Passage to dialogue
Band's music forges cultural bridges

WEEKEND

By CHRISTIAN ZAVISCA
Tribune Correspondent

Successful dialogue can transcend the typical spoken form that tends to confine the term.

Kinan Azmeh finds this to be true in his everyday life. When he meets people in America unfamiliar with his native Syria, he doesn't just tell them about Damascus, he gets out his photo album and shows them parks, beaches and mosques.

It's no wonder that Azmeh knows how to communicate. He and his band, Hewar, create an expansive dialogue of their own through music.

Hewar, which translates to the word "dialogue" in English, will perform in concert on Friday at Kern Road Mennonite Church in South Bend.

Azmeh, a clarinetist and co-founder with Issam Rafea of Hewar, spoke in a recent telephone interview from New York City about the difficulty of categorizing the band's music.

"It's the hardest thing, to try to describe music to someone," he said with a laugh. Hewar blends Arabic music with elements of jazz, classical, opera and chamber music.

The members of the group are all classically trained and are Syrian, except for one American performer who has joined Hewar for this tour.

Azmeh's goal is to build cultural bridges, to go beyond the cursory impression that Americans have of his country and the Middle East.

"This is needed more and more," he said. "No matter what instrument you have in the group, if you have common ground, you can make good music. This is something that is missing."

Hewar's self-titled CD is, as might be expected, extraordinarily eclectic. The music's tempo ranges widely, as does its instrumentation. The strings, reeds and percussion are rich and layered, and are woven with vocals by Dima Orsho to form an enthralling tapestry. The CD and the band's tour appearances feature entirely original compositions, Azmeh said.

The tour's organizer, Mel Lehman, is a Mennonite peace activist who, through his connections to the South Bend and Goshen area, worked to bring Hewar here. The Concert for Peace Tour makes eight stops, including the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in the fall, which will be Hewar's second performance there.

"The concert by itself is a form of interaction," Azmeh said. "We're hoping the audience will connect with it."

That the tour's performances are mainly in churches is fitting, Azmeh said. Hewar's first concert was in a Damascus church in 2003.

"You're playing in a place that is open also for dialogue," Azmeh said of the church setting. "People listen to each other in a church more than they do outside."

Countering negative perceptions of the Middle East can be a daunting task, but Azmeh is enthusiastic about the challenge. He said of Syria, "The diversity is amazing. Christians, Jews, Muslims" living together, exchanging ideas and learning from one another. "You have to live there to really see it. Fox News and CNN are no way to learn about it."

Andre Stoner, one of the pastors at Kern Road Mennonite Church, said he is excited about the coming Hewar concert here.

"We saw this as an opportunity to build bridges in our community," Stoner said, "a place where Muslim and Middle Eastern neighbors can be welcome."