FAWM: "Olive Trees"

Olive Trees

1 week ago by @abudabard12514

Olive Trees

abudabard12514

00:00

Liner Notes

#folk #palestine #lebanon #solidarity #fromtheriver #tothesea #freedom

It's a folk song. It's literal and it's a metaphor. I love it when that happens.

I've been reading reports about the agricultural devastation in Palestine and Lebanon over the last 15 months and it's nothing short of a hideous war crime. My family immigrated from Lebanon and people have been filtering back and forth for the last 80-100 years. At this point I don't think there are many, if any family members still there that we know well enough to keep regular contact with.

Anyway, this song is about trees.

Lyrics

For ten thousand years, there were olive trees there that would nourish the people with their fruit.
For the food, soap, and oil, are the fruits of all the toil, in Jenin and Ramallah and Nablus.

Til some kids who were too young to be carrying those guns heeded their master's call. They hired machines to rip out all the trees and make sure every olive there would fall.

They poured saltwater in the land, so no olive tree could stand on the place where its ancestors stood. But their efforts were in vain, and will be cleansed in the rain cause there's nothing as strong as olive wood.

And the trees there will grow, as they always have before til the land once again is lush and green. The people won't leave their ancestral Falastin, they have the spirit of the river and the sea.

To the sea! To the sea!
No one is free til Palestine is free
To the sea! To the sea!
No one is free til everyone is free.

The olive and her sister, mighty cedar, great resistor, stand together in their solidarity. And though the fires burn
To their homeland they'll return
And no western guns can ever make them leave.

May the cedar spread her sprays
For a thousand sunny days
Over generations til the end of time
Solidarity forever as we Dabke all together
Sister Lebanon and Sister Palestine.

And the rancid IDF, bringing famine fear and death, desperate to install their settler colonies. All the chaos that they've sown, let it choke and let it drown, in the waters of the river and the sea.

To the sea! To the sea!
No one is free til Palestine is free
To the sea! To the sea!
No one is free til everyone is free.

Allah hears it up in heaven til Handala turns eleven, protect our land from every enemy. Til we all return again and in the olive orchard lanes, sing together Falastin 3arabi.

For ten thousand years there will be olive trees there, their roots all spreading wide and digging deep. And their fruit will feed us all as on free land we stand tall with our freedom from the river to the sea.

To the sea! To the sea!
No one is free til Palestine is free
To the sea! To the sea!
No one is free til everyone is free.

Comments

@janeg 1d

Very powerful and justified. I am an Amnesty volunteer so have known about some of the injustices of Israel’s apartheid state longer than many others. Great idea to use the olive trees to ground the song.

@cd_caleb_duane 4d

cohesive story, strong message, crisp guitar playing, way to use your voice to speak towards all our freedom --- peace.

@cmharwood89 5d

Holy sh!t: "there's nothing as strong as olive wood"

My wife and I just finished bottling olive oil from her family's trees on the outskirts of Ramallah. If I still lived in Ann Arbor, I'd drive out to give you a bottle

@oaksnprairie 1w

What a beautiful way to channel your anger and sadness.

@mosno 1w

Ya habibi!
I love this so much, its inspiring me to write a new one for Sudan (We actually share the same flag with our Palestinian siblings, just in a slightly different order).
And I love hearing our beautiful 'rhythm' on there!
Free Palestine!!

@laurenoxford 1w

not to mention the entire campaign that was started to bring non-native european trees and plants in to make the land feel more "familiar" to european colonists. trees and plants that are NOT suited for desert climate. trees and plants that do not support native wildlife and species and habitat. of course, all this is ON TOP OF destroying the sacred olive trees that families have loved and relied upon for generations and generations.

anyway, thank you so much for this incredibly important song. i love the sound of that nylon string guitar, and the chord progression feels authentic and appropriately rousing. i also like how it goes between lines in the chorus, and more of a prose feel in the verses. it's so effective and does a lot to make this feel like the kind of story that's passed on from grandparents to parents to grandchildren and on and on.

FREE PALESTINE

@rbachman 1w

Love the glimmer of hope that "nothing is strong as olive wood" brings, cluing the listener into what's to come. And the way you can pull rhymes out of the air like "The olive and her sister, mighty cedar, great resistor" Great writing and a powerful message. Aaaaand it's stuck in my head.

@miltz 1w

Excellent. Thank you for making it downloadable.

@fuzzy 1w

War crimes.
Right out in the open like that.
A solid protest song here.
Passionate vocal delivery.
I like the strong and confident guitar work.
And yeah, about trees; it's a shame that, around the world, they are always casual victims of human greed and ignorance.