It is clear immediately that “Dying Son” is more than just another pop song. Its combination of delicate Eastern sonics and lyrics that border the realms of the heartfelt and tragedy tell you as much. If you still need help understanding the place that this song comes from, then the stark video showing the horrors occurring in Gaza leaves you in no uncertainty.
Sonically, Ooberfuse’s collaboration with Charlie Rishmawi and Miguel Khair transports you in no uncertain terms to that part of the world, their combination of the traditional Oud and tell-tale percussion setting a sonic scene, added to with mournful and yet marvellous vocal swathes—a resulting sound which is pure, purposeful, and laced with poignancy and pathos.
And lyrically, we are taken by the hand and asked to share the suffering of the people of that war zone, a tribute to those living through this orchestrated horror and a reminder, if one was needed, that it isn’t the soldiers or politicians, the instigators and antagonists whole bear the brunt of such pain but the everyday people. People like you. People like me.
“Dying Son” is a musically delicate torch song, a beacon of musically pale light in the darkness of ambivalence and political posturing, of ignorance and flimsy justifications that just don’t add up. Perhaps when our pleas and protests, our cries of pain and our attempts to hold those in power to account fall on (intentionally) deaf ears, we are forced to turn to music’s subtle charms and beguiling effectiveness. Songs such as “Dying Son” are the result. It is not just an important song but a documentation of the failings of the human race – just one more in the long line of such tear-stained chapters.
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