 |
 In the first of his lectures
from Jerusalem Daniel Barenboim will talk about how music is
the great equaliser as he discovered in his West-Eastern Divan
Orchestra which brings together young Arab and Israeli
musicians.
Read
the transcript of the lecture below.
Lecture 4: Meeting in Music
SUE LAWLEY:
Hello and
welcome. For the last two in this series of Reith lectures
we've come to the Middle East. Daniel Barenboim had intended
to deliver this, the fourth lecture, in the Palestinian city
of Ramallah, but because of the growing tensions in the West
Bank, we've been advised not to go there. So both lectures
will be delivered here in Jerusalem, but in different parts of
the city. Today we're just outside the walls of the Old City,
in an area mainly inhabited by Palestinians, who make up the
bulk of our audience. Barenboim is a controversial figure in
this part of the world. A Jew, whose family made their home in
Israel when he was ten years old, he believes that the
destinies of Israelis and Palestinians are, as he puts it,
inextricably linked, and he's tried to exemplify this through
that which he knows best - music. In 1999 he joined with the
late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said to create an
orchestra made up of young Israeli and Arab musicians. Called
the West Eastern Divan orchestra, it's the living
representation of its founders' central belief, that music has
the power to bring people together. To explain why, and how,
please would you welcome the Reith lecturer 2006, Daniel
Barenboim.
(APPLAUSE)
DANIEL
BARENBOIM:
Thank you very much. Edward Said said
that music is a little bit subversive. That too of course
speaks about how we perceive it, and not about the music
itself. But he was unquestionably right. In music, different
notes and voices meet, link to each other, either in joint
expression or in counterpoint, which means exactly that -
counter point, or another point. And yet the two fit together.
Please allow me to give you some very simple, simplistic I
would say, er examples of what I mean. The slow movement of
Beethoven's Pathetique sonata - which I am sure many of you
have heard many times and some of you probably even played -
is a relatively simple melody.
(PLAYS FEW BARS
OF SONATA)
Etc. When we examine it a little
bit more closely we see that obviously there is a main voice
that sinks its way through the whole passage…
(PLAYS FEW NOTES)
And the bass
accompanies it, in the best sense of the word - not in a
situation where he, the bass is only following, but having its
own to say, and goes up when the melody goes down, and
opposite…
(PLAYS FEW
NOTES)
thereby influencing each other. And
there is still the middle voice that gives a sense of
continuity, of fluidity.
(PLAYS FEW
NOTES)
This is relatively a simple example. I
can give you one more perhaps which might be of use for us
later, and that is the last prelude of the first book of
Bach's Well Tempered Klavier.
(PLAYS
FEW NOTES OF PRELUDE)
There the main voice is
less obvious, because it could be:
(PLAYS FEW
NOTES)
that, or it could be:
(PLAYS FEW NOTES)
with all
sorts of possibilities.
But you see in all that, that
in music there is a hierarchy, a hierarchy if you want with
equality. And that is what of course is much easier than in
life. How difficult it is to achieve equality and yet to find
a hierarchy. In times of totalitarian or autocratic rule,
music, indeed culture in general, is often the only avenue of
independent thought. It is the only way people can meet as
equals, and exchange ideas. Culture then becomes primarily the
voice of the oppressed, and it takes over from politics as a
driving force for change. Think of how often, in societies
suffering from political oppression, or from a vacuum in
leadership, culture took a dynamic lead. We have many
extraordinary examples of this phenomenon. Some is that
writings in the former Eastern Bloc, South African poetry and
drama under apartheid, and of course Palestinian literature
amidst so much conflict. We only mention one important
Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Dalwish, and many others. Culture
brings contact between people, or, shall we say, culture can
bring contact between people, it can bring people closer
together, and it can encourage understanding. This is why
Edward Said and I started the West Eastern Divan project, as a
way to bring together musicians from the different Arab
countries and from Israel, to work together, to make music
together, and ultimately, when we realised how much interest
there was, to form an orchestra. When we had the first idea,
which was linked to the city of Weimar in Germany, being
culture capital of Europe in 1999, we expected to have a small
forum of maybe eight or twelve young people who would come and
make music together and spend a week or ten days at a workshop
with us, so you can imagine the surprise we had when there
were over two hundred applicants from the Arab world alone.
And this is how this orchestra was formed. Edward and I met by
chance in London in 1993, in a hotel lobby. I had gone to
London to give a concert, and ironically he was there to give
the 1993 Reith Lectures, which explored the changing role of
the intellectual in today's world. Now, thirteen years later,
I have brought the Reith Lectures here to the Middle East.
