Palestine Folksongs

When the early pioneers of 1885 came to Palestine they were faced with the problem of selecting proper songs to sing. They wanted to sing, and had to sing, for every Jewish heart breaks into song upon beholding the beautiful land of our fathers.

The folk songs of people cannot be created in a day, a month, or a year. They must be evolved. Our people had to become rooted in the soil again. They had to become saturated with the atmosphere of Palestine, in order to be able to produce a representative type of song.

As for the poetry of these songs, the problem was less difficult, for our people have been composing poetry about Palestine ever since they were exiled into the Diaspora And so, when they came to Palestine, new poetry blossomed, but there was no Palestinian music to accompany the new verses.

They had to sing, and so they ##k the songs which they had ##ard in the countries from which they came, and adapted them to this new poetry. They were, however, always conscious of the fact that their songs were of the stranger; the songs of the Galuth. When they were asked to sing one of the new songs of Zion, they always answered that these songs were derived from the Russian, Slavic, Rumanian, and the like.

After 1917, when the Chalutz movement began, the folk song held a place of importance. One could hear music throughout Palestine; at work and at play. As a matter of fact, when one thought of the Chalutz, one always thought of him in terms of work and song.

With the coming of the Chalutzim to Palestine came a great increase as well as advance in the Palestine folk songs.

It seems as if the Chalutz became more conscious than ever of the inadequacy of the existing Palestinian song, for it was he who was now close to the land. It was he, who was first to become rooted in the soil, to saturate himself with the atmosphere of Palestine, and it was, therefore, he who was first to fathom the importance of creating a genuine Palestinian song. He was entirely dissatisfied with the songs which were being sung, for they did not echo the music in his soul; they were alien. He could not express himself through them They were out of tune with his heart throbs.

So they, the Chalutzim, set about to create a new song. They discovered that the Yemenites had a great many beautiful folk songs which were Oriental in color and which were very much akin to the spirit of the land. And so they began to sing songs, which were in many cases genuine Yemenite folk songs, or new Hebrew texts set to Yemenite melodies.

For a time there was a vogue for Chassidic songs, used mainly for dances. There was also a period when a great many liturgical songs were sung, songs consisting of synagogue melodies adapted to excerpts from the prayers.

It took, however, the combination of all these elements to strike what may today be called the beginning of the new Palestinian folk-song. The old synagogue mode, the Yemenite and Arabic elements, had to be fused into the song, which the Chalutz and Chalutzah are today happy to sing, and call their own.

The makers of these songs are just Chalutzim, young men who worked on the soil in Palestine, and whose souls are filled with the spirit of the land. They are musically gifted young men without the knowledge of musical technique, and it is for this reason that they have been able to plant into their songs the naive beauty which one finds in their creations. These songs, in a great many cases, have a certain virility which one does not find in the Palestine song of the past; virility in the music, as well as in the poetry.