Palestinian Music

Palestinian music has long been embedded in everyday life, shaping and reflecting social, cultural, and political identities. It has served as a means of storytelling and news-sharing, a part of ritual and community life, and a connection to the broader musical traditions of the Near East. As displacement scattered Palestinians across Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and beyond, musicians carried folk and urban musical traditions into new political and cultural contexts, blending them with various modernities and transforming the process of music-making. In the decades that followed, music and dance were increasingly folklorized and mobilized as symbols of Palestinian identity. Palestinian Music traces these transformations from the British Mandate through the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1970s. Drawing on rare recordings, oral histories, archival materials, and original musical transcriptions, ethnomusicologist Issa Boulos examines two dozen artists across five countries and follows the composers, producers, and performers whose innovations helped shape the musical scene of the entire region. Palestinian music emerges as a dynamic medium through which Palestinians continually negotiated identity, solidarity, and hope-balancing preservation and innovation, rootedness and displacement.