A guitar ensemble from Damascus, Syria
“Sometimes people have a typical image for people from somewhere,” Mir Mahmoud says. “When they see them as a musician or artist, they will start to think more about them.”
Guitar 1 : Gabriel Al-Botros
Guitar 2 : Orwa Al-Shara'a
Guitar 3 : Nazeer Salama
Guitar 4 : Mohammed Meer
Band on the run: A Syrian guitar quartet, silenced by war, plays again in Canada
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCFFXG3bc-QBombings and violence forced them to flee their homeland, then the Trump administration’s travel ban complicated their plans to find refuge. Now, a fellowship program has brought four musicians together again at the University of Victoria
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/mu ... ays-again/In November, the four guitarists left Beirut and eventually landed in Vancouver, where they were greeted by Dunn, Shaw – and McDonald, who flew in from Texas for the occasion. “I sometimes think of myself as their musical mother,” she says.
“We were all waiting nervously at the airport, as there was no way of knowing if a border services officer would reject their paperwork,” Dunn explains. “Thankfully, they all came through immigration with smiles and expressions of relief.”
They took the ferry to Vancouver Island and finally arrived at the campus. “My first impression was wow,” says Al-Shara’a, who says the fresh air and quiet in Victoria are much more conducive to practicing guitar than the sirens and bomb blasts back in Syria.
“It felt like I’m travelling not from a country to a country; I felt like I was travelling from a planet to another planet.”