Brehony, Louis. Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of Resistance

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.46.1.0077
• Published date: 19 January 2024
• Pages: 77-79
• Date: 19 January 2024
• Author: Thomas Hofland

BOOK REVIEW

Brehony, Louis. Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of Resistance.

American University in Cairo Press, 2023.

340 pages. Hardcover $59.95

Reviewed by Thomas Hofland

Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of Resistance by Louis Brehony provides a

unique historical research of Palestinian music in the Middle East and North Af-

rica (MENA). Its extensive grassroots perspective eldwork and analysis form

a major contribution to our knowledge about Palestinian music that constructs a

necessary counternarrative against ongoing Zionist attempts to destroy Palestinian

culture.

Brehony’s focus on Palestinian music in the MENA region stands out in a field

where most recent English-language publications primarily deal with Palestinian

music in Europe, North America or Palestine. The book also fills an academic gap

of little engagement with modern patriotic and revolutionary Arab and Palestinian

music, as they form the majority of featured songs. Brehony reminds the audience

that Palestinian music is intimately linked with resistance on the ground in and

around Palestine, practiced by workers, women, students, refugees, and fida’iyin

(freedom fighters).

Brehony starts from the point that Palestinian music research is itself a form of

political activism. In the context of the ongoing Nakba (Palestinian Catastrophe

of 1948) against the Palestinian people and their culture, ethnomusicology is pio-

neered by musicians, activists, and academics as “a survivalist field of study

against the grain of cultural Zionism” (23). To this end, Brehony develops a theo-

retical framework informed by Marxist analysis of Palestinian revolutionaries

such as Ghassan Kanafani, Leila Khaled and Naji al-Ali, and the cultural theories

of Edward Said, Frantz Fanon and György Lukács, among others.

The research explores different lahajat musiqiya (“musical dialects”) of

Palestinians in exile from 1967 to 2021, arguing that they are “politicized tool[s]

for representing Palestinian collectivity in times of acute crisis” (59). Through

engaging case studies and in-depth interviews with grassroots artists who do not

possess recording contracts except for one, the book brings to life the stories of

musicians who have become cultural strugglers for the Palestinian cause.

Thomas Hofland is affiliated with the International Center for Palestine Studies in Holland.

DOI:10.13169/arabstudquar.46.1.0077