We took the name of our project, the West Eastern
Divan, from a poem by Goethe, who was one of the first Germans
to be genuinely interested in other cultures. He originally
discovered Islam when a German soldier who had been fighting
in one of the Spanish campaigns brought back a page of the
Koran to show to him. His enthusiasm was so great that he
started to learn Arabic at the age of sixty. Later he
discovered the great Persian poet Hafiz, and that was the
inspiration for his set of poems that deal with the idea of
the other, the West Eastern Divan, which was first published
nearly two hundred years ago, in 1819, at the same time,
interestingly enough, that Beethoven was working on his ninth
symphony, his celebrated testament to fraternity.
Goethe's poem then became a symbol for the idea behind
our experiments in bringing Arab and Israeli musicians
together. This orchestra consists of Arab musicians from
Palestine, from the territories, and Palestinians from Israel,
Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians, and Egyptians, and of course
Israeli musicians. Now, when you play music, whether you play
chamber music or you play in an orchestra, you have to do two
very important things and do them simultaneously. You have to
be able to express yourself, otherwise you are not
contributing to the musical experience, but at the same time
it is imperative that you listen to the other. You have to
understand what the other is doing. And the other may be doing
the same as you, if he is sitting next to you if you're a
string player, or he may play a different instrument and be in
counterpoint to what you are doing. But in all cases it is
impossible to play intelligently in an orchestra concentrating
only on one of those two things. If you concentrate only on
what you do, you might play very well but might play so loud
that you cover the others, or so soft that you are not heard.
And of course you cannot play only by listening, but the art
of playing music is the art of simultaneous playing and
listening. In other words, one enhances the other. And this is
the main reason we started this workshop. Edward once said,
separation between people is not a solution for any of the
problems that divide people, and certainly ignorance of the
other provides no help whatever. In this workshop we were
trying to start a dialogue, to take a single step forward, and
to find common ground. And we saw what happened when an Arab
musician shared a music stand with an Israeli musician - both
trying to play the same note with the same dynamic, with the
same stroke of the bow if they were string players, with the
same sound, with the same expression. They were trying to do
something together about which they were both passionate,
because after all you cannot be an indifferent musician. Music
demands permanently, at all times, passion and effort. The
idea in a sense was as simple as that, because once you have
agreed on how to play one note together you can no longer look
at each other the same way again. That was our starting point,
and from the beginning Edward and I were filled with optimism,
despite the darkening sky, as he called it, with what has
turned out sadly to be all too accurate foresight.
In
the West Eastern Divan the universal metaphysical language of
music becomes the link, it is the language of the continuous
dialogue that these young people have with each other. Music
is the common framework, their abstract language of harmony.
As I have said before in these lectures, nothing in music is
independent. It requires a perfect balance between head, heart
and stomach. And I would argue that when emotion and intellect
are in tune, it is easier also for human beings and for
nations to look outward as well as inward. And therefore
through music we can see an alternative social model, a kind
of practical Utopia, from which we might learn about
expressing ourselves freely and hearing one another.
This, and many other things, you can really learn from
playing music, so long as you don't view music only as a
pastime, no matter how enjoyable, or as something to forget
the world, but something from which you can actually
understand the way the world can, should and sometimes does
function. In any case, from the beginning it was our belief,
Edward's and mine, that the destinies of our two people, the
Palestinian people and the Israeli people, are inextricably
linked, and therefore the welfare, the sense of justice and
the happiness of one has to eventually, inevitably be that of
the other, which is certainly not the case today.
Of
course the West Eastern Divan orchestra is not going to bring
about peace. What it can do however is to bring understanding.
It can awaken the curiosity, and then perhaps the courage, to
listen to the narrative of the other, and at the very least
accept its legitimacy. This, if you want, is the main idea
behind this project. And people very often ask me, but this is
a wonderful example of tolerance, and I say no I don't like
the word 'tolerance', because to tolerate something or
somebody means you tolerate them for negative reasons. You
tolerate somebody in spite of the fact that he or she is ugly,
you tolerate somebody er in spite of the fact that he or she
is stupid. And therefore tolerance is used, and I would say
misused in today's world, and in the press very often, is a
very misleading word. The French Revolution gave us three much
more important and powerful ideas, or concepts - liberty,
equality and fraternity. But these ideas of the French
Revolution are not only right in themselves, but they are so
because they come in the proper order. You cannot have
equality without liberty, and you certainly cannot have
fraternity without equality. The importance of this I learnt
from music, because music evolves in time, and therefore the
order inevitably determines the content. And I have never had
to ask myself the question, can't we have equality before
liberty. And this underlines if you want a central problem of
our conflict here in the Middle East. When young musicians
from the opposite camp, as it were, come together, they have
the liberty. They have the liberty or choice whether to come
or not to play music together. They also however have
something just as important, and that is automatically they
have equality, because music gives everyone the same
possibilities regardless of race, sex, religion, or where they
came from. In front of a Beethoven symphony we are all equal.
