Coping with the trauma of exile: two cases of Palestinian composers making music in the diaspora. Loab Hammoud (University of Haifa) The year 1948 marked a turn in the modern history of Palestine and the Palestinian people. In 1948, the state of Israel was established on Palestinian land causing Al-Nakba (the Arabic word for disaster or catastrophe, which after 1948 became the proper name for the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and the establishment of the state of Israel). Through forced displacement, many Palestinians lost their lands and family homesteads, along with their connections to family and relatives, and ended up being scattered across refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Arab cultural life in Palestine was upset and the music scene underwent massive upheaval by the dispersal of many Palestinian Arab musicians to different Arab countries. The development of the music scene in historic Palestine was stalled, and in the ensuing decades, while the music production focused mainly on resistance and national music. Meanwhile, displaced Palestinian composers became active in their host countries, to the great benefit of local music scenes. In most scholarly discussions of music in Palestine, musicians living the ordeal of Palestinian exile have been conspicuously absent from academic undertakings. Most studies on music in Palestine and among Palestinian musicians have focused on the conflict with Israel, folk, national and resistance music. The proposed paper will explore two case studies: Rawhi al-Khamash (1923-1998) who was a Palestinian composer that established a stable musical career in exile in Iraq, and Riyad al-Bandak (1926-1992) who was likewise an exiled Palestinian composer, but remained mobile, moving among Middle Eastern countries. I will investigate the strategies those composers practiced to: adapt to their new locations, to cope with their trauma of exile, to establish musical careers in their Arab host countries, their contribution to the musical scene in their host countries, and what are the outcomes of this interaction with their new place(s)?