Reflections on Jordan - Mohit Dubey

Oberlin guitarist Mohit Dubey had a lot of thoughts about our Winter Term trip to Jordan upon returning back to Oberlin.

As I sit and slowly sip my cup of green tea mixed with rose and cinnamon purchased at the market in downtown Amman (where volume generated by the shopkeepers) correlates to number of customers attracted), I use my prayer beads to try to count the number of times someone has said something along the lines of “oh you were in Jordan, how was that?” in the past few days. Wow, what a question… where to start?

Next to me, in the first drawer of my desk, sits a copy of the Holy Qur’an with both the English and anglicized Arabic translation (purchased in the back of a tiny shop at the same market), on my shelf are cups of bits of pottery (Roman and Byzantine) that I scraped from the dirt in Um Qais and mosaic fragments dug up on Mt. Nebo (where Moses saw the holy land and then died), the three tiered telescope I bartered for at the crossroads in Jerash, which is holding up a polished sphere of stone carved from the walls of Petra, one of the seven wonders of the world. If I showed you all these treasures, that would only begin to tell you about the few days we spent exploring and relaxing as tourists – but nothing of the seemingly countless days of incredible interactions and experiences I had playing music with friends and for friends and for the sake of friendship in a totally foreign world. In thinking about how to get across all the power in those moments, I imagined interviewing myself, forcing me to find the challenging questions first before answering them. So that is what this is. However, what I might say as a quip to that question above, then, are six cliché words about the trip: historically educational, musically empowering, and personally transformative. Stick around to see why…

The author performing at Zata'ari Camp with Questscope

what did you go to Jordan expecting?

Good place to start, I’d say. I had many expectations about Jordan, but not too many. I expected winter warmth (mostly true), mosques (a lot more densely packed and louder than I imagined), and delicious hummus, pita, and shwarma (ohhhhhhhhmyyyyygooodddddyeesssss). But beyond that, I tried not to have too many expectations. In my previous travel experience, I have found it helpful to just enter with an open and eager mind, and spend the first few days excitedly trying to figure out and adapt to as much as I can: the language (I may sound like an idiot in Arabic but I don’t care), the daily rituals (call to prayer at 5:30 a.m. = alarm clock), and general customs (men may kiss your cheeks but be careful about shaking a woman’s hand). These things I felt I picked up quickly, and had no problem because I didn’t really expect them to be a certain way. I just tried to fit myself into the groove of Jordanian life.

what were some moments that stood out in Jordan?

Hmmmm… there are quite a few, and I may go in a weird chronology so bear with me.

One would be: arriving at the High Place of Sacrifice in Petra to the sounds of a flute above me, scaling a staircase while responding melodically on my ocarina, finding an old Bedouin woman named Tuba sitting there selling rocks, sitting with her daughter and drinking tea, then leaving with an unexpected big old kiss on the lips… That small set of moments gave me a small window into the life of these Bedouin who all once lived (some still do) in the caves and canyons of Petra, which have been inhabited for over 3,000 years. I will not forget the music of the flute, the taste of the tea (minty and sweet), or the surprise of that kiss.

At Petra

At Petra

Oooh: driving back from Jerash (largest and best preserved ancient Roman city [take that Pompeii]) sitting in the front seat with our driver Abdullah (who always called me sufi) watching the big red sunset. Earlier that day he had told me his life story: born in a tent in Kuwait in 1968, his mother was pregnant with him when she fled Palestine, once (and always) Bedouins (at heart, he remarked when we passed the scent of goats), they landed in Amman, he studied engineering in Germany, but no jobs so he runs historical tours instead. I started to tell him things about cosmology (I study physics at Oberlin). The Big Bang. “That’s in the Qu’ran”. Gravity. “That is too”. The eventual heat death of the universe in a billion cooled off black holes in a near-flat space-time. “101:5 and the mountains will be like carded wool”. We sat and smiled in silence, staring into the setting sun.

