"A Trip to the Amman Chamber Music Orchestra: A multicultural program and reflection of my time in the city" by Sela Dombrower
The adrenaline from final presentations had drained. The four of us had been pushing through the last week of classes and we’d finally made it.
I’d spent the last few hours in a fatigued-state of gift shopping with one of my friends and was now on my way to the American Community School of Amman. My Uber dropped me off beside a security box and a convenience store with neon letters blinking in the night.
Exploring a new city, by myself and after dark, was something I would’ve shirked away from last year, probably even a few months ago. But these past four months have shown me how much I can trust myself and my language skills, and how rewarding traveling solo can be.
I began to walk up the dark path to the school. A woman and her elementary-aged son approached the security box at the same time, and asked a guard in English where the concert was. He didn’t reply, not understanding her. I turned to ask him in Arabic and he pointed around the street.
As we walked together toward the concert, we introduced ourselves, finding fellow Americans in Amman. One of the interesting parts of study abroad is meeting other foreigners, and talking about their reasons for moving to Jordan. Some people I’ve met have moved for work, others for their partners, and others for study or research opportunities.
I got my ticket checked and we parted ways. After finding my seat, I listened to the exchange of languages as people from all over filed into the auditorium.
This fall was the orchestra’s first season after Covid and that night was their last concert of the year. It began with two pieces for oud and orchestra, performed and composed by Tareq Jundi. (The oud is a Middle Eastern stringed instrument.) The concert then moved into Beethoven to Handel’s Messiah and ended with a couple of carols.
As the program brochure explained, the Amman Chamber Music Orchestra aims to mesh Middle Eastern and Western classical music. They were founded in 2018 and have members from all around the Arab league who convene about a week before each performance in Amman.
The lights eventually dimmed and four people came out on stage. They spoke in Arabic with sporadic English phrases. I understood what I could and let the rest go. It can be overwhelming sometimes to feel the largeness of a language while you’re learning it. I landed in Jordan only knowing Modern Standard and not really able to communicate with people, and within the semester I’ve turned that around. However, when you’re in the middle of something it can be hard to see how much you’re growing, especially during the stress of the term.
For future students, if you feel like you aren’t doing enough, I encourage you to evaluate yourself on two levels: the first is what your specific goals are and the actions that align with them; the second is how you talk to yourself about how much you’re already doing and how much you should realistically push yourself. Is there a discrepancy in one or both of these areas? These were things I had to continuously ask myself.
As of writing this, I still have a couple weeks left in Amman, and while I’ve been reflecting on my time here, I don’t think I’ll fully see how I’ve grown and changed until I return home. And as my art professor says, there are things about this experience we may not synthesize for years to come. That night, a few days before final exams, proved rewarding after the ups and downs of the semester.
The audience was clapping. The conductor exited, the orchestra entered and began to tune (lowkey love the anticipation of an orchestra tuning). Even though I’d been in Amman for four months, this was the first time I’d really listened to oud music. I love Spanish guitar sounds and the tuning and intricacies of the oud melodies reminded me of that. It was beautifully set into the textures of the orchestra. So while I enjoyed the familiarity of Beethoven and Handel, my favorite part of the program was probably the beginning, with its rich new-to-me sounds.
The next time I go to a new city, one of the first things I’ll do is check out music opportunities. It might give a glimpse of the local relationship to music as well as how larger traditions tie into that. For me, this concert blended the nostalgic and the intriguing, and proved a welcome respite in the final weeks of the term.
Sela Dombrower is a junior at Lawrence University and is studying abroad on the Amideast Area and Arabic Language Studies Program in Amman, Jordan this fall 2022.
