A Visit to Zata'ari with Questscope

On Monday January 11th, three Oberlin students were able to visit Zata'ari refugee camp in northern Jordan to participate in programming run by Questscope, an NGO active in the camp. We thank Questscope for their generous offer to host us and introduce us to their volunteers and  beneficiaries and wanted to make special note of the warmth, sensitivity, and capacity demonstrated by their volunteer team.

The drive to Zata'ari Refugee Camp included views of vast sandy fields speckled with litter and the occasional goat herder. Ellyn and I shared the drive with two female employees of Questscope and discussed a variety of topics including history classes, college education, and daily life working for Questscope. The further away we drove from Amman, the fewer buildings we saw It was quite warm outside and no clouds blocked the sun as the camp appeared in the distance twenty minutes prior to our arrival, the white buildings gleaming in the sunlight. It looked so clean from this distance, but as we approached, the white blob fell apart into distinct caravans of varying shades of grays and browns.

Inside Zata'ari

Zata'ari camp is surrounded by a wall topped with barbed wire and would take about two hours to walk around by foot. There were a multitude of guards by the entrance, where our car was stopped at the entrance and we were asked to procure our temporary Questscope volunteer badges. The drive to the Questscope center within Zata'ari revealed to me a brief glimpse into the everyday life within in the camp. Many children were out and about running and playing in the open spaces between caravans. We passed pop-up barbershops, convenience produce stores, and occasional rack of clothes. I noticed one man on a bicycle but otherwise everyone was moving on foot and moving out of the way for the trucks and cars roving in between the caravans. Several little kids ran up and waved at the car, flashing genuine smiles. The arrival to the Questscope center provided the first opportunity to interact with residents in the camp.

Upon arrival, our group was greeted by the leaders and instructors of all the different areas within the UNFPA-funded Youth Center, who provided an enlightening and informative tour. The center provides multiple resources residents, including: life skills, responding to gender-based violence (GBV), peer education training, art, music and fitness activities, a peer mentoring program, a soccer field, a library, and computer room. The Life Skills room held workshops and provided role-playing scenarios on topics including GBV and reproductive health (RH). The Art and Music Center provided beginning music instruction and instruction in numerous forms of media. The gym had hours and instruction at separate times for both men and women so that both could participate in physical activities. The psycho-social support (PSS) caravan offered those from the ages of 15-17 individual and group support from a peer mentor. The soccer field had recently been fenced and covered, which allowed girls to play soccer as well without being seen by any male members of the center. The library had a range of books to inspire and educate on various topics and included biographies and poetry of prominent Jordanian figures that all members of the camp were allowed to borrow out and request further materials. Finally, the computer lab had two rows of computers that offered video editing, Photoshop, and other computer science instruction. We were especially impressed with the volunteer team members, who seemed incredibly vibrant, positive, and capable.

Camille Backman, the author, performing at a Questscope caravan

After the tour of the center, Mohit, Ellyn, and I took out our instruments and began to warm up for the concert that took place in the art area of the center. The concert area filled up mostly with young female residents of Zata'ari camp, but the audience also included male leaders from different areas of the center. I began by playing a solo Bach composition and providing a brief introduction to the composer. After the Bach, the program included two solo Spanish guitar pieces, a flute and guitar duet by Ibert, a trio for violin, flute and guitar by Kreutzer, and a solo guitar piece by Koyunbaba. The audience was attentive and after I finished performing and was listening in the audience the younger girls would occasionally look back at me with smiles on their faces. Several members of the center asked us to pose for selfies and for pictures with them. At this point in the day, we went to the administrative portion of the center and had a lunch of numerous pizzas made of pita and an assortment of meats and cheeses.

            After lunch, there was about an hour before we were scheduled to leave and it was in this time that I had the most interaction with the residents of the camp. I befriended a small boy about the age of four, and we ran around with a football. During this time, I became aware of laughing and shouting coming from the soccer field. I stuck my head inside and to my delight was invited to engage in a soccer game with several of the young girls who live in the camp. Language was not a barrier; we all ran around and laughed and yelled when we missed the goal or made a shot. The girls were so excited to have Ellyn and I on their teams and I felt like I could truly connect and experience a happy moment with them. When I left to say goodbye, several of them gave me hugs kisses on my cheeks. Driving away filled me with a throng of happy and sad emotions, but mostly with the overwhelming feeling of gratitude to be able to visit the camp and have the opportunity to bring our music there. The entire experience truly affirmed my certainty that music truly provides bridges between different cultures and experiences and will continue to allow me to connect to many more people in this life.

