Palestinian-born musician and biomedical engineer Huda Asfour discusses her life of displacement across the Middle East and her decision to leave academia to dedicate herself to the oud. Through her latest project, 'Naqus,' she explores themes of borders, memory, and political resistance in the wake of the ongoing Palestinian crisis. Her work highlights the intersection of art, activism, and cultural preservation, offering a vital voice for diaspora and displaced artists.
**THE DAILY INQUIRER**
*Late Night Edition — Five Cents*
**NEW YORK CITY**
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### **THE SIREN WITH THE GOLDEN LUTE!**
#### **From the High-Brow Labs of Science to the Smoke-Filled Halls of Song, Dr. Huda Asfour Plucks the Strings of the Human Heart!**
#### *An Exclusive Exposé on the Globe-Trotting Sheba Who Defies the Map-Makers with Her Ancient Oud!*
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**BY OUR ON-THE-SCENE CORRESPONDENT**
**NEW YORK** — Stop the presses, boys, and pull up a chair! There’s a new bird in town, and she’s singing a tune that’s got the whole world listening. Her name is Huda Asfour—which is Arabic for "bird," don’t ya know—and she’s got enough moxie to fill the Hudson! This swell dame has crossed more borders than a bootlegger on the Canadian run, and she’s done it all with nothing but a wooden lute and a dream of a world without fences.
"I’ve always dreamed of a world without borders," Dr. Asfour told our gal Amy Goodman over at the *Democracy Now!* headquarters. And let me tell you, this broad isn’t just whistling Dixie!
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### **A LIFE OF LEAPS AND BOUNDS**
To understand the doll, you’ve got to understand her folks. It’s a real epic, straight out of the picture-plays. Her mother’s people were displaced way back in ’49, fleeing to Baghdad. Her old man high-tailed it out of Gaza in ’67, landing in Syria and Lebanon. The two met in Lebanon through the Palestinian Communist Party—a real red-hot romance of political intrigue!
Young Huda was born right in the middle of the ’82 Beirut blitz. Before she could even walk, her family had to beat it to Syria. From there, it was a twelve-year stretch in Tunis. By age fourteen, she was back in Gaza, joining the National Conservatory of Music. Talk about a traveling roadshow!
She spent the golden years of the late ’90s in Ramallah, studying under the master Khaled Jubran at the Edward Said Conservatory. But just as she was getting her footing, the Second Intifada broke out in 1900-and-00 (2000), turning the joint upside down. To escape the racket, she skidooed to Alexandria, Egypt, to finish her schooling.
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### **MICROSCOPES AND MELODIES**
Now, here is the real kicker, folks: Dr. Asfour is no simple street busker. She’s a certified egghead! To keep her folks copacetic, she hit the books and grabbed herself a doctor’s degree in biomedical engineering! She even taught the college stiffs at George Washington University down in D.C.
"I studied the heart," she told our reporter with a wink.
But in 2019, she threw her academic robes in the ashcan. Why? Because she realized playing the oud was a much healthier way to heal a broken heart than dissecting one!
The oud—for those who aren't up on their music-hall lingo—is an ancient, pear-shaped box of tricks. It’s the granddaddy of the lute, played from North Africa to the Far East. Huda first saw her grandfather strumming the thing at a family shindig in Amman when she was a young slip of a girl of thirteen.
"It brought the whole community together," she said, her eyes shining like diamonds.
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### **THE SILENT YEAR AND THE ALARM BELL**
But it hasn’t been all easy street. In the year of ’23, Huda shut her trap. She went completely silent, jaded by the empty jawing of global big-wigs and the terrible tragedies over in her homeland.
"The values I thought mattered became completely irrelevant," she sighed. "We’re looking at a world system that doesn’t work at all, but keeps pretending to be functional."
But you can’t keep a good songbird down! She’s back with a brand-new project called *"Naqus"*—which is Arabic for the big brass bell they ring in times of war. It’s an alarm bell for the soul, using repetition and looping to fight back against the forgetfulness of the age.
She’s also putting her shoulder to the wheel with the Palestine Music Expo, volunteering her time in Egypt to help young musicians who had to flee Gaza get their tunes recorded. She’s even teamed up with the brassy Sonny Singh on the "BDS Mixtapes" to put some serious cultural squeeze on the Zionist establishment.
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### **THREE TUNES TO SHAKE THE RAFTERS**
Before she hopped the train, Dr. Asfour treated the studio to three spectacular numbers:
* **"Abaq"** — A spicy, pan-Arab collaboration originally cooked up with a Syrian flamenco dancer.
* **"Haki"** (Talk) — A real sarcastic raspberry aimed at the high-hat politicians. "Talk, talk, talk, resolution after resolution," she sings, mocking the empty folderol of the diplomats.
* **"Khatar, Tama, and Darawish"** — A spiritual trilogy about Danger, Greed, and the whirling Dervishes. It’s a regular trance-inducer!
So hats off to Dr. Huda Asfour! Whether she’s in Egypt, Gotham, or aiming her sights all the way to Mars, this is one bird whose wings will never be clipped by a scrap of paper or a border guard!
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*This program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 U.S. License. Attribute legal copies to democracynow.org.*