A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, il Cantiere #23: Exodus - Reverend (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

"Everything is alright, so we are going to walk alright, through the 
roads of Creation, we're the generation, trod through great tribulation, 
Exodus" ---- "Everything will go right, so we will set out with a sure, 
long step the paths of Creation, we are the generation that has gone 
through great tribulations, Exodus" ---- These are some of the prophetic 
verses of Bob Marley, lyrics of the super hit Exodus, released in 1977 
(an excellent year in many respects), on the self-titled album, an L.P. 
which will remain forever, in heavy rotation, in our hearts and in our 
headphones. Verses which, it is easily deduced, are inspired by readings 
and passages from the Old Testament and which testify to the 
tribulations of the people of Israel; in that case they were bent, by 
the artist, to the miserable life of Jamaicans in the slums of Kingston 
Town.

As I write these lines, the inhabitants of Gaza are making "their" 
Exodus. Thousands of people who in the darkest night and chased by 
bombs, pack up the four rags they have and leave. And every man knows 
that having a house, no matter how miserable it is, will never be like 
not having one.

The story is cruel and paradoxical. How much the desperate people of 
Gaza resemble those Jews who fled the European pogroms, bringing with 
them poverty and the musical instruments indispensable to their culture. 
Mind you: musical instruments that could be transported, i.e. violins, 
clarinets, mandolins, trumpets, accordions, everything that could be 
packaged, the same instruments used by gypsies and Roma from all over 
the world, others without land, others murdered in concentration camps . 
All Jewish music is imbued with the profound pain of a landless people, 
persecuted and driven away. The platforms of Auschwitz were full of 
musical instruments abandoned next to suitcases. And today, without a 
doubt, that music would be an appropriate soundtrack for Palestinians. 
And these Jewish musicians would play well alongside the powerful and 
sharp, sweetly melancholic and high-pitched voices of the Arab singers, 
and those instruments would sing well, those people would dance, they 
would meet on the scores, they would dialogue between the notes, they 
would compete with each other with mastery of the instrument , with 
words of heartbreaking dirges.

How well the lyrics of Arab poets such as Adonis, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, 
Khalil Gibran would stand out, on the melodies of Gabriele Cohen, 
Kletzmatics, John Zorn and so on ad infinitum. But why can't it be like 
this, by whom and when was it decided that men should slaughter each 
other instead of meeting and re-knowing each other, perhaps through 
poetry and notes?

Who composes and updates this musical of destruction and death, bombings 
and pogroms, that is, the same score that is always presented to us, on 
different latitudes, but always the same and despairing?

Man's pain is the same for all men, like poetry, like music. But there 
is something greater in man: there is an inspiration crushed, crushed, 
reduced to a small light, a small flame that must resist.

The Apulian pianist Francesco Lotoro dedicated part of his life to 
transcribing and saving from oblivion the music composed in the 
concentration camps, clearly including those coming from the Dachau and 
Borgermoor concentration camps, but not only those of the Jews involved 
in the Holocaust.

Beyond the artistic value of the operation, what violently emerges is 
the enormous human depth that it represents. It means preserving and 
sheltering that flame of humanity and brotherhood, that glimmer of 
testimony that those music express. It means that even in the darkest 
moments, exactly like the ones we find ourselves experiencing, it is 
always possible to express the radical value of every single life 
against the monstrous machine of war and oppression that surrounds us, 
that hope is not a panacea for defeated, it is not only a theological 
virtue, but it substantiates and defines us.

Tomorrow we will listen to the music and why not, the rap composed 
during the dark night in Gaza, during the Exodus, as for all Exoduses. 
This Greek word which means "out in the streets", when will we 
understand that it is our condition as men, when will we accept that it 
alone breaks down walls, that it means revolution?

Tomorrow, but today and forever we will shout: two peoples no nation.

http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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