Episode 14:  “Between the Tears, So Much Pride” ft Clarissa Bitar

Clarissa: I remember when I called my dad and I was like, I'm learning oud. And he kind of, he was like, blah, blah, It's difficult, you know? He kinda like, he put me down a little bit in a way that was a challenge to me, cause I was like, okay, dad. I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna show you that I can do this.

The time was not something I even noticed, to be honest of how much I was putting in. Like one hour would turn to two hours, would turn to three hours, and I would be sitting there for five hours and not realize

They used to, they used to laugh. I was like, I was a dorm, I was in my freshman dorm room. They'd be like, I don't know, there's this person, they're always playing this Persian music. Then it wasn't Persian music, but I could hear them in the hallways saying that they were very confused as to why this person was always playing this instrument. They heard it all the time.

NARRATION: Some people call it a flow state, some people call it obsession. Some people say it is just a necessary step to gain mastery of an instrument. But when music grabs you, and your whole life‘s journey is entwined in it, then all you can do is follow the pull. 

Clarissa Bitar grew up in LA, part of a well-established Palestinian community. One side of her family was expelled from Palestine all the way back in 1948. The other side was displaced in 1967, after their home was bombed in the Six Day War. Clarissa grew up with stories of home, and songs of home, but the oud would help her connect with that past, in a whole new way.

My name is Meklit and this is Movement, stories of music and migration, remixed. 

Clarissa: I started playing guitar when I was like 10, 11 and my guitar teacher was this like classic Rock van Halen dude with a Mohawk. And I would practice a lot cause I was really into it. My mom actually doesn't really like Arabic music. It's so funny because, you know, my dad and I will be jamming out and she's like, can you turn it down?

 But if we were playing, if we were playing Rolling Stones, she would've been fine with it. Right? Cause we're, yeah, it's like that's the type of stuff my mom will listen to. So when I was growing up as a guitar player, my mom was much more interested. When I switched to oud she was kind of less interested, I think, and my dad became much more interested. So it was a shift.

Meklit: Yes. Oh, that's so interesting. Was there an oud in your house growing up?

Clarissa: Yeah, actually there was, yeah. My dad, he loves to sing and he had an oud and he never knew how to play it. It was just always in the house. And he let his cousin borrow it one time. And I was a kid and I was like, dad, get your oud back. You know, I play guitar, I wanna learn oud and he never like kind of bothered to grab it back from his cousin until I actually started learning when I went to college. Then he was like, let me get this back from my cousin, so.

And then when I saw like my family's reaction to me playing it, they were like, whoa, wow, you're, you're actually playing this really well. And there was like pleasantly surprised. And then I also saw how much it like, reminded my grandfather of all these memories and my grandmother. And it kind of brought the family together in a different way. We always had this love for music, but almost like resurfaced it.

Meklit: You described calling your father and telling him, but how did your grandparents find out? Like, what was that moment?

Clarissa: So I did come home for a weekend, came back from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, and I had brought my oud with me and I remember playing for my grandparents and they, they were so shocked. And they were like, how did you know this song and how are you playing so well? 

And they were so happy to see me excited to learn these types of things and to share these songs with them. And a lot of these songs too were very nostalgic for me because, you know, growing up my grandparents were my next door neighbors. So I still have my grandma's still next door. And 

Meklit: How wonderful!

Clarissa: Yeah, it's really, it's a really cute situation. My grandfather passed, but my

Meklit: Sorry to hear that

Clarissa: Yeah It's, he loved to sing a lot, so he like exposed me to a lot of music. I would sit in his car and we would go for drives or like go to the grocery store and he would just have all these classic Mohamed Adb Elwhahad but like very Tarab stuff. We call it Tarab, which is just that genre of music.

And to me it was, when I was growing up, I didn't realize how much it was like absorbing in my soundscape. But after I started learning Oud and putting that to practice, I realized like, wow, even though I grew up in diaspora, I was still so surrounded by all of that music that it really helped me bridge that gap liked to learn oud and to have this repertoire like in my head, you know?

Meklit: When you were describing the car rides, I was thinking about, okay, it's LA, Southern California, so the windows are down

Clarissa: definitely.

Meklit: And I was like, is the music bumping? Like is it like? Was it like loud? Could you, could you like hear it as you were driving by? Like what's the

Clarissa: Definitely. This is the type of music that when he was a, you know, my age it was the popular music at the time. And it's not the type of crowd where you sit and you listen silently to the music and you're like,

 Meklit: Mmm 

Clarissa: You know, that was great. No, these people are like, if they hear something they like, they're standing up and yelling. Allah. And like screaming at the artists and telling 'em like, my eyes, oh my God, this is so beautiful. And like, screaming at them in Arabic. And so it's active listening. It's not just like a passive thing, right?

