Pomegrenade, a Collective Song

The cassette tape starts, it’s playing Michael Jackson’s Freedom, but 30 seconds in, you hear the songs of anti-colonial resistance. When you were a child your mother prepared rummaneyye (رمانية) a warm, hearty dish of pomegranate, lentils, eggplant, pomegranate juice, cumin, and coriander. A dish that was displaced together with the Palestinians from Yaffa to Gaza. Participants joined artist Khaled Jarrar for a special supper and evening of collective song in recognition of the importance of music and food in sustaining Palestine’s ongoing fight against genocide and land theft. The artist prepared rummaneyye, followed by songs of Palestinian resistance and liberation performed by Safira Berrada-Riggs, Mohammed Salah, Alber Baseel, Iskandar Dridi, and H. Sinno.

As a starting point for the evening, the artist shared a personal recollection on a seminal encounter with revolutionary songs:

I was ten years old when I met them at their cave. My Momma would send me out with food for them and their laundered clothes. Five men in this hidden cave were the Palestinian Black Panthers with their hand made guns. They took the food from me directly and started eating. They looked so hungry. After they ate, they changed their clothes and gave me the old clothes to be washed. When I was leaving, Kamal, who was the co-founder of the Black Panthers, gave me a cassette tape with Michael Jackson printed on the cover, a cover-up of Palestinian liberation songs that were forbidden to listen to or distribute, and the cassette ended with the voice of Prince.