And although the fraternity does not have to be there, it is
at least a possibility, whereas now in real life it is not.
I know, or rather I feel - no, I feel I suspect and I
know - that some of you might think the idea of Palestinians
and other Arabs and Israelis playing together is unacceptable.
I know that this is unacceptable for many of my friends in
Ramallah for instance. And I understand it, because it is seen
as a form of normalisation - and by that I mean an acceptance
of the status quo. And this is unacceptable to them, because
the real problems of actual existence have not been solved.
And when we played in Ramallah last August there were people
who said, how can we look at Israelis, Palestinians and other
Arabs playing together when the Israeli tanks are here, and
when we have the situation that we have now. But, as Edward
Said said - I quote - 'My friend Daniel Barenboim and I have
chosen this course for humanistic rather than political
reasons, on the assumption that ignorance is not a strategy
for sustainable survival'. When Palestinians and other Arabs
meet Israelis in music, the primary quality that is missing in
the political life, namely the equality, is already a given.
Therefore this may be precisely the starting point for them to
show each other that what they have in music, the equality and
the ability to converse with each other on equal footings,
will lead them to look for ways to find that outside of music.
Music in this case is not an expression of what life is, but
an expression of what life could be, or what it could become.
Music itself should not be used for political or any other
purpose. But although you cannot make music through politics,
perhaps you can give political thinking an example through
music. As the great conductor Sergei Celibidache said, music
does not become something, but something may become music.
Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
SUE
LAWLEY:
Daniel Barenboim, thank you very much
indeed. So music is a great equaliser but only if the players
are willing to listen to each other. Here in the Middle East,
where the Israeli Palestinian conflict is as tense as ever, is
it possible that this metaphor of music can describe a way
forward? Let me remind listeners that our audience this
evening is a predominantly Arab one. We're in a part of
Jerusalem inhabited mainly by Palestinians. Next week in
another part of the city we'll have a predominantly Jewish
Israeli audience. So, to our questions, and the first is from
Razan Kaloti who works for the Office of the British Council,
which is responsible for the Palestinian territories. Razan,
your question please.
RAZAN
KALOTI:
Er as a Palestinian, and having to live
under extremely harsh living conditions and daily humiliation,
my question would be how would music really help?
DANIEL BARENBOIM:
Well, maybe you
should go to Ramallah the day after tomorrow. In Ramallah the
day after tomorrow, in the Palace of Culture, there is a
concert by an all Palestinian orchestra, half, or more or less
half, from Ramallah, and the other half from Nazareth. Now
since you are Palestinian and you live in the area, you know
that what I have said is practically an impossibility. How do
you get twenty or twenty-five youngsters from Nazareth to go
through the checkpoints and to get the permissions and to go
to Ramallah to join other children who have the same passions
and the same will to play together? This is not going to solve
the problems, it's not going to solve the inner Palestinian
problems, but it can do several other things.
First of
all, I think it should be a day of great joys and pride to all
Palestinians, to see forty or forty-five youngsters, as I said
from Ramallah and from Nazareth, walking on stage to produce
something which is not even something that one associates with
Palestinian culture. Classical Western music is not exactly
the quality that first comes to mind. And yet you have
children, and very young people, most of them under sixteen,
some of them ten and eleven, who have through their passion
and the curiosity, found something that will give them a sense
of pride, as I said, of dignity, all those things which
Palestinians so rightly complain the lack of in their society.
SUE LAWLEY:
But I want… I mean are
you in any way convinced by that? You sounded sceptical when
you began. You're saying that the realities of everyday life
make it quite difficult.
RAZAN
KALOTI:
It's much different than… And it's, as
they say, it's easier said than…
SUE
LAWLEY:
Than done.
RAZAN
KALOTI:
Than …………
SUE
LAWLEY:
Easier said than done.
