Palestinian poets who are cited or whose work is drawn from in making this album include both living, recently deceased and the ancestral ones: Hibaa Kamal Abu Nada, Refaat Alareer, Rashid Hussein, Mahmoud Darwish, Mohammed El-Kurd.

Many are the words of other Palestinian poets, writers, podcasters that I have listened to in these weeks of research which have entered into the blood-stream of my own texts and words spoken through this album and I thank all those I can recall and those who I can't at the moment. I also thank my fellow Americans: Martin Luther King Jr. and Tony Brewer. Cover art is a re-working of a Samia Halaby painting.

https://jeffgburekprojects.bandcamp.com/album/a-moon-will-rise-from-my-darkness-suite-for-gaza

A Moon Will Rise From My Darkness (Suite for Gaza)

I began this process over a month ago.  Carrying to term tomorrow with the album release.

Gaza 6 Another Kinda Jungle

The world continues to be unfathomable. The human world no less so but in a more distressing way. Trying to make a process piece using pitch values that model conflict resolution. Paradoxically, to resolve tensions one creates different tesnions as a result -- in the distant hopes of an eventual balance. So I've eased into the process this way. Bringing discordant tones into a field of re-pitched urgencies leads somehow to this skein of tangled tanpura-like quiverings and frayed drones with keening moments. Nothing tremendously original thus far. Just a struggle. Nono meets Scelsi meets Eno. Maybe originality is too controversial in certain moments right now. Maybe your music cannot reach too many people sometimes and rather aids in transform your own consciousness. Melodica, looper pedals, synthesizer.

Process Peace`

I have been meditating upon the curious life of Nathan of Gaza since the Hamas attack of October 7 and the rather devastating consequences for the people in the Gaza Strip. I note without irony but simple observation that this leader of the messianic cult surrounding the figure of Sabbatai Zevi, another volatile, evasive and enigmatic personage, who ultimately converted to Islam while conducting an enterprise seemed to revolve around reconnecting Jewish people to their homeland -- well, Nathan didn't make it either... I can barely come to grips with the terror of the Nazis in the country that hosts me, let alone who could live happly and peacefully in Gaza after all this---  

On Friday, January 11, 1680 in Üsküp, Ottoman Empire (now Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia), Nathan of Gaza died.[3][4][5][6] According to another version he died in Sofia, Ottoman Empire (now Sofia, Republic of Bulgaria) but his body was transferred to Üsküp and buried here.[7][8][9] It is presumed also, he could have died traveling from Sofia to Üsküp. It is understood that upon arriving into Üsküp that day, he immediately requested that several gravediggers construct his grave. He told these men that he was about to expire and wanted to be prepared so that in the instance of his death, his burial could occur prior to the start of the Sabbath. Then, as he predicted, “‘[w]hile he was still in [a] rabbi’s house he fell down and died, and the members of the congregation buried him with great honor.’” While the death of the prophet was a tragic event for his followers, his burial place was a pilgrimage site after his death,[10] but it would not become a permanent pilgrimage site, since it survived only until World War II, when it was destroyed.[11]

Ghazatti Drone Mix

Swarmandal 462 New Tuning

Voices taken from speeches of Martin Luther King and the final one in Arabic from a man and his wife in Gaza speaking about sleeping with their child close together so that they might all...

A Moon Will Rise From My Darkness

Also known as Gaza Blue Theme, composed around October 11, 2023. The title comes from a poem by Mohammed El-Kurd whose voice you hear on my track, reciting not his own poem however but that of Rashid Hussein (d.1977) first in Arabic and then in El-Kurd's translation. Thanks to Mohammed El-Kurd and the Palestine Festival of Literature who faced great obstacles in finding venues for their conferences and readings since October 7.

Children for whom the Red Sea does not part

Introductory passage from and address given by assasinated Palestianian poet Refaat Alareer. Next poem by Tony Brewer (USA), "stripped barren reborn" -- music and arrangement by myself.

Stripped Barren and Reborn



Where are we?

Home

Where are we from?

Beyond the veil 
of tears unnumbered 

That’s too far

Earth inside the veil
One of many tears
Stars from out there

I want to be closer

Explosion of sunset

Too close

Fiery blooms of sunrise

Too close

Falling infrared tears
green night vision
sight of soldiers
of children waking
from dreams

The Earth covers me

Avenging moon rising scythe
A mouth of night
swallowing Earth

A mouth of tombstones

The throat of Earth
not linen but stone
coarse – unforgiving

What have I done?

Hiding nothing
but moon and clouds
its veil

I die here

We do not perish but
death is an answer

Feeding on the Earth
Feeding the Earth
is how we learn home
Chance existence
where we are born

Swollen stomach Earth
Swollen feasting worm

Born bordered

Doppler of sirens

Little obliteration – big scream

Sun & moon pass over walls
obliterating obstacles

We do not move

Persistence ammunition
Survival a threat

We migrate

River of conscience
Souls rippling to the sea

Impediments to firmament

Working free like a tooth
pushing through new gum
slipping out of decay

To whom?

