‘The Last Bit of Solace’: Disaporic Palestinians Use Music to Bring Support

Tarik Kazaleh remembered the sounds of the bombs that dropped around his best friend. In the middle of that night, all he could do was play the oud, a Middle Eastern stringed instrument, over the phone for someone thousands of miles away.

Kazaleh watches the suffering of those in Gaza from afar like other Palestinians in the diaspora. Protests and calls for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war are closer to home, but the issue is more than political for Palestinian Americans. It is the loneliness and sadness carried through generations — and those feelings originating in their lifetimes — leading some diasporic Palestinians to use music as a way to cope. Read more at Contra Costa Post.