The judges on the popular reality TV talent show Arabs' Got Talent usually use their buzzers to terminate a contestant's performance, or at the very least, to show their displeasure at what is being presented to them on stage.
But last Saturday, when five young musicians from Gaza took their spots on stage, their beautiful, emotional performance inspired one of the judges – Saudi actor and comedian Nasser Al Qasabi – to press the Golden Buzz, signifying that the contestants would be afforded a shortcut straight through to the live rounds of the show. That’s how good they were; that’s how much they tugged on the collective heartstrings in the room.
The six-and-a-half minute video of their audition, taken from last Saturday's episode of Arabs' Got Talent, has been spreading like wildfire. On Facebook alone, the video has received over 55,000 likes and been shared more than 40,000 times since it was first uploaded on Sunday. On YouTube, it has been viewed close to 2.5 million times and counting. An assortment of Twitter commentators proclaimed the episode the most moving since the show launched in January 2011, accompanied by the hashtag #GazaGotTalent.
You don’t need to understand Arabic to get what’s happening, either. The five Palestinian children from war-torn Gaza – four boys and a girl – all study at Gaza’s Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, and their band is called Al Takht Al Sharqi. Ahmad Al Madhoun is the lead singer, Sarraj Al Sersawi plays the oud, Mahmoud Kehail plays the qanun and Ramzi Alfar the tabla. The girl, Reema Ashour, plays the nai, a flute made of wood.
The band tried and failed to audition for Arabs' Got Talent three times before making it.
“We couldn’t, the checkpoints were closed, and there was no way for us to leave Gaza,” Al Sersawi says during the opening sequence of the video. “During the war, studying stopped because there was no way for us to go to school or the conservatory, but there were times when we’d get a respite, sometimes five days, three days at a time, maybe just one day, so we’d get together to film videos of our performance to send to the TV programme because we really wanted to take part.”
Bombs and war did not deter the musicians from their desire to show the world talent from Gaza.
“Despite the bombing and the war and the destruction – on our way to the conservatory, we always see destroyed homes, destruction everywhere, it really bothers a person to see things like that, on the way to go perform music – we kept getting together and practising because we really wanted to take part in the TV programme,” said Al Sersawi. “We wanted to show that Gaza has talent, Palestine has talent.”
On their fourth attempt to leave Gaza, the members of Al Takht Al Sharqi finally crossed into Egypt, then travelled hours on bus to the airport in Cairo, where they boarded a flight to Beirut.
“The road was so long in the bus. We slept in the airport for one night, it was hard.”
Finally on stage, they performed a moving rendition of a song by the late Lebanese singer Wadih El Safi, Alallah T'oud, which means By God May It Return, in reference to Palestine. It is a well-loved anthem related to Palestine and to lost lands and showcased their incredible talents to the four celebrity judges – Al Qasabi, Lebanese singer Najwa Karam, Egyptian actor and comedian Ahmed Helmi and MBC Group TV director Ali Jaber – and the audience of millions who watched Saturday night.
Their performance – well-executed and heavy with emotion – moved the audience to tears. When Al Qasabi pressed the Golden Buzz and confetti showered down on the performers prompting all four judges to get to their feet to clap and sing along, the youngest musician, playing the qanun, had tears running down his face. The show’s hosts, Saudi rapper and musician Qusai and Lebanese TV presenter Raya Abirached, were visibly moved. Abirached was unable to contain her tears; Qusai said: “Palestine is deserving, Gaza is deserving.”
“We want to show that the children of Gaza have talents,” said the youngest boy in the band.
Dina Al Natour, a Palestinian -Jordanian mother of two living in Dubai, was one of the first to share the video in the UAE, early on Sunday morning, a few hours after the show aired on MBC4. She wrote on her Facebook feed: “In the middle of war they sang. In the midst of all the death and pain they did not give up and were determined to follow their dream. So many other kids from Gaza have not been able to leave yet. So many wonderful talented kids were killed before they got the chance … But I’m happy at least these kids were able to.”
Ellen Schwarz, who lives all the way over in Oakland, California, was one of the more recent people to share the video on Facebook; she posted it to her timeline on Tuesday afternoon UAE time, and wrote: “No translation necessary ... the photos and huge smiles tell it all ... so affirming and impressive what beauty can come from such hardship.”
At the end of the performance, when all four judges had made their way onto the stage to embrace and congratulate the young musicians, Karam asked the youngest of them, after he put his qanun aside and wiped his face of tears, to share how he is feeling.
His answer? “Joy.”
• Season four of Arabs’ Got Talent (www.mbc.net/mbc4) is on MBC4 every Saturday from 10pm to midnight. Follow the show on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; stream past episodes through shahid.mbc.net
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