Dust in the mouth
Civilian rubble
Frozen conflict swelters

To home

We will not be moved
We move or die
and die

To who we are

Explosions move 
everything

Ingrained 
in grains

Dust

Settling

Oxygen is not for the Dead

07 If I Must Die, Let it be a Tale (Suite for Refaat Alareer)

improvisation on acoustic guitar while listening to democracy now

How is this happening in 2024

Recital of New York Times article accompanied by prepared Swarmandal. Article used for educational purposes only.

The War The World Cannot See

With the poetryof Basman Aldirawi and Jeff Gburek recited by Jeff Gburek. Music by Jeff Gburek: electronic drums, field recordings, radios.

Maybe They Told You Children Don't Grow Old in Gaza

This is called Threnody but it is not strictly in the tradition of the wailing song of grief but rather a broken form of lullaby for those children who might survive. On the first level, it's a piece of music that should calm me down while creating, processing, and now replaying it for friends. The percussive, random back-drop was generated using 4 layers of the swarmandal stimulated by a re-purposed computer ventilator with long strings attached (see my Youtube channel for a video demonstration. Then another layer of improvisation: plucked, strummed swarmandal zither, played at times with a bottle-neck slide to create mictrotonal glissandi textures. The fact that I started out with aleatoric pizziccati movements that echo Penderecki's piece tagged for Hiroshima pushed me towards this title which may, in the future, change. Peace. Hug your kids if you have any. Help some if you can. They are the future only if they survive this mad machine of wars.

Threnody for the Children of Gaza

Some commentary about Gaza by the Anti-Empire Project podcast inspired this rendition of Tuxedomoon's "In a Manner of Speaking".

Give Me The Words

An array of topics addressed in a freefrom experimental podcast with instrumental music created sponteaneously while in a state of fighting against depression. 

All the Gaza related pieces on Soundcloud can be heard on this playlist
https://soundcloud.com/jeff-gburek/sets/a-moon-will-rise-from-my

To support via paypa directlyl: jeff.gburek@gmail.com

Bandccamp: https://jeffgburekprojects.bandcamp.com/album/a-moon-will-rise-from-my-darkness-suite-for-gaza
 
Keep informed about the Gaza war.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX6_QaV9IRM&ab_channel=TheAnti-EmpireProject

Rifles & Garbage Podcast Premiere

For him and also for the unnammed woman in Atlanta who died in December, the news of which never reached me until this morning.

In Memory of a Martyr

While listening to Electronic Intifada's interview with Abubaker live from Gaza Strip, I've improvised an electro-acoustic piece using field recordings, synthesizer and guitar. Instrumental version (without voice-over but perhaps with another poem when it gets written). 
Keep informed and donate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykklx8iLo_0&ab_channel=TheElectronicIntifada

Unmute The Speaker On Gaza

The Rifles & Garbage Podcast is a series concerned with acoustic ecology and the slow, methodical dismantling of the technocapitalist war machine via poetry, deep listening & sound activism. We go in search of a demilitarized trade zone of spirit & ideas. If we don't find it then we takes steps toward creating it while pushing back against ecocide. Join us. Support via paypal jeff.gburek@gmail Patreon coming soon. Field recordings made by Jeff Gburek. Poems by Mosab Abu Toha & others (full list of all recordings will be posted in a few hours).

Rifles & Garbage Podcast Second Edition

I recited lines of poems compiled into one long poem by Adi Magazine's Editorial team. From works by Hasheemah Afaneh, laila r. makled, Yousef Abu-Salah, Rashid Hussain (translated by Salma Harland), Bassam Jamil (translated by Nicole Mankinen), Rania Lardjane, Hani Albayarie, Summer Awad, Veera Sulaiman, Suzana Sallak, Nama’a Qudah, Michael Jabareen, Alia Yunis, Yara Ghabayen, Aiya Sakr, Edward Salem, Ahmad Mallah, Kat Abdallah, Liane Al Ghusain, Priscilla Wathington, Lisa Suhair Majaj, Farah Alhaddad, Mikhail de Parlaine, Bader Alzaharna, and Fady Joudah.  https://adimagazine.com/issues/17/   Sounds by Jeff Gburek composed from VLF, Shortwave radio captures, mixed with frame drum, synthesizer loops and other field recordings. Cease FIre Yesterday!

Cento for Falasteen

I just want you to know I can see through your mask. Like Anelle Sheline and Aaron Bushnell, I cannot remain silent. Stop the cash for arms bloody oil gas flood and open the book of life and love.
Stop quickening toxification of the earth. "The vast majority (over 99%) of the 281,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2 equivalent) estimated to have been generated in the first 60 days following the 7 October Hamas attack can be attributed to Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by researchers in the UK and US." (Sourced from the Guardian)

Post Deluvian Mechanism

acoustic guitar wordless in the arrival of spring magnolia strewn over almost grass and haunted ripples in the water either of a the great eclipse and all those planets behind us now or all those phantom limbs wandering phantom maps and the way the tree sings with a chorus of bees or wasps too high to see.

Phantom Limbs Phantom Maps

listeners will find here the most recent edge of my research as well as album samples and one-offs from the last 10 years of my solo work, from official, upcoming releases, unreleased oddities, works in-progress, & experiments, all music by jeff gburek and collaborators, as noted. support directly via paypal: jeff.gburek@gmail.com or buy albums via https://jeffgburekprojects.bandcamp.com/