Jerash

Jerash

Another: driving into Za’atari (a newly built Syrian refugee camp about an hour north of Amman) and seeing birds flying through the sky thinking to myself “wow, I’m like a bird, I can fly wherever I like, passport paper wings” then turning to see the smiling kids playing in the streets. Later that day, closing our concert, I played a Turkish piece called “Koyunbaba” but spontaneously started off instead with a Syrian folk song “Hal Asmar Al Lan” that I had learned from oud player Tareq Jundi just a few days before – people humming along and smiling. The sound of home. Home in sound? We then snacked on little pizza-like pita yum-yums for lunch. The taste of home. Home in taste? I spoke to a poet who lived there (also a painter) and asked him to recite his work to me. He looked me hard in the eye, smiling, almost singing in his swaying Arabic. “What was that one about?” “Home”.

what did you go to za’atari expecting?

I think I was expecting a lot of different things in going to Za’atari and was going in with a lot of misguided information and interpretations. This is mostly my own fault, as I could have easily done some research and read up on the history of the camp and the reasons behind the current huge Syrian influx, but you know… yeah. So I went in thinking: there are all these people here, fleeing from some form of violence (all I had heard about from mainstream media was ISIS), and now they are stuck in Jordan until it all “gets sorted out”. I had no idea about the complexity of the whole situation or its historical and political roots.

But what I was thinking about a lot was “in what ways can music be empowering to these people who have lost their homeland, hopefully temporally”. Both my parents themselves are immigrants, Indian father and German mother, and, at least to some degree, I have seen Ravi Shankar and Beethoven connect them respectively to their homelands. Funny enough, while I was packing for this trip, I was listening to Beethoven’s Ninth and when the choir comes in at the end for the famous moment (ode to joy), my mother burst into loud German song across the room. So, I started thinking about how music is an experience, in a way, of how home stays inside of us and travels with us. Makes me think of the early tribes of Israel carrying around the tabernacle…

Another thing I thought a lot about was related to that word “empower”. This came from a Skype session we had with George Matthew, the founder of Music For Life International who had recently brought chamber music to Za’atari. Something he said really stuck with me, it was along the lines of: “When you walk into the camp, you exude power. You smell like it. Your passport, your freedom to travel wherever you want, to go home. That is an immense power that you wear. We want to find out how can music help bring the people with less power forward, and, inevitably, push those with power back. I want you to think about how you can be needy.” This was mind-blowing to me, I thought about it everyday. How can I be needy? What does that mean? I had recently done a workshop on “nonviolent communication” (developed in Detroit, you can Google it) which talks a lot about how stress arises when fundamental human needs (all humans included) are not met. I realized that while some people at Za’atari may have more urgent needs for subsistence (sustenance, health) and autonomy (freedom, self-efficacy), we all have shared needs for transcendence (meaning, beauty, creativity) and community (to be heard, appreciation) that music can provide. By connecting with that need, I felt like I prepared myself for anything in store at Za’atari and tried not to over think it too much.

Panoramic of Amman from the Roman Citadel

what did you learn from your experience at Za’atari?

Wow… so many things.

I guess, first off, I learned that the entire conception of “refugee” as portrayed in the popular Western media is very incorrect and dehumanizing. I am Facebook friends with refugees, I sang Wiz Khalifa with refugees, I talked about jazz and history with refugees. Many of them were college students like myself whose country just happened to erupt into civil war due to forces beyond their influence. This is sad. But it is sadder to me that much of their experience often just gets concatenated into one word: “refugee”. There is a pair of eyes and a life behind every single number added to create the ones broadcasted on TV screens…

