The Long Road by Alexander Nikolayevich Vertinsky, first published in 1990 in USSR/Alamy
Qalam strives to explore the interpenetration of different cultures. To this end, we have decided to launch a series of playlists in which music mediates between different geographical and ideological spaces. Our first playlist is called ‘West to East: One Hundred Best Songs’. It will be updated several times a week, and its curation will focus on how Western pop culture has reflected the realities of the East, whether they are musical, geographical, religious, or political. (The terms ‘West’ and ‘East’ should be taken as broadly and arbitrarily as possible.)
‘Above all, Palestine is ruined by charity, which turns a vibrant and independent country into something like an invalid living in public care … while the eternal antagonism between the Jewish and Arab populations, skillfully stirred up and supported by concerned foreign circles, hinders its trade and natural growth,’ wrote Vertinsky about his trip to Palestine in 1933, where ‘seven thousand Jerusalemites welcomed my songs,’ and the guide who took him to the Holy Sepulchre had a huge portrait of Stalin at home.
‘The Palestinian Tango’ (released on Soviet records as ‘The Arabian Song’), however, was written before that tour, in 1929, and its words now sound like another anguished hope:
‘And in the land where there are no storms or battles,
Where golden silence pours from the sky,
They still sing some prayers,
To greet God’s gentle and serene day.’