Ramzi Abu-Redwan says he remembers waiting in the halls of Al-Fara’a prison as a boy, holding his grandfather’s hand, and staring up at the walls as he waited to see his jailed father. Now, those same walls echo, not with the footsteps of prisoners, but music and children’s laughter.

The prison, just outside Nablus, was used by the British, Jordanians, and Israelis.  It was made into a youth sports center in the 90s, and each summer Abu-Redwan turns it into a music camp for Palestinian youth from poor families and refugee camps.

Abu-Redwan is not the only one whose past meets the present in the halls of Al-Fara’a.  He’s had about twenty campers whose parents were imprisoned here, and one teacher was also a former prisoner.

For Palestinians, Al-Fara’a  was a place where “people with a noble goal-liberating Palestine” were jailed and tortured, says Abu-Redwan.  Its past is dark, but mingled with the pride of resistance. That’s why Abu-Redwan says the goals of Al-Fara’a’s new inhabitants are not that different. “We’re  trying to liberate people-we’re giving our children a kind of internal freedom…Maybe [my generation] didn’t have means of expressing ourselves, but our children will have a different means of resisting occupation that is better, and stronger.”

Abu-Redwan, who got an opportunity to leave his home in Al-Amari refugee camp to study music in France, wants to offer the same chance to other Palestinian children from disadvantaged backgrounds. His project, called “Al-Kamanjati” (”The Violinist”) offers kids musical training from September to June. They’re given instruments, and to culminate the year, they have a week-long intensive summer camp at Al-Fara’a, which ends today, where they give a concert.

The goals of the camp aren’t just about music, but collaboration too. “We learn how to be one hand-how to play as a single music group,” said one camper. “If everyone plays on his own, it doesn’t work.”  Abu-Redwan says that the kids, who come from all over the West Bank, get together “not based on class, or backgrounds, but on their shared musical interests.”

[Check out this clip of teachers and students rehearsing for their concert, playing a classical Turkish piece]

Sa’ed Karazon, a director of the camp, says they encourage this collaboration even between students and teachers. “The teachers play and rehearse right along with the students when they’re not teaching. We want students to feel like they are musical equals, that this is not a hierarchy.”

This year, Al-Kamanjati is spreading its reach further-they’re funding 18 year old Shehadeh Shaldy to go to London and study how to build and repair violins. At Al-Fara’a, he proudly shows off his two violins; one of them has a tiny Palestinian flag painted on it.

About 25 instructors come from  Europe and the United States to participate at the summer camp. Ethan Cardoze, a member of the Paris Orchestral Ensemble, has come to the camp for the past two years and says he benefits as much from the experience as his pupils: “Each day I’m learning Oriental music, and that’s something that makes me richer… I love the freeness [of Oriental music]. Western music is really square, with bars, with rhythms. It’s very strict-Oriental music is much more supple. You have to listen more, you have to adjust your personal sense of rhythm.”

Abu-Redwan also stresses bringing the two musical traditions together for students and teachers-”They’re very different, but they can also complement each other…. Western music is a technical perfection; Arabic music is a perfection of expressing feelings.

Asked if he feels strange using a former prison for music camp, Abu-Redwan shakes his head: “It’s true that this was a prison-but walls don’t hurt you. It’s the people who use them that do. It’s true that this place brings back a lot of memories, but it’s great that now we can fill the place with something positive.”