Ellyn Butler, Mohit Dubey, and Camille Backman perform at a Questscope caravan

Music at International Academy Amman and the American Language Center

(Post by Max Bessessen, Oberlin Conservatory jazz saxophone major) When we first stepped into the performance hall at International Academy Amman (IAA) I confess that I couldn't believe it. The strobe lights, miniature Rock n’ Roll drum set, and-most important of all-the smoke machine-it all reminded me more of a music video than a school auditorium.

Oberlin jazz students on stage at International Academy Amman

While the music program at this school is only about three months old, the students were already playing at a very high level and performing with a level of professionalism far beyond their age. The students performed a wide variety of styles including original compositions, popular music, and a Lebanese folk song. Students performed on piano, guitar, and drum set but they also played oud, an Arabic instrument similar to the guitar, and qanun, something like a cross between a lap steel guitar and a harp. Not only were the performers exceptional, the audience was very well behaved. When my peers performed Paganini they sat quietly and applauded enthusiastically. When we performed our set the students clapped, sang along, and a couple even got up and danced!

Oberlin Conservatory flute student Ellyn Butler works with a qanun student at IAA

 For me this was the most enjoyable performance yet. The energy in the room, the exceptional performance of my peers and the IAA students all made for a really exciting afternoon of music.

After our performance we were treated to lunch with the band directors and several class representatives. These students were kind, intelligent, and very talented. One young man told us that he speaks French, Arabic, English, and some Spanish. Another young woman is one of twelve high school girls selected for the Jordanian National volleyball team.

These students took us on a jaw-dropping tour of the school. They have everything: A basketball court, a soccer field, a pool, a basketball court, a library, and not one but two playgrounds. From the soccer field you can see not only the biggest mosque in Amman but also the King’s living quarters.

Oberlin Conservatory violin major Camille Backman with IAA violin students

After seeing this amazing campus, meeting some amazing class representatives, and working with some amazing saxophone students I began to reconsider my first impression of the auditorium. It seems to me that having a professional-quality venue is likely to make students behave like professionals. I bet that having a beautiful volleyball court is likely to make a great volleyball player. This made me reflect on my own upbringing. My past is littered with professional quality instruments, educational materials, and facilities. A professor of mine at Oberlin once said to the class “most of you have been very coddled to get here. Someone had to drive you to soccer practice and buy you the books and help you through it all, otherwise you wouldn’t be so prepared.”

            As we left the school I couldn’t help but feel a little disquiet; an emotion that I have felt all too often on this trip. The sad truth is that the schools we have visited (the ones with high-quality music programs) represent a small fraction of the school population here in Jordan.

This is not to say that we have not made an impact: one of the saxophone students I taught showed up at our concert and the American Language Center that evening. But I also wonder how much school-age audiences without a music education would be interested in our music. (Ed note - our appearances in Amman were mostly at schools with already-existing music programs; future appearances may target schools at which music is not a curricular option or has less emphasis.)

IAA and Oberlin students post-workshop

Jazz at Amman Baptist School

A group of musicians from Oberlin Conservatory are touring Jordan as part of an international Winter Term project, funded in part by the Julie Taymor fund of the Winter Term office, and also the U.S. Department of State. 

On Saturday January 9th, a jazz quintet from Oberlin Conservatory visited the Amman Baptist School to perform and teach young band students. Amman Baptist School boasts one of the most impressive collection of instruments in a band program in the country, including a xylophone and a four-valved tuba. Matt DiBiase, a jazz percussionist and dual-degree student from Oberlin, wrote about his experiences there.

Oberlin jazz students, including members of the group "Echoes," performing at Amman Baptist School; Zach Resnick on trumpet solo

The jazz quintet's time at the Amman Baptist School on January 9th proved valuable in many respects to our time here in Jordan. First, our performance for the students reminded me of the significance of both cultural and generational differences in music appreciation. When comparing the reaction of Jordan University students (mostly aged in their early twenties) with that of the younger generation at the Amman Baptist School (early teens), I was reminded of the rapid turnover pop music can have in a single decade in any culture worldwide. The Fairuz tune from the 70s that we performed had little to no engagement from the younger generation, while the older generation began clapping along during the performance. The younger students were also much more reserved as an audience, possibly because of the age gap between themselves and us as college students, but most likely because they were less familiar with the Fairuz song. Its also important to keep in mind that any audience could take our performance of their music as being disrespectful or incorrect, but we have yet to receive any feedback—which we would love! (Note - Max Bessessen, Oberlin jazz sax major, arranged Al Bint Al Shalabiya, and the group performed it previously at the University of Madaba last week. While the students at this school did seem to be more reserved in their reception of this song, their teacher subsequently got in touch with the group to ask that they send over a pdf of the music because they liked it so much that they wanted to play it themselves. Their reserved reception may have been more of an indicator of shyness or personal reservation rather than musical reservation or lack of familiarity.)

