Ten-year old Monet Monterroso and her teacher Olga Shibtini of the Saturday Islamic School at the Bridgeport Islamic Community Center were among the more than 300 people across faiths and communities who gathered at Battell Chapel on the Yale campus Sunday night for a rousing fundraising concert to assist the civilian victims of violence in Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon. The concert offered a sense of healing not just through the music, but through who showed up, and why.
The brainchild of David Chevan of the Afro Semitic Experience (first row center, in photo) and Isaiah Cooper of the Sliders (first row, left), the concert brought together these and other instrumental and choral groups in a program ranging from jazz to folk, from Hebrew to Arabic, in a manner, said Chevan, “non-partisan, non-sectarian, and non-political.”
“Our sadness over the Middle East situation was just not sufficient response,” said Bill Goetlter (first row, bottom right), of Interfaith Cooperative Ministries, one of the sponsors, along with Yale University. “So a night of music was planned to mend this broken world.”
To hear some of that music, recorded by Melinda Tuhus, click here for a snippet from the Afro-Semitic Experience, click here for Trio Con Brio, click here for Mighty Purple, here for Marty and Sheri Levson.
p(clear). 
Drake Smith, Sr. and his son Drake Smith, Jr. were two of the five trombones of the jazz ensemble, the Sliders, who got the proceedings rolling with the haunting Hebrew melody, “Erev Shel Shoshanim,” followed by the jazz arrangement “Arabia.” Smith, Jr., only 15 years old, has performed many times, but doing so on behalf of victims of war’s violence was a first. “This is pretty darn important,” he said.
p(clear). 
When Cooper, of the Sliders, sat down to much applause, contribution plates were passed, while other performers such as the Trio Con Brio and Mighty Purple’s Rodgers brothers took the stage.
p(clear). 
Concert-goers, such Ellen Cohen and Steven Fraade, who had heard about the event through their synagogue, Congregation Beth El Kesher Israel in New Haven, were among those who made possible a tally of approximately $4,000, and the concert was barely half over. The donations are to be distributed equally to the Israeli, Lebanese, and Palestinian affiliates of the International Red Cross.
p(clear). 
“No matter what amount we are able to raise for the children,” said Hosam Afifi, one of the concert’s organizers, an Egyptian-American businessman and vice-president of the Bridgeport Islamic Community Center, “it’s in a way for us here about far more than money. We are proving that we can gather across all faiths and backgrounds for a humanitarian cause. This is a first time in my memory for the Islamic community in Bridgeport that we have reached out, successfully, this way.”
Cooper, who when he is not playing a trombone in the Sliders finds a little time to be a lawyer and serves as the pro-bono legal counsel for Afifi’s Bridgeport Islamic Community Center, absolutely agreed. “We’ve learned a huge amount from this experience,” he said. “Both Hosam and I encountered, he in the Muslim and I in the Jewish community, some people who thought there were other motives in this beside the humanitarian. But we went on, and look at this wonderful event. We hope to do more.”
p(clear). 
Meanwhile, onstage, Cantor Martin Levson, of Hamden’s Congregation Mishkan Israel, with help from David Chevan’s son, Jesse, on drums, was belting out one of Tom Paxton’s songs in the sing-along portion of the concert.
p(clear). 
Then Nehme Attallah, the leader of the choir of Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Church in Waterbury, took the stage, along with six members of his family. They got the audience to stamp their feet and to sway through “zajjal,” a type of sung poetry that celebrated love of their home country, Lebanon. Attallah, who heads a family of five brothers (with a total of 44 people) in Waterbury, had a special reason to be celebratory and grateful for the peace that some, but not enough people, in the world have.
“We were in Lebanon on July 12th celebrating a wedding. Two hours after we arrived, the airport was bombed. The U.S. Marines evacuated us to Cypress ten days later. We love this country, I and my children,” he insisted on telling a reporter, “and we are ready to help to defend it and to make peace in any way we can.”
Waterbury, according to Attallah, has had a Lebanese community for about 120 years. He emigrated there in 1982 from the northern Lebanese town of Jounieh, and made his living, at first, singing in a Lebanese band. Now he heads a family construction and home-remodeling company. “I’m too old to be in a band now,” he said, but with his deep baritone he is the mainstay of the church chorus. He held the stage powerfully at Battell, receiving afterwards the congratulations and interests of many thankful to have learned “zajjal.” “We’ve never done an event like this,” he said. “We love this country. Tonight is wonderful and we want to do more.”
Chevan’s Afro-Semitic Experience finished the concert with a set that featured, among other pices, a composition by pianist Warren Byrd (third from left in the photo) called “Plea for Peace.” When the war in Iraq began, he explained, he was so angry he didn’t know what to do. His answer? “I decided to write a song of beauty.” The piece brought Battell’s audience to its feet in syncopated clapping and applause.
p(clear). 
The total tally raised for humanitarian purposes was not known as the concert ended, but it appeared to be a success in many other ways as well. “Hey, man,” Warren Byrd of the Afro-Semitic Experience was overheard saying to Nehme Attallah, “how can we get in touch with you?”
Oh, and little Monet Monterroso said, “I can’t wait to tell what happened here to kids in school tomorrow.”
