Mustafa Al-Kurd (born 1945) is a Palestinian musician and composer who blends various musical traditions in his music, including classical Arabic oud music, Sufi chants and rhythms, Byzantine singing, European organ music, and Palestinian folklore.^[1] Using these traditions, he has created a new genre of contemporary Palestinian political music and chansons. As a composer and songwriter, he also sets to music the texts of famous Palestinian poets such as Mahmud Darwish, Rashid Hussein, Tawfiq Ziad, Fadwa Touqan, as well as his own poems, accompanying them on his oud.

Al-Kurd received his education in the Old City of Jerusalem at the Omariyeh School. He was thirteen when his father died in 1958. Subsequently, he had to work to support his mother and four younger siblings. Until 1970 he worked as a metalworker. Self-taught and learning from traditional oud players, he became a skilled oud player within a few years, initially playing it only privately. It was only after the June War in 1967, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and particularly the annexation of his hometown Jerusalem by Israel, that he began to play his music publicly. He began writing political songs, setting his own texts to music as well as poems by recognized Palestinian poets to music, and performing them throughout the country.

His Palestinian anthem, "The Plow" ("Give me the plow and the sickle and never leave your land..."), created in 1972, resonated throughout Palestine, including the West Bank, Gaza, and notably within the Palestinian population in Israel. Journalist and diplomat Eric Rouleau wrote about this time in 1984: "In the Arab part of Jerusalem, young people in jeans and colorful shirts visit each other, listening attentively to a record produced in East Jerusalem. Through his poetic and accusatory criticism, Mustafa al-Kurd indirectly draws attention to the occupation of the land, the struggle of the Palestinian National Front, but also the longing for peace."

From 1972, al-Kurd collaborated with the Jerusalem theater group Ballalin, serving as one of its influential actors and composing theater music. Following the group's dissolution in 1975, he performed in 1976 with another group in the play "We Are Insane," written by the actors themselves. He was arrested on stage and placed in administrative detention without any charges or trial. Through joint efforts of several Palestinian and Israeli lawyers, he was released at the end of 1976. After his release, however, he had to leave the country. Al-Kurd settled in Beirut, where he worked as a musician and theater specialist until 1979, collaborating with Lebanese artists. In 1979, he left the region and lived until 1985 in exile in West Germany.

Time in Exile Until 1979

In December 1976, al-Kurd left the West Bank and initially went to Jordan, then continued to Damascus. In January 1977, he embarked on a concert tour in Finland, followed by his participation in the Festival of Political Songs in East Berlin in February. On May 1, 1977, he took part in a concert in Amman to mark the release of Jordanian Communist Party leader Yaqub Ziyadin from Jordanian custody.

During the summer of 1977, al-Kurd toured Western Europe, including Düsseldorf, where he participated in the Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Concert of the German Communist Party. From there, he proceeded to the Fête de L’Humanité in Paris before returning to Beirut.

Over the next two years, al-Kurd shared his rich experiences in theater and music, particularly in political songs, with Lebanese artists like Ziad ar-Rahbani and Lebanese activist Jean Chamoun. He also collaborated with the playwright Roger Assaf, focusing on theater.

While in Lebanon, al-Kurd visited Palestinian refugee camps in the southern part of the country, performing his songs. In 1978, he spent some time in Rome, where the film "Tell ez-Zaatar" by Palestinian director Mustafa Abu-Ali was produced. Al-Kurd composed and recorded the film's music. A highlight during this period was his participation in the "Contr’Eurovision" Festival in Brussels in April 1979, where he gave a solo concert and performed some songs in the general program. His solo concert was released in 1979 as an LP titled "Mustafa al-Kurd. The Voice of Palestine."

Exile in Germany 1979–1985

From Beirut, Mustafa al-Kurd initially moved to Göttingen with his wife, the political scientist Helga Baumgarten, who was pursuing a Ph.D. at the local university and working as an assistant.

He gave several concerts in Göttingen. The first major tour in 1980 took him, along with poet Samih al-Qassem and Pastor Shehadeh Shehadeh, throughout Germany. Al-Kurd's first significant political song in German was "Ohne Reisepass" (Without a Passport), based on the words of the Palestinian poet Raschid Husain, who had died in exile in America. The song addresses the theme of Palestinian exile.

