‘My way of being useful’: for Palestinian oudist Huda Asfour, performance brings catharsis – and frustration

On a recent Wednesday in Brooklyn, about 40 people gathered at Storm Books and Candy , an independent bookstore dedicated to showcasing work from the Swana (south-west Asia and north Africa) region. After several poets and writers read, Huda Asfour emerged from the audience. She picked up her oud, a type of Middle Eastern short-necked lute, and arranged herself on a stool.

“It’s great to be among like-minded people,” Asfour, 42, said, her unruly curls bouncing slightly as she settled the instrument on her lap. As her lilting voice filled the space, people listened quietly to the haunting melody about hypocrisy and the flawed human condition. But when she played a rousing protest song in Arabic that included a refrain about putting the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in prison, the energy changed. People clapped along, singing and laughing. At the end of the short performance, the audience, wide awake, erupted in applause.

Four months before the bookstore performance, Asfour had been at a crossroads, unsure about what to do next. She had recently returned from visiting family in Egypt, where more than 115,000 Palestinians, including her aunt, had been evacuated since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza. Many lacked access to basic resources and were struggling to deal with the trauma of war. Asfour had learned of injured Palestinians being sequestered in hospital rooms; of Palestinian children barred from entering the school system. There were several mutual aid groups on the ground trying to help the huge influx of Palestinians, and she wasn’t sure if she should go back to Egypt and try to join them. How best to help in a situation where the need is so urgent and intense, and resources so limited?

Ultimately, she decided to stay in the US, where she’s a legal resident and a working musician, rather than leave and face the complications of being a Palestinian in Egypt. She later described it as a pragmatic decision – but a serendipitous one, too.

A year into Israel’s deadly campaign, the stream of horrific news – Palestinian homes destroyed, entire families wiped out, a devastating, mounting death toll – is unrelenting. At the same time, across the US and the world, there has been a marked increase in interest in Palestinian artists and musicians, many of whom are using this attention to call for a ceasefire , demand the US stop arming Israel and to raise funds for families in Gaza.

Just days before she called for Netanyahu to be held accountable for alleged war crimes at the bookstore, Asfour had played the Requiem for Justice festival in Amsterdam, where she and the Sudanese singer-songwriter Alsarah performed their remake of a revolutionary Sudanese song, Ne3ma , about the struggle for collective liberation. Her decision to stay in New York allowed her to continue participating in this work, sharing her message about transcending borders and working together to overcome “fascist” systems of power with this newly tuned-in audience – “my way of being useful in the moment”, she said. She has played so many fundraisers and concerts for Gaza in the US over the past year that she’s lost track.

These events serve as a place for people to grieve together, to see and support one another and find ways to keep going. But at times, Asfour feels frustrated. “Even though the urgency of the moment is overwhelming, we have to think about … how our energy is being spent. How do we create spaces where we’re capable of thinking about next steps?”

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Asfour is many things: a skilled oud player and composer, an educator, a biomedical engineer with a PhD. She came from a musical family and described seeing her grandfather play the oud at a family gathering in Amman, Jordan, when she was 13. “I saw the power that the instrument has, in bringing people together and creating spaces of cathartic expression, community and identity,” she said.

Growing up in Tunisia, Asfour was exposed to music from Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Egypt. Her early influences included some of the giants of Arabic music – Umm Kulthum, Mohamed Abdel Wahab, Sayed Darwish – along with more contemporary music, like Marcel Khalife and the Palestinian group Sabreen, which blended Arabic music styles with jazz and rock. In her teens and early 20s, she studied in musical conservatories in Tunisia and Palestine. A crucial part of her artistic understanding came from her time in Ramallah during the second Palestinian intifada.

“My upbringing was more traditional in terms of music understanding and appreciation – more elitist. I was more focused on form and tonality,” she said. “Later on, I understood … the ramifications of colonialization on Arabic music. The political very much becomes part of your theoretical background.”

Asfour moved to the US in 2005 to complete a doctorate degree in engineering and to teach, but continued to work on her music, releasing two studio albums, writing film scores, and collaborating with artists across the globe. Playing music in the US was complicated in new and unexpected ways. Many Americans had never seen or heard of her instrument, the oud, and didn’t understand Arabic lyrics.

“There was a different perception of the music, there was this exotification,” Asfour said. “It’s off-putting. It doesn’t allow for a smooth human connection … there are all these layers of weird that you have to get through.”

In the past year, people’s desire and openness to learn about Palestinian culture, including its music, has changed.

People are risking a lot by even saying they are standing with Palestinians right now

At film festivals, poetry readings, stage plays, art shows and folk concerts, Americans, including Jewish solidarity groups, have shown up in droves to bear witness, to learn, to listen, to protest against Israel’s continued assault on Gaza. “I truly believe that all resistance is important. People are risking a lot by even saying they are standing with Palestinians right now,” Asfour said.

But she is concerned about the lack of diversity at these events: the loudest voices are usually not Palestinian, and people in Gaza are too often portrayed as powerless victims, or charity cases, their humanity stripped away. And after a year of playing music at these events, Asfour has seen plenty of solidarity but little focus on collective solutions to prevent what is happening in Gaza from happening anywhere else in the world.

“People want to help, so they get you a meal, but then they watch you eat. They don’t understand how humiliating this is,” she said. “They need to sit and eat with you. It’s that human moment of sharing the meal that is important.”

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Beyond raising money and awareness for Gaza, Asfour has a busy career as a musician. She has taught workshops and founded improv orchestras that bring together musicians of all stripes in spontaneous live performances – another way to transcend musical boundaries and embrace the collective. She’s also working on albums, including one about protest, that document her experience of the vicissitudes of the last several months. “I’m writing at a speed that I’ve never written before,” she said. And she’s found hope in a new non-profit project for youth mentorship in response to the situations in Gaza and Sudan.

While not a solution, she believes that fundraising and gathering together in community – stirring something through melody – still can provide respite after a long year of horrific news and hard decisions. “At least I know we’re helping as much as we can to just keep people in survival mode,” she said.

After her performance at the bookstore, Asfour stepped outside to smoke. Israel had launched an intensive bombing campaign against Lebanon two days before, killing more than 550 people, and several of the writers who had spoken that night mentioned how heavy things felt; the grief was palpable. After a few minutes, two women who had been in the audience joined her outside. They told her they were Palestinian, too, and that her music was beautiful. “We really needed this,” one said. “At times like this, it’s important to be together.” Asfour chatted with them for a few minutes. The wind had picked up, and it was getting late, so she headed back inside to the lighted bookstore where people milled about, none of them quite ready to head home.