Pink Floyd co-founder and bassist Roger Waters has teamed up with Palestinian-American singer Mona Miari to reimagine his old band’s song ‘Comfortably Numb’ in honour of the people of Palestine and their struggle for freedom.
The music video for the song, which released on Wednesday, is shot entirely in black and white and moves between visuals of Gaza and the singers themselves in a studio.
The video highlights the destruction and desolation in Gaza, showing somber shots of massive piles of rubble that once used to be city blocks. Survivors of the war are also shown in the video — people who continue rebuilding, who are committed to living and finding moments of lightness and joy where they are. The visuals seem to tell a story of resistance through existence, of a people who cannot become ‘comfortably numb’ to the war and must keep living through it.
An older, more grief-stricken Waters sings the opening verse from the original, to which Miari responds in Arabic, “After what happened, no one was left. No words were left — what use is asking? All that is lost… Home, oh beloved home. The night fell silent and collapsed. Oh, beloved home, tell him.”
In his next verse, Waters says the cries of the people of Palestine reach him in New York, travelling across oceans. Miari sings of her own dreams of freedom. “Our light will break the darkness. We are the promise of a new dawn,” she says of the Palestinian people.
Both singers join voices to say they will “never become comfortably numb”.
Later in the song, Waters laments not learning of continued injustice against the Palestinian people sooner, “We never know about the Nakba. I was only five years old in ‘48. We were unaware what was happening over there. It breaks my heart I came on board so late.”
He says now is the “Time to clean the slate. Go back to 1948. Before the settlers stole the land. When Grandma’s key unlocked the door and everyone revered the olive tree. And every human life was sacred, everyone, every daughter and every son.”
The song ends with the two demanding “equal rights for everyone, from the river to the sea”.
The song was released on music platforms on June 12, with the music video following a few days later.
Waters has been a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, notably facing a possible legal case for his outspoken stance on Palestine Action — an organisation that has been banned by the UK parliament.
Waters has publicly declared the group is “not a terrorist organisation”, for which he may face prosecution in Britain.