On Saturday 10 August, the final concert of this year’s M&R activities took place, rounding off the Summer Camp 2024 organised as always with our partner Beit Atfal Assumoud. The M&R team had arrived in Lebanon at the end of July, with the intention of working, during the first week, in the refugee camps of Mar Elias (Beirut) and Beddawi (in the district of Tarablus, in the north of the country); the precarious situation in the whole area, however, led the staff to decide to concentrate their activities in Beddawi, while waiting to move with all the students to the place where the Summer Camp would be held the following week.

The Summer Camp was hosted by the Orthodox College of Bkeftine, in the district of Koura, south of Tarablus. Here all the students (a total of 53 boys and girls) from all the camps involved in this year’s project (six: Nahr-El-Bared, Beddawi, Shatila, Burj El Barjeh, Ein-El-Helwa and Rashidiye), the entire M&R team (12 people), the Al Kamandjati musicians, and all the Assumoud staff gathered. The days were a true immersion in music, through various activities: from the more informal and social ones, to the more formative ones, up to orchestral rehearsals; all in a Community Music spirit. The final concert, held at the same college, had a mixed set list of traditional Arabic pieces and Western pieces, all carefully and lovingly arranged for our splendid ensemble.

The international situation did not help: from abroad, we were receiving not very reassuring messages (such as the Italian foreign minister’s invitation to leave Lebanon), but our position there gave us a different feedback, also due to the great care and attention devoted to us by our local partner, Assumoud, who was always ready to take and support any decision that made us feel safe. Indeed, the music went on, stronger and stronger, weaving bonds, creating beauty, letting smiles bloom while elsewhere, on the other side of the country, the situation was becoming more and more complicated.

To have completed the difficult task of preparing a full concert in one week is not only a technical and professional achievement: it is an act of resistance against adverse historical, social and political conditions, a demonstration of how the human soul can stand firm and strong in friendship and beauty.

Full concert video by our friend Francesco Corsi