Secondly, before arriving at the camp, I got a crash course on the origins and consequences of the current crisis and how it is entangled with Middle Eastern and international politics. I don’t know if I want to delve into it too much here, but understanding that president Bashar al-Assad has been persecuting the majority of his own people, splitting the country into a civil war partially supported by the United States and partially supported by Russia (the Kurds), who are simultaneously fighting the growth of ISIS into an Islamic State. The numbers are astounding… So far, over six and a half million Syrians have left home, about 600,00 of which are now in Jordan, either in Za’atari, another more recent camp, or living in urban areas. The Jordanian government, having dealt with refugee crises in the past, has become a safe haven for many people fleeing violence around the Arab world, providing protection and the hope of a new life. But, as I learned, the competitive interests of refuges from many places can cause trouble. About a month before we arrived, Sudanese refugees protested outside the UNHCR headquarters in Amman, claiming that they had been neglecting them in favor of incoming Syrian refugees. The issue of deportation also seems to still be a very tricky and terrible thing… What I learned here is that one’s homeland and one’s identity are intertwined (I am American, Amriki) and to live in a land where “home” is always in dispute is very intricately emotionally, socially, politically and psychologically complicated. I feel strongly for these people. I’m gonna quote a translation of a poem by the librarian at the Questscope center in Za’atari (thanks to Amal Ghulam):

“what is the homeland?

the homeland is the earth

and the lover/beloved

and the turquoise (or the singer*)”

*Fairouz literally means turquoise

On the balcony at our hotel in Amman

what did you learn about the role of music in Jordanian culture?

Music has many roles in Jordanian culture, many seem to overlap with those I’ve lived in the U.S. and experienced in other cultures (like those of my parents), but many were strikingly different. Moreover, music is treated very differently in different parts of Jordan based on the historical, cultural, and religious perspectives of the majority of people living there.  In the northern capital city of Amman, we could go out and see live Arabic music in hookah bars or dance to club music at the Holiday Inn if we wanted to, but just four hours south, music was thought of in a completely different way. We actually did go visit the south, to see the ancient city of Petra (I still feel like it was all a dream), and I had another musical-cultural shock: hanging with Bedouins.  Here, where people roamed the canyons by camel and slept in caves, music was essential. I sang with people in “Café’s at the end of the Earth”, played flute with people perched upon cliffs peeking into Egypt and Israel, and even had a jam session with a hip Bedouin guy IN THE ANCIENT MONASTERY (covered with “do not enter” signs [but remember it was his before those signs were there]). Even funnier was the way that many of these people (especially the kiddos) tried to trade anything they could for my ocarina, including a donkey ride up the mountain (I always had to decline). These different worlds felt so differently about music, and I learned from them all.

Professor Tareq Jundi of the University of Jordan instructs Oberlin students

A funny thing happened when we played at the University of Madaba, which was our first show. After the show, we had a q & a session with the students, mostly about our age, in a “music appreciation” class (they were mostly engineering students). They were mostly too shy to talk, so Terrence called out one kid in the back and asked him what he liked to listen to. His response was pure gold: “I don’t like music”. Ahahahahaha, the whole crowd was in uproar. But even better… T’Errence probed, “What do you listen to in your car in the morning?” “Nothing”, he says, to the great shock of an elderly gentleman in the room who immediately cried out “NOT EVEN FAIROUZ!?” Every morning, every one (I guess of a dying generation) wakes up and listens to Fairouz. It’s just a thing that happens. Isn’t that just magical? Everyone, falling in love with the same sounds over and over again each morning. I’ve been doing it here since I got back, and wow, waking up for class is a lot easier…

Finally, I think I learned the most about the similar roles music play in Jordan and the US after our performance at the American Language Center. This was a place where Jordanians in Amman can go to practice speaking English and take classes in English. They were nice enough to host us for multiple events, including a very well attended concert that ended with a question and answer session. Immediately the older crowd started questioning the viability of music as a career while the younger people started defending the importance of music – a similar struggle I have faced in convincing my parents to let me pursue music. We played for kids at three different school and the question of “can music really be a career” came up everywhere. I’m starting to wonder if musicians are making a stable living anywhere in the world. But one thing was for certain, music played a role in so many people’s lives, and connecting with people through this part of their identity was truly incredible. Each time the jazz band closed with Al Bint Al Shalabiya and the audience started grooving along, clapping along, or even singing along, wide smiles spreading into the sax solo leading into Bebop, there was a sense of “yeah, music matters here, music matters a lot”. That filled me with joy.

