Musicians who have been refugees have moved across the world since the dawn of time. Many musical genres and expressions are the result of musicians fleeing and migrating from country to country over millennia.
In five episodes, we will meet some of these musical carriers from countries such as Syria, Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan, Hungary, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Poland, and Ukraine.
Cellist Bashar Sharifa is 37 years old and trained at the music conservatory in Aleppo, Syria, in both classical oriental music and Western classical music. He performed on television, at opera houses, and toured much of the world.
Before the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, Aleppo, the northern metropolis, was Syria’s economic center.
Since the civil war reached the city in 2012, large parts of Aleppo are now in ruins. Daily, war crimes and other human rights violations occur by government forces and opposition groups, as well as by the so-called Islamic State.
In its report from May 2015, Amnesty International describes Aleppo as “hell on earth.”
Barrel bombs, filled with explosives and metal shrapnel, have caused massive destruction and killed and injured many people, especially as government bomb attacks targeted schools, hospitals, mosques, and market squares. Several hospitals and schools have been forced to move to underground bunkers.
Barrel bomb attacks dropped from helicopters killed more than 3,000 civilians in the Aleppo area in 2014. Many of them were Bashar Sharifa’s friends and relatives.
Those who flee to Sweden are primarily Syrians, like Bashar Sharifa. In 2015, more than 51,000 Syrians applied for asylum in Sweden. In 2016, after the Danish and Swedish governments introduced border controls at Kastrup in Copenhagen and in Hyllie in Malmö, only 2,221 Syrians applied for asylum during the first three months.
The flight from one’s homeland, from war, destruction, and death, is not unique in world history. Rather, it has almost always been the case. It affects everyone, and it also influences the musical expression in the meeting between different cultures and traditions.
Musicians flee with or without their instruments. Some are invited to a festival and can take a flight, only to seek asylum afterward. Others walk long distances and endure perilous boat trips across the Mediterranean.
Bashar Sharifa fled through Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, and Austria before arriving in Stockholm and later settling in Gothenburg, where he now lives in the northern district of Angered. Bashar plays in his free time with Bashar Sharifa and Friends, but drives a bus to support himself.
“If I think too much about my friends and family in Syria, I get so tired, so tired. But when I play my cello, I feel better.”