17
Every song knows its home Karolina Grzywnowicz in conversation with Bogna Świątkowska Your several week-long stay in Palestine, in the West Bank, came about through an open call for an art residency in Ramallah. I know it was your first encounter with this complex part of the world. What was your proposal? I think that going with a preconceived project to a country that you‘ve never visited before isn‘t a right thing to do. I wanted first to expose myself to what I‘d see and experience there, to the stories and conversations. But the procedure is such that you need to submit at least a concept note. So I described a project I‘d been working on for a couple of months, Every Song Knows Its Home, where I collect immigrants‘ amateur songs. I trace them in various archives, but also do field recordings. Sung in different languages, originating from different regions and traditions, the songs deal with the general experience of migration. Sometimes this is the story of a journey, an expression of home sickness, or an account of how people try to cope in the new conditions, building a new life for themselves. I thought it very important to start the proper work on on this project in Palestine, where so many people have lived in refugee camps since 1948. Even though their home towns or vil lages are to be found not thousands or hundreds but sometimes just few dozen kilometres from the place of their exile, they can‘t return to them. They can look at them at Google Maps. Their stories are incredibly moving, yet it‘s clear that it‘s not emotional reactions they want, but for the occupation to end. I‘ve seen
you at work, and I know that you spend a lot of time researching and gathering information. Reading, talking to experts, interviewing local people. Did any of the meetings that you had there prove a breakthrough, a turning point? Let me tell you about two. The first one was with Ehab, who was my guide around the Amari refugee camp. At the end of our first meeting, he told me, “You know, in fact we live under a double occupation. We are occupied by Israel, but also by our own govern ment, which doesn‘t care about us. We‘ve been left to our own fate. We have no representation.” Many people there, not only in refugee camps, were critical of the government, but Ehab put it most bluntly. I saw the diplomatic district where government officials live. I didn‘t expect such luxu rious homes, such wealth in Palestine. Especially that the district is located just three or four kilometres from the Jalazone refugee camp, one of the largest, where the situation is particu larly difficult because a huge Israeli settlement, with a population of some 6,500, is virtually next door. For many Palestinians, the diplomatic district is a symbol of official corruption and of politicians‘ being out of touch with everyday issues, a measure of how much they‘ve stopped representing the people to focus on the pursuit of privileges for themselves. The second meeting was when we were recording in Balata, the largest refugee camp in the West Bank, near Nablus. There I met an incredible woman. Tohfa is a teacher of the Arabic language, a very warm and generous person, endowed with a great voice. She sang absolutely beautiful songs for us, and told us stories about how she and her family, using the fact that they had a permit to go to hospital and were able to enter Israel, went to the Sea of Gali lee, where she comes from, and there they all sang songs about the Nakbah,
