From protest to dabke, how Palestine's Le Trio Joubran process grief for Gaza on stage

The Palestinian group and its supporters seek solace from the stage

When Coldplay released Arabesque in 2019, it was considered one of their most adventurous songs to date.

As part of the album Everyday Life, it is a melange of global sounds veering from traditional Arabic folk to Afrobeat and jazz.

Responsible for that regional flair are fraternal Palestinian instrumental group Le Trio Joubran, who collaborated with the British group after member Adnan Joubran met Coldplay’s frontman Chris Martin in the Palestinian city Ramallah five years ago.

The eventual recording is a dramatic ode to the unifying power of the arts, whose key lyric has Martin declaring: "We share the same blood. Music is the weapon, music is the weapon of the future."

But Arabesque’s message doesn't go far enough, according to Joubran.

Speaking to The National from his home in London, a more forceful version of the song remains unreleased that could speak to the daily tragedy in Gaza today.

"We worked with them on different parts of the song and it had different words and it is really talkative [about what is going on today]. I hope it is released one day, but it is too early to tell yet," he says.

In the meantime, Coldplay are one of many artists expressing support for Palestine on stage. At last month’s Glastonbury festival in the UK, they joined artists including Dua Lipa, Damon Albarn and Idles in sharing messages of solidarity with Palestinians, while calling for an end to the war.

For Le Trio Joubran, their concert experiences are more visceral.

With their latest tour beginning at the onset of the war last October, their shows – including a sold out date at the Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation – evolved to become charity drives, a rallying point for the Arab diaspora and Palestinian solidarity protests.

For the band itself, Joubran says the stage was the only place where the trio – including brothers Samir and Wissam – can process the daily bouts of anguish and helplessness.

“Art is a healer for us in that gives us something that we can do each day. We would start the day listening to the news, watching the daily massacres and cemeteries and buildings being flattened and then you feel the need to go and do something,” he says.

“So on a psychological level, this tour helped us cope during these difficult days. And then there is the other part where, as artists, we have this responsibility to use our platforms to reach out to millions of people. And when some of those platforms are being restricted on social media, what we have left is the stage and where it is our duty to shout for Palestine.”

Le Trio Joubran have been doing their part on the road.

In November, they announced all proceeds of coming concerts are to be donated to charities operating in Gaza, including the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. The band also headlined the Palestinian charity event Echoes of Peace in Switzerland in June.

That support didn’t come without challenges. Joubran recalls certain European venues demanded they tone down their activism on stage.

“There was a show in the Netherlands where we had to sign a paper that said we’re not going to hold the Palestinian flag on stage. But then the audience ended up coming with all these flags and keffiyehs. We were looking at the organiser and he was happy because emotionally he was with us,” Joubran says.

“It was just the theatre itself that had policies where they didn't want to upset any side. But at the end of the day, it’s hard to restrict yourself from being righteous.”

While Le Trio Joubran gigs are normally contemplative affairs, the latest tour elicited various emotional reactions ranging from the spontaneous outbreaks of the traditional dabke dance to pro-Palestinian chants.

“Some of our concerts tend to end with a demonstration where people are just shouting free Palestine, and whenever we speak about Palestine, people would just clap,” he says. “We also had people coming to the show who don’t even know anything about Le Trio Joubran, but because they belonged to the Palestinian cause and the pain they feel in the music.”

If there is anything positive to emerge from the latest bloodshed, Joubran notes, is the argument for Palestinian self-determination is no longer an ambiguous one.

“Although we are losing our land and people, this shows the Palestinian case is winning,” he says.

"I have seen people from all categories of all life who wanted to help. In April, I created a fundraiser for medical aid in Palestine and gathered £14,000. The people who contributed were actors, influencers, public speakers, artists, chefs and normal people.”

The war also resulted in a change of tune from Le Trio Joubran.

With brothers hailing from a family of luthiers and oud musicians in Nazareth, the group formed in 2004 to support the late Palestinian poet and author Mahmoud Darwish during live readings. With his death in 2008, the group forged ahead to release their own albums with songs inspired by the poetry of Darwish.

During those early years, Joubran recalls the group didn’t want their work associated with the Palestinian struggle.

"We started our band purely for the sake of music and we wanted to be viewed as great musicians who happen to come from Palestine,” he says. "But the situation has changed. I still dream as I did 20 years ago for a better situation where there is no need to mention that we are Palestinians and we can create music for the pure sake of art, research, creativity and innovation.

"But as a musician, I wake up every day asking myself what I need to do to make people and myself feel better because that is my weapon. And to do that, the music that I am doing has to reflect what is happening today. So talking about Palestine today is not my choice, but it is my duty."

It is now Le Trio Joubran's turn to seize the moment and release a new version of their Roger Waters collaboration, Supremacy.

Appearing in 2018 album The Long March, it is a slightly tweaked translation of Darwish’s poem The "Red Indian's" Penultimate Speech to the White Man and composed in response to former US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel the prior year.

Waters delivers an empathetic reading of Darwish's poetry over Le Trio Joubran's ominous ouds: “There are the dead and the settlements, the dead and the bulldozers, the dead and the hospitals. There are radar screens to capture the dead, who die more than once in this life.”

Joubran confirms the new version of Supremacy will be out before October.

“We were just about to release it last October or November as a response to what was happening. And we were so scared that we might be censored in some kind of way because at the time you couldn’t say or click on anything,” Joubran says. “I hope soon we're going to release it. It's the same words, but the music underneath is completely different and it just gives you a completely different aspect and understanding of what it means to defend your land.”