RAZAN KALOTI:
The salaries are not
paid, er extremely hard living conditions, er even having to
go to Ramallah to do some work we have to cross checkpoints,
the humiliation, er so it's not that easy.
DANIEL BARENBOIM:
No I know, I
never claimed it was easy and I didn't claim that it is a
substitute for the other. I'm just saying that we have to find
ways that each and every human being in life has achieved
something that he doesn't want to lose.
SUE
LAWLEY:
Is this… On this subject of, of, of music
being the equaliser is very difficult when you're confronted
with the harsh reality of everyday life in the occupied
territories.
GEORGE SAHAR: My name is George Sahar, I
am er from Care International. What I hear Mr Barenboim saying
is that it doesn't necessarily have to be that er the guns
have to be silent so that we can hear the music, and I feel
that this is um, it's interesting but it's an added challenge
for us as Palestinians, because we still are in a state where
we have to prove our humanity to the world, and music is
supposed to be an equaliser, so I'd really like to hear your
perspective about it. Can we hear the music when the guns are
still so loud? Thank you very much.
DANIEL
BARENBOIM:
Well I think, you know you are
perfectly right. There is an area where the music and the
reality does not always go hand in hand, and I don't believe
that music is an equaliser. Music is nothing except itself.
What you can do is find the equality in the music. It will not
silence the guns, and it will not do any of those things.
SUE LAWLEY:
But the…
DANIEL BARENBOIM:
Now let me tell
you something else in a very con… Sorry. In a very
constructive and positive way. I wish many Israelis could go
to Ramallah on Saturday to hear this all Palestinian
orchestra. Believe me, the Jewish people have played a major
role in classical music over the last two or three hundred
years. Some of the best musicians all over the world were
that. And with what respect they would suddenly look at these
Palestinians who are able to play this music in a way that is
not only as good as some of the Israeli children, in some
cases maybe even better. When I was a child, I came to Vienna
from Argentina - I was ten years old, it was in 1952 - and
Vienna was occupied by the four powers - the Soviet Union, the
United States, Great Britain, and France. And the Americans
brought Coca Cola, and the whole of Vienna went on a Coca Cola
feast. They had never seen anything like that. And a week or
ten days later the Vienna Philharmonic played a concert with
the great Soviet violinist David Oistrakh, and believe me that
day the Soviets conquered a place in the hearts of all the
Viennese - and not just the musicians - because of that. And I
am sure you are such a talented people - and I am not saying
this to flatter you, I know this, for many years I have been
working with a lot of your people - you have such a fantastic
strength, and force of talent that everything has to be done
to allow all Palestinians to develop and express themselves in
that. This is why I am involved in all this.
SUE LAWLEY:
I'm going to take one
more point on this and then I'm going to move on.
SHIRLEY BENJAMIN:
My name is
Shirley Benjamin, and I'm a Jewish Israeli, and from my point
of view the terrible problem is to get the Israeli Jews to
open their eyes to what's going on. I am on the internet every
day and I have friends and I know what's going on. Can you not
bring this orchestra to Israel, to the Jewish part of the
country, to let Jews see what… that they're not everything
that we see on the television.
DANIEL
BARENBOIM:
Well Edward Said and I started this
orchestra, and we saw what it can do and how it travelled. We
realised that the full dimension of the project will only
happen when this orchestra is allowed to play in all the
countries that are represented in it - Israel, Palestine,
Syria, Jordan, Egypt, etc. We are not there yet. We made the
conscious decision to go to Ramallah last year because we
thought this is the most obvious and clear humanistic
attitude. It was not a political… Had we tried to go to
Damascus, or to Tel Aviv, this would have been a very very
clear political thing, which we didn't really want to do that.
But I am sure that the day will come when we will play both in
Tel Aviv and in Damascus. We are not quite there, but we will
get there.
SUE LAWLEY:
And can you
come to a question here on the front row now, from Tova
Lesarov, who describes herself as an American Israeli - that's
right isn't it? - and she's a journalist with the Jerusalem
Post.
TOVAH LAZAROFF:
I had a
couple of questions actually.
SUE
LAWLEY:
No no no, give us one question.
DANIEL BARENBOIM:
She is bossy
with me too - don't worry!
(LAUGHTER)
Not personally.
SUE LAWLEY:
No you can't, you
can't ask a couple. Ask a question, and if it's good and if
the answer rolls then we'll let you ask another one but…
TOVAH LAZAROFF:
Okay…
SUE LAWLEY:
…don't push your luck.
