The Palestine Music Space
About
The Palestine Music Space is a Ramallah based project that works with pioneering Palestinian musicians, producers and managers.
The Palestine Music Space (PalMS) offers a safe haven for young musicians and producers, fostering creativity and collaboration in contemporary music genres. Through band formation, coaching, workshops, and concerts, it empowers participants while advancing Palestine’s music scene.
The initiators Ahmed Eid, Majd Hajjaj and the larger team and their partners recently completed a recording studio in Ramallah, it is due to enable The Palestine Music Space to extend beyond the educational and rehearsal space into making the voices of the community heard internationally.
Starting June 2024 the Palestine Music Space is providing weekly classes for 5 bands and 8 producers as part of the pilot “ Band Training and Producers yearly course”.
Carried by the local community, regional partners such as Delia Arts Foundation and support from the international community, future plans include expanding training workshops for management, impact and artistic collaborations to nurture structural growth.
Background: Nurturing Creativity and Connection in Palestine’s Music Scene
In 2022, the idea for Palestine Music Space (PalMS) emerged from a need for a safe, accessible environment where Palestinian musicians could gather, experiment, and grow creatively. Recognizing the lack of such spaces in Palestine, efforts were made by Ahmed Eid and Majd Hajjaj to establish a space that would support musicians at all levels, providing them with opportunities to rehearse, form bands, and record their music at minimal cost.
By 2023, PalMS had begun to take shape, attracting musicians and fostering the creation of new bands. The team was joined by resident Ranim Daraghmeh, instructor Naseem Rimawi and impact producer Lorena Junghans. Recognizing the space’s potential, Delia Arts Foundation and other supporters invested in its development, contributing to the purchase of instruments, acoustic treatment, and the setup of a small studio. This support, combined with contributions from the Goethe Institute and private donors, ensured that by early 2024, PalMS was fully operational.
Ahmed Eid’s own experiences growing up in Palestine, where political barriers and limited resources stifled cultural exchange, underscore the importance of PalMS. While institutions like the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music and Al Kamandjati Association have contributed significantly to the music scene in Palestine, there was a need to extend beyond a focus on classical music and offer spaces that are freely accessible to less privileged communities. PalMS thus was designed as a free-of-charge band training program that emphasizes non-traditional and contemporary music genres, including alternative Arabic music, rock, reggae, hip-hop, and more.
PalMS provides young Palestinian musicians with a physical space to explore, learn, and collaborate, fostering creativity and building connections across borders. Through partnerships with local and international organizations, PalMS is creating a vibrant, inclusive musical community in Palestine, helping to shape the future of the region’s cultural landscape.
For further insight, please check out the two Delia Sessions of Moj and Majas bands formed at the Palestine Music Space in 2023, who produced two songs.
What the physical space has to offer
The space offers two rooms: one 7mX5m (est.) rehearsal room that has instruments such as a drumset, E-piano keyboard, different guitars (Acoustic and Electric), Upright bass and Ebass, percussions, speakers, amplifiers, PA system etc.
And the second smaller room is a studio control room, with all needed equipment to record and produce music.
The space has a small kitchen counter, and a toilet.
Programmatic content
Currently the Palestine Music Space (PalMS) is an open musical community space. PalMS is free-of-charge, and it entails a band training program curated by musician Ahmed Eid. It aims to work with emerging bands and musicians, and/or creating bands with musicians and music students from all levels and coaching them, with a focus on non-traditional and non-classical music genres including alternative Arabic music, rock, reggae, hiphop, disco, jazz and more.
The space will also include a series of training workshops for the emerging musicians and managers in areas they identify. The training component is being curated at the moment.
The main focuses are expected to be along these lines:
- Songwriting, music composition and arrangement
- Music production to form a pool of music producers to work with bands/individual artists
- Band formation and mentorship
- Management and Social Impact
The current program includes two jam sessions per week (Mondays and Thursdays) and free booking of the two rooms by individual musicians or bands to rehearse and/or record and produce music. In addition to three songwriting workshops that took place in January, February and August 2024, at least six songs are being produced.
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