By Maya Moratti

I met Marcel Khalife for the first time at the main entrance of the University, the traditional place for appointments in Pavia. Although a legend, he is a man who turns out pleasant from the first moment. After supper, here he is, seated among the public of the Palestinian Film Festival, watching a movie on the Palestinian issue. The film ends with a song of Khalife and it is almost surrealistic to take the microphone and announce to the public that that voice is seated between them, that Marcel Khalife is with us in Pavia.

This is the first memory I have of the three days the artist has spent in Pavia, in occasion of his concert. Marcel Khalife and his oud, accompanied by Peter Herbert and his contrabass, offered us a refined concert, in which Arabic classical music has melted with the western melodic tradition.

I will not write about music, rather I’d like to make some considerations concerning the person and the power of music beyond its cultural value. But above all, I would like to tell about the evening of the concert.

It has been a very special evening. I think the most will remember it with great emotion.

Pavia is a small and quiet town of the Italian province, located between the rice-fields and the foot of the hills, animated by the university students and enriched by the presence of some immigrant communities, among the others, the small Arab community. Before the concert, nonetheless, the city never experienced the arrival of buses full of Arabs coming from everywhere, in order to listen to a concert.

Everybody was there: Lebanese, Maghrebis (North Africans), Egyptians, Palestinians (and of course Italians). Men, women and children of all ages: Arabs over fifty that live in Italy since ages and Middle Eastern students enrolled at the first year of university, families with small children and the so called second generation teen-agers. Representatives of the consulate were there along with the immigrant workers. All-Arab families sat close to mixed ones. Local and Arab journalists worked together.

I would like to put the accent on the atmosphere of the evening. Leaving aside the fact of the robust presence of the Arabic community, a fact which we should not take for granted in a country like Italy, still not accustomed to collective manifestations and communitarian moment of expression of the immigrants.

The concert created a kind of magical moment, a protective umbrella under which everybody felt at home. It has been occasion to express joy and gratefulness for the acknowledgment of a culture, the Arabic one, often depreciated and vilified. In the course of the evening, music itself was able to define a community, certainly heterogeneous but unified by a common sense of identification, solidarity and sharing of a destiny. A joyful community, amused, relaxed by a music that is at the same time popular, sophisticated and poetic.

The concert was a crescendo. During the first instrumental part, a "suite" entitled "Taqasim"; the deep emotion of the people was tangible. The public was nearly incredulous of the presence of Marcel Khalife in person. When Marcel, in the second part, began to sing, the public rose to their feet in unison and sang in a chorus. Marcel has demonstrated a strong capacity to negotiate with the public the modalities of joining into the songs. Every member of the audience became a "performer", singing "Rita" and "Ummi" the voices melted under the direction of the master and the atmosphere became touching.

Then Marcel sang "Ana Amshi" (I Walk):

While listening to this song, I could not stop smiling remembering that on the same morning Marcel reached the rehearsal, after covering on feet a five miles distance, following a path between the rice-fields and the countryside, under the strong Italian sun. Funny image for an international star!

Marcel then sang "Ala-l-Hudud":

The music of Marcel Khalife states an engagement against violence and oppression and reaffirms the necessity of peace. It moves thoughts, feelings and sense of closeness. Many, after the concert, came to thank the organizing committee for the event, for supporting a difficult cause like the Palestinian one and for having given a space to the Arabic culture.

I think this has been a great result and it demonstrates that there is not just space, as the press coverage wants us to believe, for the extremist militant claims, but also for other —prevailing- voices. Culture can and must give a fundamental contribution to the fight for the human rights and for a less unjust world.

The concert, finally, imposed a reflection around the relation between the Western and Arab world, particularly difficult and tense nowadays. In the context of moving peoples, technologies, finances, and the dislocation of culture is a precious instrument for fruitful intercultural dialogue. The answer that came from the Italian public strengthens this belief. Mixed feelings were perceivable from this public: curiosity for an unknown oriental sonority, surprise for the unexpected deep affection of the Arab public towards Marcel, interest for a culture and a world, the Middle Eastern ones, unknown to the great majority. Many, after the concert, asked me not only about the music of Marcel and the oud, but also about the Arabic language, the poetry of Darwish, the Middle Eastern literature, etc. For one evening, "Arabic" stopped being the index for "enemy", for "terrorist", and became something positive, beautiful, peace giving.

Marcel Khalife, with his music, has carried an important message of brotherhood and peaceful cohabitation between peoples. People answered with warmness and Marcel Khalife surely knows how to deal with his public. Although he is very careful to propose an elegant and elevated cultural product and very attentive to the smallest details regarding his work at the day of the concert, nonetheless he found time for the journalists. He took pictures with families, signed his CDs one by one, shaked hands with hundreds of people. He also found the energy to tell of himself and of his family, remembering the difficult times of the Lebanese civil war, never forgetting to ask his interlocutors about their life and opinions. To conclude, I met a sensitive, curious, open-minded man who still invests great passion and enthusiasm in the job of a life.