Emphasizing pride

The Tuscia Opera Festival, where Lubana Quntar will sing the role of Queen of the Night With such a rich and diverse heritage, the Syrian Trust for Development’s Culture and Heritage division works round the clock to ensure the Syrian public experiences products of this culture, as well as commemorating it through documentation before it is lost to us forever.

“The way we view culture, it’s not a luxury or an accessory, but rather it is completely important to developing our country; it develops our image and our sense of self,” says Bissan Khadra, cultural communication officer for the Culture and Heritage (C&H) division of the Syrian Trust for Development.
Active since November of 2007, C&H has dedicated itself to supporting Syrian cultural initiatives, and the enhanced interaction between Syrian heritage and those of others.
“In this sense, all Syrians have a share in it, and all Syrians are involved in it,” adds Khadra.
The division’s work is grounded in a belief that cultural development in Syria is both an integral part and a vehicle for the overall development of the country.
“Culture is essential for the well-being of humanity and society,” explains Rania Assassa, project coordinator for C&H.

As a common sense of heritage helps boost social cohesion and a sense of identity, a heightened understanding of our identity improves morale, and through that, a better, more economically stable Syria.
“Economic, social and cultural factors cannot be separated, they are all important to the development of society,” she says.
To this end, C&H has put together a number of programs to improve the access Syrians and others have to Syrian artists.
Topmost among these programs is the Career Development and Capacity Building initiative, which takes on the task of discovering and promoting talented Syrians, and helps them get on their feet.
By providing agency, training, and, under very specific conditions, funding, C&H hopes to take several Syrian artists from relative obscurity to high acclaim.
“We start with career training for the artist, sharpening their skills and introducing them to experts in the field,” says Khadra, explaining the process.
“We also create opportunities for exposure in and outside of Syria, and finally train them on how to present themselves to the media and to potential employers.
The aim is that within the year we offer agency, the artist will have been able to launch their careers.
” Another initiative C&H has is promoting the tangible and intangible aspects of Syrian culture.
As UNESCO defined it in 2003, tangible culture is the monuments, sites, and artifacts that stem from a people’s creativity.
Intangible culture is the mainspring of cultural diversity, and is expressed through oral traditions and expressions, performed arts such as music and theatre, and social practices and rituals, among others.
“You can’t talk about heritage unless you talk about intangible heritage,” asserts project manager Nada Osman Alaeddine.
“This is what gives any culture its flavor.
If we don’t pay attention to it, we will lose our uniqueness, our Syrian heritage.
For example, our music is really unique, especially our religious music.
You can’t work in music and not be aware of your own heritage.
”” “Intangible culture is what keeps us non-static, it helps with development, and moves us forward, and makes heritage a dynamic concept,” agrees Khadra.
To this end, the division has allowed music to be the focus of its first year of projects, using it as a launch pad to set C&H’s projects off.
The division hopes that, as the programs become more popular, they can diversify into other aspects of Syrian culture, such as gastronomy, narration and story telling, and social practices such as marriage, which have been handed down orally but have not been preserved through documentation.
With the relative ease of organizing and publicizing concerts, and its accessibility to a broad audience, it’s a good way to get the public interested in culture.
One of the major events dedicated to raising awareness of Syrian musical culture is the Oriental Festival, scheduled to start in February 2009.
With “Uniqueness and Interaction” as its banner, C&H hopes to get people excited about Syrian traditional music, and to encourage specialists to put more effort into documenting and archiving the various compositions available.
“There are almost no references or archives about our musical heritage,” says Alaeddine.
“If specialists would use their experience to start projects and conduct research, we can show our culture in as real and as pure a way possible.
A composer could then use and make music inspired by our now  documented culture but completely new and modern.
We want to show that we have a heritage that inspires the creation of something never seen before.
” That said, many of the programs C&H have put together have been musical performances from other cultures, albeit performed by Syrian artists.
“We have to understand what really interests the Syrian audience, which is rich and diverse, and up-todate, and cater to that,” explains Assassa.
“So we can’t exclude any form of art.
” “We accept all forms of art, and understand that all talents are linked to all forms of expression,” agrees Alaeddine.

Indeed, some of the division’s most popular concerts have been their opera and chamber music concerts, and they have now been put in charge of the annual jazz festival, “Jazz lives in Syria.
” “Our focus on Opera is to raise awareness among the public what our artists are able to achieve,” explains Alaeddine, pointing out that Lubana Quntar, the soprano chosen for the Queen of the Night role in the Tuscia Opera Festival, and one of the stars of Damascus’ Gala Puccini, was one of their sponsored artists.
“Jazz, on the other hand, is the best form of musical exchange, where you can use your own culture, your own musical heritage, and merge it with this new improvisational art form.
It has already succeeded in Turkey, Armenia and Germany in facilitating dialogue and communication.
” The jazz festival has definitely managed to become one of the most anticipated musical events of the year, with successive musical concerts and The DFCO in concert at Deir ez-Zour workshops to get people interested and active in jazz.
“The jazz festival in Damascus has always been a way to create encounters with musicians from other countries, and has become a brand that attracts the widest range of performers,” explains Assassa.
One new aspect is taking it on tour, as musicians will perform in Damascus as usual, but also in Aleppo and Tartous.
“We’re helping emhasize culture in other governorates, not just being Damascus-centric,” explains Assassa.
“Feed back and response to the proposal has been very good, especially from the private sector in Tartous.
” A rehearsal with Lubana Quntar, one of Culture and Heritage’s sponsored artists Many of the projects executed by C&H have ventured outside the capital.
The Damascus Festival Chamber Orchestra (DFCO), another of the division’s projects, held a very successful concert in Deir ez-Zor.
“People were very interested in meeting the artists and exchanging their experiences, we definitely want to hold more concerts there in the future,” says Assassa.
Even the auditions for the Syrian Children Symphony Orchestra were held across the country, in the musical institutes of Lattakia and Aleppo as well as Damascus.
“During the auditions in the governorates, we discovered amazing talents, and these musicians can become world level if given the opportunity to develop,” explains Assassa.
The children’s orchestra is composed of talented children, fostering their natural musical talents, and offering them the opportunity to experience work with orchestra and big musical ensembles.
The aim is to help them attain their professional dreams, and raise awareness among children and parents, giving them an idea of what can be achieved, as well as developing Syria’s pool of talent upon which the art world can draw on.
“Instead of losing these talents along the way, we give them the opportunity to experience what they can do, and encourage them to carry on,” says Khadra.
“One of our achievements is that we were able to start the ball rolling,” continues Khadra.
“In a short period, we have inspired young Syrians to send proposal after proposal, creating ideas and taking initiative to preserve and present their culture.