From 1981 to 1985, al-Kurd lived in Berlin with his wife and their son Sami Darwish, born in 1981, where his wife worked as an assistant at the Free University of Berlin.

During this period, he performed in concerts and concert tours throughout Europe. After the Lebanon War against Palestinians and the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organisation from Lebanon, he toured several German cities in 1983 with Palestinian poet and lyricist Mahmud Darwish. In these performances, he sang his songs about Ariel Sharon's campaign against the Palestinians and the Sabra and Shatila massacre. In the same year, he created his first cycle of Jerusalem songs, which gained widespread popularity in Europe, Palestine, and among Palestinians in Israel.

In 1981, the theater group al-Hakawati, which evolved from the core group of Ballalin, led by François Abu Salem, toured Germany, especially Berlin and Hamburg. Al-Kurd performed short concerts within the same context. Building on this revived collaboration, he traveled to southern France in the spring of 1982, working with François Abu Salem on a new theater production titled "One Thousand and One Nights for a Stone Thrower." Al-Kurd composed and recorded the music for the new play. The initial performances took place in Denmark and later in Tunis. In Tunis, al-Kurd continued working with al-Hakawati and held his own concerts.

In 1984, he traveled from Berlin to Jerusalem and inaugurated the new theater for al-Hakawati with a grand and widely acclaimed concert. A year later, the final return to Jerusalem became possible, largely due to the efforts of his lawyer, Lea Tsemel.

End of Exile and Return to Jerusalem

At the first Palestinian theater in Jerusalem, al-Hakawati, or simply Hakawati (now the Palestinian National Theatre, located in the former Al-Nuzha cinema), al-Kurd established a music department in 1986. There, he taught Arabic music, composed music for numerous plays, and organized concerts, including his own solo performances, joint concerts with other musicians, or guest concerts by Palestinian or international artists. In 1988, after a year of Intifada, the Hakawati group left Jerusalem. This led to Mustafa al-Kurd separating Nuzha al-Hakawati Theater and establishing an independent institute, the Jerusalem Center for Arab Music. He continues to lead this center today.

Upon his return to Jerusalem in August 1985, al-Kurd composed a cycle of chansons dedicated to his hometown. They were first performed in the summer of 1989 in a concert at the Cloister of the Lutheran Church in the Old City. The arrangement was revolutionary, featuring two ouds and percussion instruments, but unfortunately, there is no recording of this performance. In a different arrangement, the Jerusalem cycle was eventually released in 1993 as a CD titled "Fawanis" in Switzerland by Giovanni Schumacher of the Sacco and Vanzetti label.

During the First Intifada (1987–1990), al-Kurd wrote a series of political songs about the events, released on cassettes titled "Children of the Intifada" or "Les Enfants de la Palestine 1 and 2." In July 1988, The Guardian wrote "Perhaps the most beautiful song of the Intifada is the song 'Stone and Onion' on the cassette 'Children of the Intifada,' the sadly underrated but still widely distributed and celebrated album of Jerusalem singer Mustafa al-Kurd." The second cassette was also released as a CD in 1992. This particular recording features al-Kurd's voice and oud accompanied by computer-controlled synthesizers, creating an impressive blend of original Palestinian-Arabic music and modern Western electronic music. Since the mid-90s, his music has become richer, more complex, and fuller. It shifted away from the directly political songs of the first 25 years of the occupation towards a distinctly lyrical direction, where the artist's deepest feelings take center stage. He set an entire cycle of poems by Fadwa Tuqan, the "grand old lady" of Palestinian poetry from Nablus in the West Bank, to music. Some of these appeared on his second CD, "Fawanis," released and distributed in Switzerland.

In a concert in the former synagogue in Freudental near Stuttgart in 1989, he and his newly formed ensemble presented these songs for the first time in Germany, following the premiere of these songs in the cloister of the Evangelical Church/Provost in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Concert Tours and Participation in International Festivals

Mustafa al-Kurd embarked on concert tours across various countries and participated in numerous international festivals.