Zainab Shaath… Palestine’s appeal is still urgent

Zainab Shaath… Palestine’s appeal is still urgent

“The Urgent Call of Palestine” is a song that Zainab Shaath released more than fifty years ago in the context of the Palestinian revolution. Today the Majaz Foundation, which works to preserve Palestinian heritage, is restoring the song in an edited version. The value of the artistic work comes from being one of the first publications to address the Palestinian issue in English.
The furious Palestinian revolution of the early 1970s pushed Shaath to sing in front of audiences: he sang for the first time about Palestine on stage at Cairo University, where he studied, when he was no more than sixteen. In addition to that experience in the Egyptian capital, Shaath at the time represented the Palestinian resistance at the International Festival of Song, Music, Popular Folklore and Documentary Films in Germany.
From the words of an Indian poet who lived in Egypt, Elita Panjabi, Shaath composed his first song, “The Urgent Call of Palestine”. Her sister suggested the lyrics and Shaath completed the song within two days.
The older sister, who supervised an English-language singing and art program on Egyptian radio, managed to push the song for airplay and achieved great success. His words say: “Do you not hear the urgent call of Palestine? Palestine tortured, wounded and mourning, with all her sons and daughters missing. Do you not hear the sweet and sad voice of Palestine? Scream louder than the roar of the weapons, launch an appeal to all his daughters and sons. Do you not feel the torment of Palestine? Raise high the flag of liberation for “Palestine. We work for it or die. Let us all respond to Palestine’s urgent appeal.”
The success of this song encouraged Zainab Shaath to do more so that people outside the Arab world knew about the suffering and pain of her people. From a book she discovered that included poems translated into English by major Palestinian poets, such as: Moin Bseiso, Mahmoud Darwish, Fawzi Turki, Fawzi Al-Asmar and others, she chose a group of poems to sing, and also sung by Tawfiq Ziad , Samih Al-Qasim, Fadwa Tuqan and Suhail Barakat.
His first song, “Palestine Urgent Call,” was filmed in Beirut. Shaath was surprised that the well-known Palestinian visual artist Ismail Shamout, then director of the PLO’s Department of Cultural Arts, asked her to photograph the song after hearing her sing it at a Palestinian festival held in Mount Lebanon.

Shaath was pleased with Shamout’s request and immediately agreed. Also on Mount Lebanon the song was filmed in the summer of 1972.
The Palestinian singer appeared in the short video, sitting on a rock and playing the guitar while singing. It was rare for a girl to play the guitar at the time, which drew attention to her, and her photo appeared in numerous art magazines in the Arab world.
Also in that period, Shamout filmed the song “Identity Card” (known as “I Am an Arab Record”) by Mahmoud Darwish for Shaath, while the PLO produced a CD for it, which included, in addition to the two songs that were filmed , “Take Me to Palestine” from the poetry of Abdel Wahab Al-Bayati and “Resistant” by Moeen Bseiso, all recorded by Shaath in English.
Shaath also sang at the Tenth World Youth Festival in Berlin (1974), in Moscow, Russia, and in Tbilisi, Georgia. She was also invited to sing in Baghdad and Iraqi Radio recorded some of her songs with her. Arabic and English.
In Cairo, where he was studying, Shaath participated in a theater show called “Call of the Land”, which traced the history of the Palestinian issue since 1948. Through the Egyptian theater work, Shaath performed some of his most important songs, such as “Until is mine” and “I tell the world”, “Tighten my ties” from the poetry of Samih Al-Qasim, and “Palestinian eyes and tattoos”, “I die of longing”, “Palestine” and “They speak in our country” by Mahmoud Darwish, all composed by Adly Fakhri.
The story of the Palestinian singer, originally from the city of Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, does not include much, since her career stopped at the age of twenty-six, after emigrating to the United States to get married and live there. However, her songs, during that fleeting phase of her life, recorded the story of a talented girl who embodied with her works one of the peaks of the Palestinian revolution. The wave of the Palestinian girl’s song receded as the wave of the revolution receded at that time, so that the experience retained its freshness and romance.
At the center of this short artistic biography is the song “Palestine’s Urgent Call”, the video of which was hidden for decades, after being plundered by the Israeli occupation army, in addition to the one that was plundered from the PLO archives during the Israeli invasion. of Lebanon.
The video appeared again in a newly produced Israeli film called “The Looted Archive” by director Rona Sela, whose subject is the stolen Palestinian archive. In this documentary film, a beautiful girl wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh appeared singing for her homeland while she held the guitar, The Urgent Call of Palestine. The song, like the experience, is still fresh.
In an initiative organized as part of its work to preserve Palestinian heritage, the Majaz Foundation has released an edited version of the song’s video, and is expected to allocate a portion of the proceeds from viewing it on various social media platforms to support the efforts aid directed at the victims. Gaza Strip.

2024-01-22 04:35:17
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