Spontaneously, she sits on her sofa in the corner of the room and holds in her hands a drum decorated with a red cloth and decorated with gilded “denadish”, then she strikes her fingers, and a beautiful ringing comes out accompanied by a sharp voice that is the singing words of the Palestinian lady Helmiyeh Al-Jalal (Umm Samer).

This scene is common in recent times with Umm Samer, every Friday evening she wears her traditional dress and meets with her daughters, the wives of her sons and the neighbors in her house, then her tongue springs out for hours and sings from the core of the Palestinian heritage with eloquence and eloquence that is unparalleled.

With her simplicity and the usual lightness of her shade, Umm Samer welcomed us at her home in the village of Pharaoh near the city of Tulkarm in the northern West Bank, and she mastered us with songs that she dedicated to us, so the beauty of this art is in its intuition and the ease of its recitation and the exchange of words, especially names, in proportion to the atmosphere of the song while preserving the meaning.

Umm Samer sings popular songs by beating the drum, producing a beautiful, melodic voice (Al-Jazeera)

Mother of the country

Umm Samer became addicted to listening to traditional songs when she reached the age of ten and memorized it with a word and meaning, and she repeated that in every social event she attended, such as a wedding, circumcision of children, or return from travel, rain and harvest, and the most attended were weddings.

The company of her mother and the elderly was Helmiyet al-Jalal, or "the mother of the country," as they call her, she roams the homes of families on any joyful occasion and listens well to snatch from their lips the sweetest sung words and memorize them by heart.

By this, it became a portfolio of the Palestinian heritage song, and it started to export what it saves to the public through video clips that it recorded and broadcast in accounts established in its name on various communication sites.

We went back with Umm Samer back a little to know the secret of her sudden appearance, so she told us that two years ago she participated in a wedding party in a nearby village, and there one of the invitees filmed her and broadcast the clip on the communication sites to spread like wildfire and the song was a duel between the white and brown girl:

Samra said, and we are Harayes (sweets) ... and we are in the hands of brides

Al-Bayda and I al-Marray (the mirror) said ... and the most senior employee comes to me (I have)

Two months ago, Umm Samer began recording more songs and broadcast them on YouTube and other pages that she created with the help of her grandson to garner thousands of views. She produced about 40 clips at a rate of 10 minutes each, and she still has a lot to prepare.

Umm Samer saves hundreds of songs and documents them through the communication sites (Al-Jazeera)

Love and concern

There is no explanation for this except for the lady’s love and her keenness to keep this art present lest it disappear amid songs described as "foreign and empty content" intended to replace the old "even by force", in addition to the death of the older women who kept these songs whose importance lies in their transmission from one generation to the next.

Weddings are the last stronghold of the popular song that Palestinian women sing, including Umm Samer, as the other occasions that she was born with, and with those songs, have largely faded away, most notably the rain, the harvest, and the newborns, but Umm Samer kept mumbling about her and her travels, even while she was doing her housework.

And at the wedding comes the "explanation", which are singing days preceding the final wedding ceremony, where women sing at the beginning of the evening for the groom and his mother, then sing to the bride second passages, and at the end of the explanation, the women help themselves with the songs "Dalaouna", "Zarif al-Tawl" and "Ataba".

All of this is known by Umm Samer and is frequency and sings by a composer as she strikes her fingertips over her drum, which she carefully chose for this purpose, and whoever hears the words of Umm Samer is supposed to repeat behind her, otherwise she will leave the hall, for repeating means the permanence of the popular song and an auditory preservation according to what she sang.

He distinguishes Umm Samer despite being "late", according to her description of her uniqueness in documenting the traditional folk song transmitted orally and publishing it on various communication sites.

On YouTube, Facebook, Tik Tok and Instagram, there are more than 100 thousand followers of Umm Samer, despite her young age, which is attributed by her grandson, Muhammad Abdel-Latif, to the Palestinian, especially expatriates, longing for these songs and asking for more of them.

Muhammad has to record and produce videos over the phone, then publish them and translate spoken words into written text, in addition to responding to audience inquiries.

Mrs. Helmiyeh Al-Jalal knew two years ago, but she began documenting two months ago (Al-Jazeera)

The required is great

Umm Samer harms the absence of official institutions, the lack of adoption of this heritage color, and the reliance on individual researchers and civil institutions to perpetuate these songs.

This is confirmed by Hamza Aqrabawi, a researcher in Palestinian heritage, who says that popular songs, especially feminists, live by oral transmission and that the danger has already threatened them after the decline in circulation and the failure of new generations to preserve them, in addition to the fact that documentation has become an individual act done by some writers such as Nayla Lebs and Abdel-Latif Al-Barghouti in their books. Or a limited institutional work.

From the reality of living in the life of the Palestinian woman with all its details in her home and land and with the various occasions of harvest, rain and singing for the child before bed and the first walk and out of his teeth, the popular song has become confined to weddings only and is transmitted by the rest of the elderly, and this is why the role of Umm Samer or whoever pursues her path is a pioneer for preserving This legacy.

And heritage, as Aqrabawi says to Al-Jazeera Net, lives by circulation, not by the “museum” that kills it even though it documents it, as it “transfers it from the stage of life among people to the phase of preservation within books,” and that what is required is to document those songs as they circulate by listening and melody, not just writing.

In his opinion, what is required is that official institutions play a real role in collecting and documenting all the lyrical heritage in its various regions, between villages, cities and the desert, in addition to placing this heritage in a negotiable context, such as collecting it by singing it, rhythmically and re-presenting it to generations in different ways through the school curriculum and various activities.