Just over a month ago Roger Waters performed with the singer of Palestinian origin Mona Miari at an event at the SVA Theater in New York. The two performed with the accompaniment of a piano a piece called Sumudwith the typical flow of Waters' solo repertoire. The occasion was the presentation of Comfortably Numb Re-Imagineda review of the Pink Floyd classic transformed, reads a statement, «into a powerful battle cry to draw global attention to the genocide underway in Gaza. The new interpretation amplifies the original message of the song, which invites us to reject alienation and apathy.”
Now the video directed by David Barron and co-directed by Miari, which was screened that evening, has also been released. We see the two singers and a montage of images shot in Gaza. The base of the song recalls the one that Waters released in 2022, therefore without the guitar solo. It is performed in English and Arabic, there is a flute, percussion, a choir of about ten members. In a shift in the meaning of the lyrics, the apathy of the rock star Pink singing from the original becomes an appeal to humanity and a cry for help.
In the video, the parts sung in Arabic are subtitled in English. The first is: “After all that has happened / with no one left / the words have vanished, all / why ask questions, after all? / All that is lost / house… oh beloved house / the night falls silently and crumbles / oh beloved house… tell him / the olive branch / that reaches out towards the stars / an open wound / that cries out for freedom”.
To the part sung by Miari, Waters responds by reimagining the refrain once performed by David Gilmour: “I feel your pain from New York City, I feel your pain from across the sea calling you and me.” Miari responds: “When I was young I dreamed of freedom / hope burns fiercely in what I am / like roots making their way through the rubble / we shape our destiny / our light will break the darkness / we are the promise of a new dawn”.
The key verse reverses Pink's statement from the original. It was “I have become comfortably numb”, it became “I will never become comfortably numb”, that is: I will never give in to indifference.
In the song, which lasts about eight minutes, Waters sings of the Nakba, “I was only 5 in 1948, we didn't know what was happening over there / It breaks my heart to join the cause so late.” Miari's response in Arabic: “Please keep writing, let the ink dry / Let them know how the siege / took away every breath of life from us / destroyed our homes / some live, but many are dead / The land waits, we have the right to return.”
“It's time for a new beginning,” Waters sings, “it's time to draw a new line.” For the singer it is time to “go back to 1948, before the settlers stole the land” and ask for “the same human rights for everyone, from the river to the sea”. The final chant: “Palestine will be free… Falasteen”.
At the end of the video we read that the song is “written, composed & performed by Roger Waters & Mona Mari”. David Gilmour's credit was therefore eliminated, when instead the original version of Comfortably Numb was one of four songs on The Wall written by Waters in collaboration with others, three with the guitarist (the other two are Run Like Hell And Young Lust) and one with producer Bob Ezrin (The Trial).
Below Sumud presented in April:
