Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land

Description

Children of the Stone is the unlikely story of Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan, a boy from a Palestinian refugee camp in Ramallah who confronts the occupying army, gets an education, masters an instrument, dreams of something much bigger than himself, and then inspires scores of others to work with him to make that dream a reality. That dream is of a music school in the midst of a refugee camp in Ramallah, a school that will transform the lives of thousands of children through music. Daniel Barenboim, the Israeli musician and music director of La Scala in Milan and the Berlin Opera, is among those who help Ramzi realize his dream. He has played with Ramzi frequently, at chamber music concerts in Al-Kamandjati, the school Ramzi worked so hard to build, and in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra that Barenboim founded with the late Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said. Children of the Stone is a story about music, freedom and conflict; determination and vision. It's a vivid portrait of life amid checkpoints and military occupation, a growing movement of nonviolent resistance, the past and future of musical collaboration across the Israeli-Palestinian divide, and the potential of music to help children see new possibilities for their lives. Above all, Children of the Stone chronicles the journey of Ramzi Aburedwan, and how he worked against the odds to create something lasting and beautiful in a war-torn land.

Sandy Tolan is the author of Me & Hank: A Boy and His Hero, Twenty-five Years Later and The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East. He has written for the New York Times Magazine and for more than 40 other magazines and newspapers. As cofounder of Homelands Productions, Tolan has produced dozens of radio documentaries for NPR and PRI. His work has won numerous awards, and he was a 1993 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and an I. F. Stone Fellow at the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He is associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC in Los Angeles

In a world where so much popular fiction depicts life in a dystopian world, it is refreshing to have this non-fiction account that reflects one individual's belief in the power of music and culture to transform lives. Congratulations to Sandy Tolan for bringing us the story of Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan * Yo-Yo Ma * Children of the Stone is alive with compassion, hope, and great inspiration. It is not necessary to believe in music's power to defeat evil in order to be enchanted by this wonderful story * Tom Segey, author of One Palestine, Complete * The book contains enthralling biographical trajectories of ordinary people fighting against the odds ... Written in the style of investigative journalism, the book is riveting and uplifting, without skirting issues of contestation and controversy * Salim Tamari, director of the Institute of Palestine Studies, Georgetown University * Somewhere amidst the separation barriers and the countless checkpoints, the refugee camps and the demolished homes, the fruitless negotiations and endless conflict, there is a people yearning for a life of dignity and normalcy. You won't see them on TV or in many newspapers. But you will find them in The Children of Stone, Sandy Tolan's moving account of the dispossessed children of Palestine, and the transformative power that music has had in giving them meaning and reason for hope * Reza Aslan, author of No god but God * Sandy Tolan's narrative artistry fuses the coming of age of a talented, ambitious, and fiercely dedicated musician with the story of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories conquered in 1967. Ramzi Aburedwan's music is powerful - even more so when we understand it as a form of resistance to occupation. Humanizing Ramzi and other Palestinians by portraying them primarily as musicians working in a universal idiom is a major contribution to our understanding of who they are and essential to a political resolution of the conflict * Joel Benin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Professor of Middle East History, Stanford University *