So yeah, back to the six words, I guess I had a lot of personal transformations in Jordan. I see things at home differently, I miss new things (Jordanian food), I love new things (Fairouz), and I feel like another part of the world is still stuck inside me somehow. Music lets me carry that around easily, I feel. That’s how this was musically empowering, I felt the power that music has to carry people across the globe (me) and unite people in listening and sometimes scare people and other times make people feel at home in midst of great chaos. This was not only empowering for the kids we were able to teach one on one and in groups (I hope), but also for me, to challenge the idea of “what can music do for people”. And yes, I did get to learn a lot about history on this trip too. But I learned to see how all these three are intertwined: our personal journeys and growth, the music we make as the reflections and sounds of that, and history as the lasting impressions we leave in a larger sense.

Oberlin Jazz Quintet at King's Academy

Bassist Tim Fenton wrote about the jazz quintet's experience visiting King's Academy, a private school outside of Amman.

     On Monday January 11^th 2016, the jazz quintet travelled about an hour south of Amman to a private boarding high school called King’s Academy. On our way, we passed many small towns, farms, and empty lots filled with trash. The area around the school, which is on the outskirts of a neighboring town to Amman, seemed quite poor. We pulled up to a guard post in the middle of a six-foot tall fence that stretched all around the expansive grounds of the school. The school’s hilly campus was covered in immaculately kept grass, trees and plants local to the East Coast of the United States. I was awestruck by the uniform limestone classroom buildings as we walked on to the campus itself. King’s Academy is named in honor of King Abdullah II of Jordan and is actually modeled after Deerfield academy, a private prep school in Massachusetts, where the King graduated from high school. The King’s son graduated from King’s Academy in 2012.

       We played a 30-minute set for King’s Academy orchestral students, and performed original compositions by Max Bessesen, Matt DiBiase, Zach Resnick, and Chase Kuesel. We closed our set with a mash up of a traditional Arabic song by Fairouz and Dizzy Gillespie’s jazz standard, Be-bop. The students seemed to moderately enjoy the set while we were playing and after we played we answered any questions the students had. Many students engaged with great questions. Some asked how much do we practice or how long have we played music. One girl asked how we can understand jazz when it moves so quickly. Surprisingly, this was the only q & a session where someone asked if we had seen the movie Whiplash (which almost all of us have.)  To close out the session, we brought up any student musician who wanted to come up and we played a blues called Now’s the Time. This was one of the most fun musical experiences for me because we got to musically interact with students in a playing type setting as opposed to teaching.  The students skill levels varied, but all seemed to have some proficiency playing their instrument.

       Two teachers took us to the dining hall for dinner after our set. The dining hall served lamb pita and rice that I thought was very tasty. It was very interesting to see students in the dining hall and talk to the teachers about them. I was surprised to see tables of American students and Asian students. The teachers told us that 75% of the population there were boarding students, but more than half were from Jordan or nearby in the Middle East. The other half came from all over the world, including the United States, China, Korea and many other places.

I couldn’t help but think about how the students were able to ask such informed questions because they have access to so many resources at King’s Academy. Our experience playing the blues with students offered a great example of their access to information because many of them knew the blues form or were at least familiar with blues and jazz, which was not the case at some other schools. All things considered, I enjoyed our trip to King’s Academy not only because it was musically engaging but it was very eye-opening and thought provoking.

Reflections on Jordan - Ellyn Butler

Oberlin flute major Ellyn Butler reflected upon the differences between what she expected to find in Jordan and the reality that actually confronted her.

As I am writing this, I am in sitting in a comfortable hanging-chair in the basement of an Israeli friend’s house. The wealth of his community is clear from the towering buildings called homes and the gated feeling of the area. Long before I ever went to Jordan, I knew that this was the sort of community that my friend lived in. We met over the summer at a festival in Italy, where we quickly became close friends, swapping stories of the similarities and differences between our respective cultures. At this time, I knew that I would be participating in Oberlin’s Winter Term trip to Jordan. Having never visited the region, in my mental image of the Middle East, as is the case for many Americans, I imagined there to be much death and destruction. I had not given much thought to the variety of lives lived everyday, and I didn’t consider the nuances of religion and education. Now, sitting here in this comfortable chair, it has dawned on me how similar the day-to-day lives are of many people, despite important cultural and religious divides.

