestinians in the UK, Reem is a musician who studies the cultural musical heritage of Palestine to help safeguard it as she teaches it to children.
'For me, it's like a manifestation of my being, so it's not that I found this career or this career found me, I was just born with a voice,' she told The National.
READ MORE: Europe's first museum of Palestinian art opens in Scotland
Reem first started singing at just four years old, her first song was about Palestine.
'It was after what Israel calls the Six Day War, so there was an overwhelming sense of defeat,' she said.
Reem said she was standing on a stage singing a song about Jerusalem, and at first everyone seemed very happy, but all of a sudden, they all 'broke into tears'.
She added that her four-year-old self was worried that she had a terrible singing voice, but then everyone 'burst into laughter'.
Since that day, she said the song has always been associated with Palestine's laughter and tears.
Singing is a seminal part of Reem's life, who said she prefers teaching kids about music rather than being on the stage.
Originally trained as a biologist, Reem worked for four years in the fields of marine biology, but switched from researching fish to researching traditional songs and teaching them to kids.
(Image: Brian Homer)
One of Reem's songs, Sprinting Gazelle, is even now taught in the national curriculum in England as she shares her joy of Arabic and Palestinian music with young people.
Reem's life is denoted by moments infused with music, as she described another important memory of hers, when she learnt her own cultural identity when she attended a wedding in a small village in Palestine, aged just nine years old.
It was the first time she had visited Palestine. Born in Manchester, Reem grew up in Kuwait and said she 'didn't know who she was' until then.
'I can even smell to this day, the food that was being cooked that night, the music, the songs, I was singing, there were all these people,' Reem said.
'In Kuwait, they always have their weddings in hotels, but there, it was in a proper Palestinian village, and everybody was invited.
'There wasn't a Western band with men with bellbottom trousers and beards and mustaches playing Abba and The Beatles,' Reem joked.
She added: 'I am just in this village, and to see women the way they were proud of singing and dancing, and it's very much similar to the Scottish women when they're doing the walking songs, that sense of collective just captured me.'
Reem has her own connection with Scotland, her father studied as a physician in Glasgow, and she also spent time in Millport while she underwent her own studies.
She has since come back numerous times and performed in a variety of shows across Scotland, including at the ever-popular Celtic Connections, and has even taken her music to Stornoway.
(Image: Simon Pizzey Photographer)
Reem drew parallels with Arabic music and Scottish folk songs, explaining they are both built on modes and not scales, adding that with her performances, there is a 'call and response' type of relationship with her and the audience.
'I just love performing in Scotland and Ireland,' Reem said.
'It's just something about Celtic people.
'It's something about the appreciation of music, the understanding of these notes.'
She explained there is a deep sense of connection between Scots and Palestinians when it comes to their culture due to their national instrument – the bagpipe.
Reem added that the bagpipe, which is also played in the southwest of Spain, helps to 'unite' the culture between the three.
'It's a very gut feeling inside me that something connects these cultures that they all have the bagpipes in common,' she said.
(Image: Supplied)
Reem added: 'Before the British mandate, AKA the British occupation, Palestinians had their own indigenous bagpipes, but since then they use the Scottish Highland pipes instead.
'You're talking about kind of the affinity with the kind of the instruments, instead of tartan on the bagpipe, you have the fabric of the Palestinians, the black and white one, or the red and white one.'
Reem said she hopes that those who attend her concert in Edinburgh will be transported back to the Palestinian village where she attended a wedding when she was just nine years old through her music.
She joked that she is sad she can't provide the wonderful food that was on offer that evening to go alongside the show.
'The wedding speaks of the existence of cultural identity,' Reem said.
'We are here. We've always existed. We are indigenous to the land.
'These are our songs, our dances, our jokes, even our swear words, that are thousands and thousands of years old.'