Bay Area Musicians Unite on a New Album for Palestinian Aid

Bassist Caroline Chung always looked up to jazz greats like Charles Mingus who used music to take a stand on the human rights issues of their time. Yet over the past two and a half years, as Israel’s military flattened Gaza and killed over 71,000 people in response to Hamas’ 2023 attack, Chung says she’s been frustrated at the silence from many of her peers.

Chung felt an urge to do something, so she began recruiting like-minded collaborators from the Bay Area’s jazz, rock, folk and hip-hop scenes to put together a protest album, Artists Against Apartheid, to raise money for humanitarian aid and grassroots organizing.

“I never knew that I would live in this time, watching a full-on, full-scale genocide,” says Chung on a recent afternoon at Wyldwood Studios, a music studio tucked in the back of a Berkeley vintage clothing store. “There’s also a taboo to speak openly about it and be honest about what’s going on. So I really felt as an artist and a musician, I just felt completely helpless and hopeless, and I just wanted to do something.”

Co-produced with Wyldwood owner Mike Walti, whose engineering credits include big names like Lauryn Hill and Big Freedia, Artists Against Apartheid features 14 tracks with multicultural influences that sprang from organic studio collaborations.

Equipto, a San Francisco rapper and community organizer, fires off militant verses on “Molotov.” Chung’s jazz ensemble, the Colors Collective, offers a triumphant cover of Mingus’ “Free Cell Block F ’Tis Nazi USA,” a song he wrote after the Attica Prison uprising of 1971. The Palestinian Youth Ensemble delivers a stoic, defiant Arabic rendition of the famous Italian anti-fascist folk song “Bella Ciao,” “Helwa Ciao.”

Hesham Jarmakani, a Syrian American percussionist who played the darbuka drum on “Helwa Ciao,” says the song underscores an important theme that can be heard in a lot of Palestinian traditional music. “The song that we recorded talks a lot about sacrifice and how, when you are struggling for liberation, it requires sacrifice,” he says. “Being an organizer is a sacrifice. It takes time out of your day and it takes a lot of commitment, but it’s for a just cause.”

Other songs on Artists Against Apartheid shine a light on solidarity among the Bay Area’s many immigrant and refugee communities. Camellia Boutros, a multi-instrumentalist with Palestinian and Lebanese roots, recorded a song called “La Lloroncita” with the band Corazón de Cedro. The pensive, acoustic track with heartrending vocals combines Arabic folk music with the Mexican traditional sound of son jarocho.

“I don’t think it’s any coincidence that we saw this horrible genocide in Gaza at the same time that we’re seeing a massive escalation of ICE action,” says Boutros, adding that the song offered her and her bandmates the space to come together around their grief and hope for a better world.

In addition to speaking out through her lyrics, Boutros has incorporated music into direct acts of protest. Along with Brass Liberation Orchestra, an ensemble that frequently drums up enthusiasm at marches, Boutros played son jarocho outside of the ICE headquarters in downtown San Francisco. The intention was for authorities to hear the community’s support for someone going through an immigration hearing.

“We were sending a message that that person had all these people here ready to stand up for them,” she says. “I think it’s an example where music can have a very physical way of holding space and sending a message.”

The musicians behind Artists Against Apartheid know that music can also bolster a cause by raising money. Proceeds from the album go to two groups that provide food and medical aid, Middle Eastern Children’s Alliance and HEAL Palestine, as well as the advocacy group Palestinian Youth Movement.

For Boutros and the other collaborators, the album serves as a reminder that everyone has the power to join a cause they believe in, no matter how small their contribution.

“I feel like everybody has a choice right now. You’re either going to fight for life and for the future of this world, or you’re going to roll with what the people in power want, which is essentially a death cult — not doing anything about climate change, worsening political instability and removing our rights,” she says.

“Every time that you do something anti-imperialism, pro-climate change, pro-Black, pro-Indigenous, pro-immigrant,” she adds, “you’re doing something in the service of everybody.”