Street view in Amman

We all wake up in the morning and have to decide what to put on. Of course, considerations that go into what we decide to wear vary by culture. When I am in Oberlin, often the only thing I consciously think about in the morning is what will be easiest for me to run in, given that I am often running late to my first class. That is not to say, though, that my decisions are not influenced by my culture’s norms. For example, I would never choose to wear something totally outrageous that would make me stick out. When I was in Jordan, I was forced to think about what would make me stick out in a different cultural context. As a woman, it was only appropriate for me to wear long-sleeved shirts with a conservative neckline and long pants. I couldn’t help but feel stifled, given that I normally show a lot more skin, but it was helpful to remind myself that all cultures have strong expectations for dress. Everyone takes into consideration culture norms when deciding how to present themselves.

The author performs with the classical trio from Oberlin at Zata'ari camp, north of Amman

We all have to go to work, in order to take care of our families or to put food on the table. Back in the US, work differs a lot between the adults in my life. I know plenty of men and women who are academics, doctors, librarians and blue-collar workers. In Jordan, I was immediately struck by how few women I saw on a daily basis in the work force. Every time we went to a restaurant, the entirety of the wait staff was men. Every time we got a cab, our driver was male. Every time we went to the grocery store, the cashier was male. I almost began to wonder if there were just fewer women in Jordan. But when we left the hub of daily life and moved into the spaces of the elite private schools, it almost felt as if we had returned home. Girls and boys participated in sports equally. Girls and boys were responsible for showing us around. Girls and boys both aspired towards a career in science. Interacting with these students, I saw my high school self. I saw exhaustion, feelings of self-doubt, and an obsession with grades. At least amongst the men of the average Jordanian community, I saw love, compassion and a joy for life. The few women I saw with each other on the streets of Amman demonstrated similar characteristics. It begged the question of whether or not what I view as a “good” elite education is ultimately worthwhile. Regardless of professions or aspirations, Jordanians and people from the US must contribute to the functioning of society through some form of work.

The author working with a qanoun player at International Academy Amman

We all value some kind of community we belong to, and as a result, we feel protective of it. A high school junior that I met at dinner one night said that one of her teachers had told her that people in the US were not tolerant of those who were not Christian. I immediately felt confused, and even a little defensive. There I was, in a region that is often portrayed as being religiously intolerant, being told that my home had just that problem. In all honesty, many parts, if not all of the US, are overtly or covertly unaccepting of religious minorities. But given that my personal upbringing had been without religion and that I had been surrounded by friends of many different religions growing up, I couldn’t help but feel that this was an exaggeration. In that moment, it dawned on me that I had been making a gross over-exaggeration of her culture, and assumed it was religiously intolerant, but from day one our tour guide made a point to mention that Christians and Muslims lived side by side in peace in Jordan, something that cannot be said of all areas within the US. Not all feelings of protectiveness for one’s culture come in the form of defense, though. During our visit to the Zata’ari refugee camp, it became clear that, despite all of their hardships, residents were intent on maintaining important aspects of their culture. They made it a priority to create spaces where both boys and girls could learn and play. Through soccer fields, libraries, and music classes, all children had access to experiences that emphasized their humanity. Ultimately, everyone wants to maintain the reality and the image of the culture they love and respect.

Art in a Questscope caravan at Zata'ari camp

As I am finishing this post, I am sitting in a hotel room back in the US. Reflecting on my time in Jordan, I couldn’t be more pleased with my experience. I was able to mentally bridge the gap between cultures I had previously viewed as being incontrovertibly different. Even better, I was able to use something that I hold near and dear to my heart, music, to help bridge the experienced gap between people. No matter what we do when we wake up in the morning, how we spend our days, or what we ultimately value, nearly all of us are able to appreciate the hard work that goes into putting on a good performance. 

Music and Dialogue: Listening and Observing While Abroad

Percussionist Chase Kuesel wrote a blog post to reflect upon his experiences in Jordan in relation to the environment at Oberlin.

