Music Harvest Brings Gift of Song to Palestine
An Irish charity is bringing the gift of music to Palestinian children through a project called Music Harvest. The group saw the need for music teachers in Palestine to bring about a cultural revival in the area. Over the years the international community has donated hundreds of musical instruments to the city of Nablus. However without skilled musicians to teach students how to play, the instruments often remain unused.
Music Harvest recruits international volunteers to teach music in these under-resourced communities of the Middle East. Music Harvest sees its goal in Palestine as a short term one. Volunteers hope to instill musical skills in a generation of children who can then go on to teach other members of the community:
Our goal is to teach a generation of children how to play these instruments that they have unknowingly attained. We believe that if we can equip one generation of children with the passion and skill that music inspires, a seed will be sown amongst the local community that will reap a harvest for every generation to come.
From Music Harvest
The volunteers and students stage concerts to bring music to the wider community. According to their website, “There is no music education in Palestinian schools. Music Harvest has formulated a series of outreach projects and introductory music courses to implement in local cultural centres and schools that express an interest in accommodating us…In classes we introduce them to music from all around the world, teach recorder and tin whistle, build choirs, play live for them and get them learning about basic rhythms through using percussion instruments. We also organise and put on concerts and music events all around Nablus involving both volunteers and students.”
Here is a video of some of the students performing with volunteer teachers at a primary school in Nablus:
Here students and volunteers can be seen playing ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ at a concert. Volunteers believe that the music brings the children of Palestine a form of self expression while they live with the difficult conditions of the area:
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