Toot Ard Reggae Druze Band

"We always sing about the big picture where things are very healthy and spontaneous. We don't feel confident about singing about more specific issues because they are too complicated for us. We sing about going back to nature, on the disappearance of national borders and about the idea of freedom. We live in the middle of the Middle East and have never visited any Arab country. We're trapped in what is called Israel." Hasan Nakhleh On Saladin and Zahra streets in East Jerusalem, a cultural nexus of book stores, movie theatres, music venues, and art galleries beckons Jerusalemites with a wide variety of concerts, films, speakers, and other events. This collection of places comprised of the Educational Bookshop (where I heard Ghada Karmi , the author of In Search of Fatima speak about her new book Married to Another Man), the French Cultural Center with its Arab Film Festival, the Yabous Center with its performance spaces, movie theatres, and café hosting musical groups, the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, and the Palestinian Art Court-al Hoash attracts a local and international crowd. Even the National Hotel is getting hosting a recent exhibition of the “Palestine Photo-marathon" from The Danish House of Palestine in collaboration with al Hoash.

In June for several weeks, these places hosted The Jerusalem Festival. I managed to see several movies and concerts among which were Khaled Jarrar’s The Infiltrators and a concert by Toot Ard .Tooting from Magdal Shams, a city in the Golan Heights with a significant Druze population made famous for some Americans by Evan Riklis’ film The Syrian Bride, the band Toot Ard, which means Strawberries, has a VERY loyal following. I was able to see why on a gorgeous night in the garden of the beautifully and recently renovated National Conservatory of Music on Zarha Street.

Young people obviously familiar with music and lyrics of the band packed the garden. As the evening progressed, many moved forward clapping and dancing to the reggae beat. It was a joyous and happy crowd. Influenced by Bob Marley as teens, Brothers Hasan and Rami Nakhleh were also raised on classical Arab Music. In addition, they liked Tupac Shakur, Miles Davis’s cool jazz, the musicians from the nomadic Tuareg tribe of the Sahara Desert, and Gnawa Diffusion , a French band that combines North African music with rock, reggae and dub. Shady Awidat, 21, on guitar; an engineering student Amr Mdah, 20, on saxophone; and bassist Yezan Abrahim, a recent high-school graduate joined the brothers to make up the band.

No one else in Israel or Palestine sounds like Toot Ard.

Some links to places mentioned on this page. And don’t miss the videos from the concert.

• TheEdward Said National Conservatory of Music

• TheEducational Bookshop

• TheYabous Center

• Palestinian –Art Court Al-Hoash

French Cultural Center - East Jerusalem

21, Salah Eddin St. - Jerusalem

Tel. : 02 628 24 51