To be a student at Oberlin is to be perpetually surrounded by certain relatively liberal ideological imperatives. Indeed, while it is an aspect of the institution that is in equal parts lauded and reviled by those outside of Oberlin, it is a spirit that is generally celebrated and championed by students and faculty on campus. It is a political atmosphere so total that is often easy to forget that there are myriad places and institutions outside of Oberlin who hold just about diametrically opposed views, and who hold those views just with just as much conviction as we hold our own. 

Accordingly, one of the most interesting, and in many ways best, parts of this Winter Term trip to Jordan was the opportunity to experience what it is like to be surrounded by a more conservative culture. Most important, however, were the questions this experience prompted me to consider, the most salient and urgent of which might be: how to articulate what the value of music is in our contemporary moment?  As I had hoped it would, our exchange allowed both explicit and implicit dialogue about that question to play out in the context of an entirely new place and culture, which allowed me to pursue new ideas about what purpose music has in a trip like this specifically and in the world more generally.

While the conservative sociocultural, political, and religious persuasions of Jordan can be understood most broadly and thoroughly by consulting historical texts, the two most striking aspects I observed – perhaps because of their sonic and visual manifestations – was the primacy of religion in daily life. A predominantly Muslim country with most citizens practicing Sunni Islam, religious life is far more audible and visible in Jordan than anywhere else I have traveled. This became immediately apparent on my first jet-lagged morning, when the first of five call to prayers commenced at 5am, loud enough for me – and many of my equally-exhausted peers – to be woken up.

Mosque Minaret in downtown Amman

However, these cultural differences doubtless made the experience all the more rewarding for the way in which they prompted me to consider what role music – most specifically, European Classical Music and American Classical Music (“jazz”), i.e, the music we were performing –  plays in an exchange like this. I think the clearest answer I arrived at after my two week stay was simply this: one of music’s most important purposes is that it is one of the best occasions for community. Indeed, had we not had music, I am highly confident that opportunities to interact with local students and community members would have been far fewer and more challenging. My most salient memory of music’s communal and dialogue-inspiring function on this trip came towards the tail end, when we performed for students, musicians, and professionals of all vocations at the American Language Center Amman. The turnout was fantastic; about 100 people of all ages must have been in the audience. This alone speaks to the importance of live performances, as the banal bears repeating here: as we increasingly move to our screens and devices, time spent interacting with other humans in diminishes exponentially, reducing our ability to engage in dialogue with others –especially those who differ from us. Experiencing an event with others in real time is increasingly becoming a radical and anomalous act, making concerts all the more important in that their very premise centers on a communal experience. 

The jazz quintet performs an arrangement of Al Bint Al Shalabiya at the American Language Center

The Classical Trio from Oberlin performs at the American Language Center

While we were all very happy that the audience at the ALC was receptive to the music we performed, the best part of the event was the question and answer session that followed our performance, which allowed us to discuss our music (amongst other topics) with the audience. The dialogue was stimulating; it became immediately clear that despite certain political and cultural differences, some of which I enumerated above, many of the audience’s concerns (e.g, diminishing state/government support the arts and music in the 21st century, the purpose of college and education, how to make music a part of a student’s life, etc.) were the same as our own. I don’t think it is a coincidence that an inspiring and thoughtful dialogue followed a musical performance, as being a good audience member and being a good citizen are similar pursuits: both require attentive listening, active reflection, and an empathetic sensibility that necessitates that you open yourself up to views and experiences that fundamentally differ from your own. The performance and subsequent conversation was an experience I won’t soon forget, not least because it made me profoundly grateful for the role music plays in my life and the lives of so many others. 

The author and friends at Petra

A final note: my deepest thanks to Dean Chris Jenkins for his remarkable leadership, organization, and care for and commitment to the students who participated in the exchange; T’Errance Favors and the US Embassy for the their support; Dean Andrés Fernandez for his help organizing the trip from the start; Barbara Porter and ACOR for hosting us and believing in the project; and most of all to Ellyn, Camille, Matt, Max, Mohit, Tim, and Zach for their music and the way they each inspired me. 

The author at Petra