 It's like you're sitting there, you're, you're absorbing the music, you're following the lines, you're following the modulations, even though if you're not actually putting the theory to words, right? Because I would listen to my grandfather and during an exact modulation, I would know what the modulation was. He has no idea about the theory, but the second the modulation would hit, he'd be like, Allah, Allah! And I would see that reaction. So like, it's there, you know, so it's a very, it's a big part, listening of that tradition.

Meklit: I'm hearing you talk about how the oud is bringing you closer to your family. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about whether it brought you closer to Palestinian culture as a whole, or like how that functioned like culturally or in the community.

Clarissa: Mm. I mean, it was for me such a important factor that like plays into how I express my Palestinian identity and how I participate as a Palestinian, especially in diaspora and how you participate in resistance. There are times where our community goes through, I mean, just today there were 10 people martyred, in Nablus just this morning, you know?

And so, there's just this constant grieving that happens as Palestinians where you are just, you wake up to depressing news all the time. And it can be what, you know, difficult to deal with a lot of times and it can be emotionally really tough. 

And I think that music and art and, culture provides like not only a way to communicate your pain, but also to have like spaces to heal and to come back and to, try to find those spaces that can bring you together and try to like recenter yourself in a struggle that's like ongoing, but also you need to have nourishment as well, and you need to like, keep yourself going because it's, it's tiring.

And this is somebody who I'm speaking as like with privilege as somebody in diaspora. You know, so I don't live under occupation on a regular basis, and it's, and it's taxing to have to see what your people go through so you can understand like how important art and culture can be in these movements to help heal people and to like, you know, give people a way to cope with their reality.

 And even for me, you know, it's been layered too as a queer person because I can even be othered within my own community. And so it's interesting. It's interesting to see how even the oud has provided me a space to even kind of help make that, almost help my queerness become more palatable to my community in a way. I don't know if that, if that is said in a way that's, you know? 

It's kind of hard because we still, we suffer from a lot of different, you know, like every community, we have a lot of different preconceived notions. But I think that, like for me, oud has helped me feel like I can participate regardless of that. And see I've like seen my value and what I can do for my, myself in expressing my culture regardless of all those things. And I think that it's, it's helped me a lot personally,

Meklit: Hmm. When did you come out?

Clarissa: I came out to my family and to you know, people around me when I was 19.

Meklit: Young!

Clarissa: Yeah, it was when I was in college and I always knew I was different and I was the oldest child. 

Meklit: So expectations

Clarissa: Yeah, expectations and having no queer, examples or members of the family or people outwardly like queer for me to see in spaces or in my community was difficult because it's almost like something like you feel like, well, that's not, that's not us. You know?

Meklit: Right.

Clarissa: That's not our community. And that's kind of like the mentality a lot of times. Like, no, that exists in other communities. That's not in our community. Right? But I was a type of kid that, was very obviously queer, you know? You could just look at baby pictures

Meklit: What does that mean?

Clarissa: Just look at baby pictures of me. And I wanted to shop in the boys' section and I, they would put me in a dress and I would freak out. And you know, just, I'd give myself a boy name during laser tag cause I didn't want anybody to know. So, you know, there was a, there was a lot there when I look back at my childhood. I'm like, yeah, you know? 

But yeah, it wasn't until I was 19 that I actually came out to my parents and my family and they were very supportive, thankfully. And they've always been super, super supportive of me. So I'm like, really, really blessed to have that situation.

Meklit: You know, it's interesting because you described that time when you're 19, you're becoming a musician at the same time as you're coming out, like both of these things together. Was that right? Was it about the same time?

Clarissa: Yeah, actually, yeah. I never thought about that, but it was

Meklit: But also really claiming your identity. Really saying like, this is who I am, this is how I'm gonna express myself musically, culturally. It's like a leaps and bounds at that, at that moment, if that's okay that I say it like that.

Clarissa: No, definitely. Yeah. It's, I've always kind of been somebody that thought like, okay, if I'm gonna, I've been a little, you know, maybe stubborn about it where I'm like, this is who I am and this is what I want. This is what I'm gonna do.

Meklit: Can you explain the phrase Hassan Sabi and how that became the title of your first album?

Clarissa: Yeah. So Hassan Sabi is what my specifically my dad's mother, my grandmother, who is the one that I grew up with next door, she would always call me Hassan Sabi. I guess it was something that she was called growing up and the term Hassan Sabi is, it loosely translates to like tomboy. You know, it's funny because it can be used in both this like positive way, and also a derogatory way.