TOVAH LAZAROFF:
I, I'll, I'll
start with this one then. Um can you think of a specific
example where music in this area has actually changed the
political process?
DANIEL
BARENBOIM:
No, because neither the political
leadership of Israel or from I know the Palestinian is musical
enough.
(LAUGHTER &
APPLAUSE)
SUE LAWLEY:
Go
on, you can ask another one then.
TOVAH
LAZAROFF:
Well, well…
(LAUGHTER)
DANIEL
BARENBOIM:
No, ask the other question - maybe it's
better!
(LAUGHTER)
TOVAH
LAZAROFF:
I, I'm going to continue that. I, I mean
is it people that you're trying to change here or the
politicians?
DANIEL BARENBOIM:
You
think politicians are not people?
(LAUGHTER)
Sorry! You know, I
am not trying to change anyone, I am trying to work in an area
which to me personally is very important, and that is the
understanding of the narrative of the other. And I think that
we can do that in our small Utopian republic, which has
existed since 1999, where everybody's life has been to some
extent changed by these experiences. This is what gives music
making a quality that is lacking in so much of the music
making today in the whole world, and that is its existential
quality. We have now wonderful specialists on the violin, on
the oboe, on the piano, whatever they are, really specialised
workers that can do all sorts of acrobatics and things on
their instrument. But this is not what we are talking about.
We are talking of the expression in music as being something
existential, which is more than pain or pleasure - it is pain
and pleasure. And this is what this orchestra does.
SUE LAWLEY:
But I think
that is the point, I think that is what people feel sometimes,
Daniel, about this, that you are - and one understands why
you're insistent that it's not any kind of a political thing
that you have set up here with the West Eastern Divan, but
nevertheless if you are setting up a Utopia that you hope is
some kind of metaphor for how life could be led, how there
could be some kind of equalisation and some kind of harmony,
you cannot say it is not political, whether you like the ……………
idea or not.
DANIEL BARENBOIM: (OVERLAP) But then you
have to really… I am sorry but then you have to really define
very clearly and very specifically what is political. Is
political tactic or is political strategy? If political is
strategy, then I take what you say about our project as a
compliment. If you think political is tactical, then I will
continue saying it is not that.
DR MAMDOUH
AKER:
My name is er Mamdo Hakar, I am a physician,
a Palestinian physician and surgeon. I'm very glad Daniel that
you mentioned Mahmoud Dalwish in your er lecture. Just last
week Mahmoud Dalwish and I were talking about the harsh
reality we are facing as Palestinians. Maybe I need just to
mention to you that to be here, it took me honestly two hours
to get from Ramallah to here, in spite of ha, having all the
necessary credentials, but what actually, what Dalwish was
saying is that now am I, within all this er reality, focusing
on culture is our chance to keep floating - this is exactly
what he said - to keep floating in this world. Can music go to
the open air and be a cry for justice and freedom, liberty,
equality and fraternity as you mention? Why not to perform in
the open air in front of the wall, not to make a political
statement but at least to show the ugliness of the situation -
can this happen?
DANIEL
BARENBOIM:
Why not? Please, I, I mean I rather
wish there were no wall and this would not be necessary, but
since the wall is here, why not?
DR MAMDOUH
AKER:
That's true.
DANIEL
BARENBOIM:
But you have noticed I am sure that I
have refrained from voicing too much criticism if you want er
of the Israeli side today here, and if I have done so it is
only because it would be very easy success for me here. I'd
rather do that in Israel proper. I have never spoken a
critical word about Israel in Ramallah, and I have no
intention of doing it here today - not because I have nothing
to criticise, I have been very vocal about this on many
occasions all over the world. But allow me just only one
sentence. One of the most important things in my view is it is
imperative that a situation is brought about where the
legitimacy of the Palestinian narration is accepted by Israel,
its politicians and all its citizens. This has to be the first
step. Until that moment has come, nothing will be real. And
this is exceptionally important.
SUE
LAWLEY:
Um I'm going to call in Ari Shavit, who's
an Israeli and a senior columnist on Haaretz, um a
leading national newspaper here.
ARI
SHAVIT:
Mr Barenboim, I think that it, for me it's
obvious that your project, the project you launched with
Professor Saeed, is a benign project. I don't see any way one
can contest the idea of an orchestra of the others learning to
play together and to be in dialogue one with another. But what
I would like to question is the metaphor there. You have come
with the BBC team to the land of tragedy, the tragedy being
that there are two people here who have lost their own music.
