KUCHING: Adel Salameh has been travelling the world with his music for the last 20 years to bring peace to his homeland, Palestine.

"Music is a powerful tool to get my message of peace across because it helps bring people together.

"I can highlight the sufferings of my people through my music," the 41-year-old musician, who now resides in Lyons in France, said at the Rainforest World Music Festival here yesterday.

He had been travelling the world since he was 18, playing his traditional Arabian music with songs about "the suffering of a mother who had lost her son, of maimed children and my people getting shot and killed".

Adel, an oud player and the leader of his Adel Salameh Trio, even managed to bring his message of peace to his "enemy".
Adel's vocalist, Naziha Azzouz, and the third member of the group, Adel Shameseldin, had once performed a string of concerts In Israel.

Their concerts in Nazareth and the Israeli port city of Haifa were all sold out . Even the Israeli minister of culture attended the concert in Haifa.

Adel said after the concert, he had told the minister that if people from different sides of the divide could be brought together by music, they could definitely work for peace.

Adel admitted his dream of bringing peace to his homeland would be long and difficult.

He was forced to leave his home in Nablus in 1998 and lived in exile in Britain to seek freedom to play his music.

"There were a lot of travel restrictions at home. We couldn't even move from one place to another as artistes."

Yet, even from his new home in London, it was still not easy for Adel or other Palestinians to move around Europe.

"Twenty years ago, we were seen more like terrorists rather than artistes and many countries refused us visas," he said.

But with restrictions slowly relaxed, Adel is able to travel more freely and extensively.