Max Bessessen lays it down on "Bebop"

Secondly, I (along with the rest of the Oberlin jazz majors) was extremely impressed with the level of musicianship displayed by the students at Amman Baptist School. This school represented some of Amman’s strongest young musicians, and may possibly be one of the best schools in which to study music at a young age in Jordan. While the talent of the students made me hopeful, I couldn’t help but think how much a small amount of funding can drastically change a student’s education. As we broke off into individual instrumentations for lessons, Zach found himself with two students who, despite being relatively young, both brought their instruments home to practice during the school week and listened to trumpeters like Louis Armstrong for pleasure. I sat down with the piano students and discovered that they knew quite a lot about various pop tunes by Adele and Taylor Swift. Chase found himself learning a new rhythm from the student to perform with our Fairouz song.

Max Bessessen teaches wind students at Amman Baptist School

Each of the Oberlin students addressed different topics in their lessons with the intent on having students collaborate in the future and combine the techniques we were trying to teach. Zach and Max covered various forms of wind and brass instrument technique and armbiture, Tim taught the guitar and bass players about standard blues form, Chase focused on standard drum set rhythms from various styles, and I focused on analyzing diatonic chords of basic pop tunes to reveal common scales and techniques for improvisation and composition.

Finally, I wanted to discuss more specifically my experience teaching the keyboard students - both of the students with whom I worked ate up the new material I threw at them about chord analysis, traditional western music theory progressions and opening one's mind away from shapes on the keyboard to singing what’s in one's mind through one's instrument.

One of the best things about bringing Oberlin students to Jordan is that they are super smart, extremely musical and extremely eager to learn. Mohit Dubey, an Oberlin dual-degree student earning separate bachelor's degrees in both physics and guitar performance, exemplifies this combination of intelligence and musicality that make Oberlin a special place. After visiting the Jordan Museum today, he wrote a fantastic blog post for our musical odyssey in Jordan. It's long, but so good that I was compelled to put all of it here. 

Mohit Dubey playing his ocarina at the Roman Citadel in Amman

Outside the Jordanian Archaeological Museum

You will not find the words “Jew”, “Christian”, or “Muslim” written once on the walls of the Jordanian Museum. You will find many things there: original stones inscribed with Bedouin writings from before Christ (which I almost accidentally stepped on); you will find the first time humans tried to depict themselves (a single millimeter of painted seashell bits that depicts the sonic use of a rams horn in worship (see Figure 1); and you will find the entirety of the only original of the Dead Sea Scrolls inscribed on copper.

When I entered the museum, I expected nothing more than a brief tour of the three Semitic religions that all sprung up around the river Jordan: first came Moses, then Jesus, then Muhammad, and now here we are. But I was surprised to find a museum far more interested in the political, cultural and social forces fueling these religious movements, and almost sublimating them in complexity. In this brief article, I hope to share with you a few of the things I learned strolling through this museum for two and a half hours, culminating in a delicious shwarma sandwich up the road at Circle Three.

Let’s begin at the beginning. Something powerful happened around 8,000 years ago when the species of animals known as homo sapiens emerged from an Ice Age. Still, times were too hard to stay in one place, so people became semi-nomadic and continued to practice polytheistic rituals to ensure their agrarian lifestyle could be successful.

Figure 1 – Cave paintings in Jordan from 6000 B.C. of  an early religious ceremony

A lot happened here, but we know very little due to the lack of written language. What we do know, we know from surviving nomadic peoples in Jordan, known as Bedouins. These tribes, formed by intermarriage of cousins to form a strong continuous bloodline (as was probably common in early civilization), base their livelihood off of one thing and one thing alone: herding goats. And they don’t let one bit go to waste: the milk is yoghurt, curd, and butter, the meat is delicious especially in mansaf (just Google it), the hair is woven into cloth and tents, and the skin is tightened around a wooden frame to form a one-string bowed banjo called the rakaba. These people, who live in the eastern hills during hot desert summers and migrate southwest to avoid the snow in winter, have widespread literacy and longstanding judicial and cultural practices that we use as clues for the people of the Copper Age.