And this is actually very specific to people who are presenting more on the masculine side of queerness, right? I don't think that a male who was performing femininity in the same way, I don't think would get that same type of respect as maybe somebody who was a woman performing masculinity in this way. 

Where it's kind of seen as like, wow, you're a, Wow! You could do what men can do, wow! That is one aspect of it where it could be used in that possible, like, wow, look at you, you can lift that Hassan Sabi! You can lift that like a man, like wow. You know? So in that type of way.

It can also be used in an othering way where when you're dressed, you know, and you might be dressed in men's clothing and somebody sees you and they're like, what? Who is this Hassan Sabi? What's going on? You know? And so they can say that in a way. 

And it's in that way. It's not meant to be like, whoa, look, you're so strong, or, look, you're doing these things then, right? It's meant to be like, you know, why are you not in a dress type of thing. And it's used in multiple contexts. So like, every time, you know, my grandma calls me, it's not like she's calling me a slur every time.

Meklit: Right!

Clarissa: Like a lot of those times it's, it's complicated. It's not, it depends on the context, you know? And so that's. The term Hassan Sabi, basically was what she would be called a lot because she was a strong woman and she used to let, you know, not take it from guys and she would like argue back. And so a lot of people would call her, oh, Hassan Sabi, and you know, she's like, Hassan Sabi. And so she would get called that a lot. 

And then when, you know, growing up, she would observe me. She would see me in the backyard, like lifting rocks or going, playing with my cousin or playing basketball or like, you know, being like a little bit, you know, not stereotypical for how a young woman should act in her mind. And so she would, she would call me Hassan Sabi. Look at this Hassan Sabi, and it would be like in multiple different contexts. So she called it to me so often, so often. And I wanted to reclaim it in this positive way, right? 

Meklit: Yes, yes

Clarissa: And this way of being like, I see the positive sides of this term. So, to me, it was, it was had that intention behind it.

Meklit: Beautiful. Can you tell us about the song, Amal?

Clarissa: Yeah, so that's, that song was actually named after my grandmother, the one I'm talking about 

Meklit: Oh really? Ok!

Clarissa: next door. Yeah. And, you know, she always, she would say play that taqsim. Taqsim is in Arabic is the word for instrumental improvisation. And so basically you pick a maqam, which is like a scale, right? And you sit in it and you, you improvise in that scale and you modulate two, maybe closely related ones. You take 'em through this journey and then eventually you come back home to the, to the first scale that you started in, the first maqam. 

And so this tradition is a very heavy and important tradition, especially as instrumentalists. It's one of the most enjoyable things for me to play as a musician and to share with people and to share, especially live with people and who are listeners, you know? Who can sit there and really appreciate and listen, you know? And so my grandma's one of those people and she just always is telling me, play me taqsim! Play me taqsim! Play me taqsim

But this track, Amal, it was a special track because I actually had my grandmother sitting with me in the studio here while I recorded it. I wanted it to have that live feel that we were talking about earlier of me having her sit there and watch her reaction to me playing. And so that I would play better and I would like feed off her energy. And you can hear her in the back of the track, like very softly, she'd be like, Allah

You know, she was, she got married at 17, my grandmother to my grandfather. So my grandfather was a very, you know, like long and important part of her life that she pretty much was raised with him, like from the time she was 17, you know? 

So when he passed away, I would always wake up early in the morning and wake up at like 4:00 AM, 5:00 AM sometimes, and then he would be the only person up. So I would go and sit with him and play oud for him. And we would have coffee together and we would just sit and play music. And then she would eventually wake up and come sit and have her cup of coffee with us and we would just have a little morning music session.

And then after he passed, I think that I noticed such an emotional response from her when I would play. And when I would sit and try to sit, let, let's just sit and play down a song. Teta let me play you an improv. And she'd always bring, it would always bring her to tears. And I think it's cuz it would remind her of those, those mornings of us sitting together and you know, playing music with each other.

But you can still see like between the tears, like so much pride. Like, she's so proud of me and so you can see these two different emotions inside when I'm playing for her. It's sadness, but she's also so happy.

NARRATION: The album is Hassan Sabi, by Clarissa Bitar

If you enjoyed this story consider sending it to a friend, or leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts. Believe me, that stuff really does help people find the show. Movement is produced by Ian Coss and myself, Meklit Hadero. Our co-creator and podcast godmother is Julie Caine. Our broadcast partner is The World. We are supported by The Mellon Foundation, The National Geographic Society and distributed by PRX.