For Gaza With Love Vol. 1 is a well-put-together new charity compilation featuring artists as diverse as Richard Dawson, Belle & Sebastian and Pefkin aka Gayle Brogan (whose slowly-unfolding hymnal ‘Premonitions’ is worthy of the cover charge alone). And that’s before we’ve got to the cause. Curated by the Yorkshire-based musician and composer Aby Vulliamy, who also contributes the moving, thought-provoking ‘Because of Us’, the collection aims to raise funds for the PalMed Academy in Gaza, an organisation which is trying to raise the standard of medical care for Palestinians through training and education. Clearly facing an existential crisis on a strip of land that has seen most of its hospitals either damaged or destroyed in the last twenty-one months, it needs all the help it can get.
“This exciting and eclectic collection of music has been donated by artists who are devastated about the enormous loss of civilian lives and livelihoods in Gaza,” reads the blurb on Bandcamp. “It will raise money to help re-establish the decimated healthcare system in Gaza via www.PalMedAcademy.com”. Moreover, these contributions are not, to a man or woman, throwaway in any shape or form. Rich Dawson, as he prefers to be known these days, contributes an immaculate number worthy of his wonderful oeuvre called ‘Staycation’, where he gently berates someone in singsongy fashion, accompanied by a bright piano: “You’re a drone stuck in a tree / You’re raw sewage floating out to sea.” The whole song is delivered with dastardly poetic relish.
More on the nose is ‘Take Back The Sky’ by Penny Stone, an account of children breaking the official kite flying world record, managing to get 12,350 into the heavens simultaneously in 2011, a feat of resolve and ingenuity, and a figure that has been dwarfed by the number of civilian deaths since 9 October 2023. There are a range of instrumentals that are obviously less explicit: the solo flute monophony of ClockDVA renegade Mzylkypop (‘Ughnait Alnaay’), the dolorous, gorgeous ‘Collapse’ from the Mu Quintet and an understatedly shimmering contribution from twee cinephiles Belle & Sebastian (‘Seance on a Wet Afternoon’). Album closer ‘Gaza on Christmas’ by the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music Choirs, a Palestinian music conservatory with branches in Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nablus and Gaza City, brought a tear to this reviewer’s eye.
The whole collection is a textural treat, lovingly assembled, with a second volume promised soon. Forty years ago, Live Aid cut through because people in another country seemingly needed our help, and the same logic applied thirty years ago when Oasis, Suede, Radiohead, etc, packed into Abbey Road to record The Help Album for War Child. In 2025, in a more polarised and atomised environment, it’s not as clear cut. Our government is currently proscribing direct action groups as terrorists and continues to sell arms to a state gone rogue, while the Prime Minister says out loud that Israel “has the right” to cut off power and water to Gaza. If For Gaza With Love Vol. 1 has thus far struggled to gain traction, then you know what to do.