Figure 2 – An example of Canaanite writing

But along came bronze, and with it, a whole new mode of living. Around 3000 B.C. the “world” was rocked by three major things: the invention of the wheel, the invention of the lamp, and the widespread use of bronze (which is really just copper with some extra tin to make it stronger). As a result, society started to shift rapidly from semi-nomadic communities to sedentary civilizations. But this did not happen peacefully. From The Epic of Gilgamesh (2700 B.C.) to the Code of Hammurabi (1758 B.C. from which “an eye for an eye” is derived), people, specifically the Egyptians across the Red Sea from Jordan, started to lay down the law. They also started doing some other crazy things including, but not limited to, building giant pyramids, enslaving other nations (especially in Jordan), and inventing monotheism. The first God, capital G, was actually Amenhotep IV who renamed himself “Akhenaten” when he transcended to the sole deity of Egyptian society-religion. This was a time of oppression for many people, especially in the Levant. Nomadic peoples were forced to supply animal products to the wealthy in Egypt and their languages were suppressed due to the imposition of hieroglyphics, which only the rich could read. This led to the formation of new languages, such as Canaanite (see Figure 2), which looks a lot like Hebrew to me…

Guess what happens next? Just guess…

Another even stronger metal steps forth in 1200 B.C. sparking the start of the Iron Age. And along with it come rapid social changes. The fall of the Egyptians, Cassites, and Hittites and their subsequent retreat from the Levant caused a potent shift towards “city-states” in the remaining Jordanian people (many were taken as slaves). Damascus was founded in 1050 B.C. followed by Ammon (where I am writing from), Moab, and Edom (see Figure 3). These three cities, each occupied by a different family (dating back to the Copper Age), formed what was called the “King’s Highway” which quickly became the most important trade route. Art and culture flourished here, retaining many of the aesthetic practices of the Egyptians but with a new spin. Ammonite (not the material, the people) sculptures had large heads and small bodies, signalling a shift in values, and Gods (plural, yes) wore crowns while humans wore headbands and rulers held lotus flowers. Most sculpted figures were of women and animals, showing a strong cult of fertility goddess worship, especially of Ba’al, who also stood for strength and rainstorms and was represented by a bull (#Gilgamesh). Domestic life involved a shift in the shape of the house: many bedrooms supported large families while open courtyards were used for chores such as weaving on looms and wheels for pottery. Egyptian practices of using scarabs (family seals) to signify wealth as well burials in anthropoid coffins (think King Tut) were kept alongside the rise of larger burial sites known as dolmens. Prosperity led to jealousy, which led to war, which led to peaceful rule by the Assyrians starting in 853 B.C. As a result, all of the languages of the three great cities began to resemble Aramaic, which was the most widely spoken language of this time period. However, with the arrival of the Persians in 539 B.C., Jordan and the King’s Highway became a lot less cool in comparison to the newly routed Silk Road.

Figure 3 - Map of the King’s Highway

No one really cared that much when Alexander the Great showed up in 332 B.C. and grabbed up all of the Levantine states in one fell swoop. But this rocked the “Arab world”. The official language became Greek, Amman became Philadelphia (literally “brotherly love”) and pottery and mosaics flooded the art scene (see Figure 4). Jordan was back in business, for a hot second, until a man named Hannibal came and messed it all up. With the Roman conquest of Persia and the inevitable fall of Greek influence, the people of Jordan were once again as oppressed as in Egyptian times. So, along comes a young gentleman with quite a zealous Judaist philosophy who flips the whole society on its head somehow. No longer is it right to be strong, but it is right to be weak and suffer. Jesus came and went, and his mark would be felt much later with the conversion of Constantine and the rise of the Byzantine Empire, but for now the rebellious Jews of Jordan were being squashed by the Romans. Eventually it will all fall to another form of monotheism in 636 A.D. when Arabic-speaking Muslims move in. But now we have arrived at my point.

In telling you all I learned at the museum, I never even mentioned the Old Testament. Religion was not the focus here – or was it? I still can’t tell… Do we just make a big deal about religion now because we have somehow divined it from the politics, history and culture that it was intertwined with? What does it mean that the first monotheistic “God” was a thirteen-year-old boy using the idea of monotheism to oppress semi-nomadic tribes in Jordan? How can we so simply filter out religion from the history, culture, language and needs of these ancestors?

What I gained from my visit today was a wonderful history of the people of the land I am standing on, but I am worried that they are all too often placed in senseless boxes that have so little relevance. When Donald Trump says “ban all Muslims”, I think he is easy to support because that is an easy thing to say, to understand and to repeat. But to actually learn the history of a people, to learn about their culture, their background, their God, is a whole lot of work – not something for Americans who are conditioned to watch tv and Netflix all day. I want to write this article in support of the idea that I have enough time in my life to keep trying to understand, to not be settled, to keep asking better and better questions. But, I don’t want people to keep getting hurt because other people are too lazy to listen to them and respect their history. I mean, why else would we have language?

Figure 4 – Map of the Levant after invasion of the Greeks

I will end with a poem from the museum by Arabios (The Arab) that was an epigram inscribed on a tomb in Gadara (just north of Amman) around 355 A.D.:

To you I say passer by,

as you are,

I was,

as I am,

you will be.

Enjoy the life

as you are going to die.

Let’s enjoy life together as travellers, my Oberlin friends, and leave the tv watching for when we need to distract ourselves from the hellfire of finals.