Don't you think that in order to move forward, in order to
have a civilised peaceful life here, each people needs a time
with his own music? Don't you think that if you try to put two
peoples into one position where they are challenged with the
music of the other in an intimate situation, that endangers
the very project that you want to advance?
DANIEL BARENBOIM:
I think it's a
very er um legitimate question, although based, if I may say
so, on an erroneous understanding of the problem. Er it, this
is not Israeli music versus Arab music, we're not talking here
about Jewish music, we're not talking about Kletzmer music
against the music of Beirut. Beethoven was German, yes, but he
was much more than that, he was everything. This is something
that we all draw from. It is not the privilege of the Israelis
to say we are classical musicians, and therefore they are not
forcing the Palestinians to accept something of their own.
ARI SHAVIT:
No I, I, I want to
emphasise that the project itself…
DANIEL
BARENBOIM:
Yes.
ARI
SHAVIT:
…I find inspiring in every way. I just
think that we all should think about whether we want to take
the metaphor seriously and to translate it to a political
goal, or where do we reach the more realistic idea which says
that each people need some time with itself, to assert its own
identity. And I think you've heard it in the questions here,
among the Palestinians, many of the Palestinians who somewhat
feel threatened by what they see as a cultural invasion of
Israelis into their own terrain, which I think very much I…
DANIEL BARENBOIM: (OVERLAP) I'm sorry, I am sorry to
disagree with you. I haven't felt that at all. I have felt
some questioning and criticism of many other things, but I
haven't felt that at all. And I think that anything that makes
every single Israeli have to think for a moment that there is
a legitimacy in the point of view of the other, even if they
are uncomfortable for the Israelis, and I have never shied
away from that, and I don't er really believe in that. And if
anybody has the fear that er this is another form of Israeli
invasion if you want, I can only tell you that this is a total
misunderstanding of the nature of music and where it comes
from.
SUE LAWLEY:
I'm going to
call finally um Rudyar Shihada, who's a human rights lawyer
and writer, based in Ramallah, which is where he was born. He
was called to the Bar in London and then returned to um
private practice in Ramallah and has been there ever since.
RAJA SHEHADEH:
I am very concerned
about the destruction of the landscape, which I find to be a
diverse ..?.. The rolling hills of the West Bank and the deep
valleys are light music captured in stone. Er the beauty and
the lives of the Palestinians who inherit them are being
destroyed by the discordant wall, which is so out of sync with
the nature of the land. My question is, can music made by
people from the different sides of the wall restore the
harmony before it is lost forever?
SUE
LAWLEY:
We come back to the same point again every
time Daniel.
DANIEL
BARENBOIM:
Rudyar, you're making it very difficult
for me. You make it very difficult for me. I still believe
that anything that people can share together, whether it is
through music or through ideas or through friendship or
whatever it is, cannot be negative. It cannot do damage. And
what I wish, I wish for a much greater percentage of er
Israelis to really concentrate and understand this part of
Palestinian history. That's what I said earlier, that until
Israelis accept the legitimacy of the Palestinian narration,
nothing will move, not only in the way that you Palestinians
want but in a way that is humanly just.
SUE
LAWLEY:
Pick up please…
RAJA
SHEHADEH:
Er I, I absolutely believe that this is
true. I have heard the Divan orchestra on several occasions,
and what struck me is not only that it's possible to have
people form both sides play together but the fact that when
they play together they can create something which is more
beautiful than what either alone can produce.
DANIEL
BARENBOIM: (OVERLAP) They inhabit each other.
RAJA SHEHADEH:
Yeah. And, and I
think that's a very important message, because I think the
Israeli experience and, and ideology is that we must have Jews
only in Israel, so the, there were always Jews living in Arab
countries, and, and now they don't, and that this is a better
situation that Arabs live on one side, the Jews live on
another side. And the possibility of hybridity is lost, and I
think the Divan is showing that if it is restored it will be
better for everybody.
DANIEL
BARENBOIM:
Thank you.
SUE
LAWLEY:
Music to your ears, as they say. That's
it, thank you very much. Next week Daniel Barenboim ends his
series with a lecture about the difference between power and
strength. Music, like politicians, can have both. The art is
knowing how to combine them. That's Barenboim in Jerusalem on
music and political leadership at the same time next week. For
now, our thanks to Daniel Barenboim, and goodbye.
(APPLAUSE)
[ END OF
FILE ]
Back
to top
|
|
Follow this link to podcast and
download as an mp3 file
Printable version of this
lecture
