Alabaster DePlume: “Some tend to consider Palestine as some sort of rubble, but these are people with lives”

A decade or so ago a tall, softly spoken artist and aesthete relocated from Manchester to London with a tenor saxophone and a bag of words. “My name is Alabaster DePlume”, he told any stranger who listened, most of all those impressed by his eccentric smarts and olde-worlde charm, and by the tiny row of stick figures – his jettisoned past selves – he has tattooed across his left hand.

DePlume got a residency at Dalston art space Total Refreshment Centre, famously Ground Zero for the so-called young London jazz renaissance, then set about his reinvention. There were monthly improv sessions; poetry books and readings filled with outrage and poignant, fragile imagery. There were album releases including 2020’s acclaimed To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals, Vol.1 and 2022’s Gold: Go Forward in the Courage of Your Love. A cult following was bolstered by theatrical live shows that were part improv jam, part poetry slam, and a commitment to fighting injustice. For always, there was Palestine.

“I get out of the way of the song, to let the song come through, and when I share about Palestinian liberation in my shows it is something that wishes to be expressed already”, says the 40-something DePlume, sitting in the cosy TRC studio space he shares with multi-disciplinary musician Danalogue, a keffiyeh scarf around his neck, an acoustic guitar – one of several instruments including sax, piano and a Chinese yangqin dulcimer within reaching distance – resting across his crossed knee.

We’re here to talk about DePlume’s new album, A Blade Because a Blade is Whole, a sombre yet curiously comforting recording whose 11 compositions meld folk sounds with groove-based energy blasts, lush string arrangements (courtesy of Macie Stewart) and ghostly Greek chorus-like refrains to reflect on themes ranging from the individual’s responsibility to heal themselves (“So we can then contribute to community”) to the dignity inherent in human struggle.

The album, which has tracks titled ‘Thank You My Pain’ and ‘Prayer for My Sovereign Dignity’, follows DePlume’s 2024 EP Cremisan: Prologue to a Blade, which he partly recorded in Bethlehem, Palestine, playing improvised saxophone with musicians including qanun player Laith Albandak and pianist Sami El-Enany as part of his Sounds of Places residency at art space the Wonder Cabinet. A haven for Palestinian creativity housed inside a building designed by architects Elias and Yousef Anastas, the Wonder Cabinet overlooks the Har Homa Israeli settlement and the newly annexed Cremisan Valley, then the last piece of lush natural landscape accessible to Bethlehem.

“I was there to make music with friends, and also to meet my fear and overcome my ignorance. I advise everyone to go to this normal place with its normal people”, says DePlume, who grew up in Manchester as Gus Fairbairn, the sensitive son of schoolteacher parents, learning the sax on drunken nights in squats, playing rock guitar in experimental bands, learning Indian classical violin from musician Olivia Moore and listening to music by Captain Beefheart, Thelonious Monk and the dissenting Soviet singer-songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky.

As DePlume recites the latter’s ‘Koni Priveredlivye’ (Fastidious Steeds), a popular song he learned phonetically and delivers with Muscovite flair (“It’s about horses being whipped to go faster as somebody begs them to slow down, so it’s about life”), there are glimpses of the man with a habit of giving his heart away so completely he’d have to assume a new identity, over and again, to reclaim it.

“I was due to leave Palestine but after the brutal attack on Rafah” – the city in the southern end of the Gaza Strip that was subject to an Israeli-led military offensive in May 2024 – “I stayed for a day of non-stop performance that was broadcast on Radio Alhara. I didn’t intend to release this music”, he continues in his mannered, friendly way, louchely strumming his guitar, “but [his record label] International Anthem said, ‘Gus, it is now we need to speak on this issue.’ And I love the label for that.”

‘Gifts of Olive’, the third and final track on the EP, has a solemn melody which references the poem ‘If I Must Die’ by beloved Palestinian poet and academic Refaat Alareer (‘If I must die, let it bring hope, let it bring a tale’), who was killed on December 6, 2023, by an IDF airstrike in northern Gaza. Today, a day when the mooted Gaza ceasefire is making news headlines, DePlume has a book by late Palestinian poet and writer Murid Barghouti on his work desk and Palestine – ‘free, free Palestine’ – on his mind.

A Blade Because a Blade is Whole was composed before the Hamas militant-led atrocities of October 7, 2023. But Palestine is there, he says, in the themes of dignity and sovereignty, of facing fear and embracing pain. As DePlume states in the album notes, “I am contributing, as a white Englishman, [from] the country… that supports and enables the colonisation and the settler-colonial project in Palestine. It is my issue, and I have a position where I can speak about it.”

He insists on humanising life in Palestine. “Some tend to consider Palestine as some sort of rubble, but these are people with lives. I carry our love for the Palestinian people and they feel it and they love you, Songlines readers”, he says, leaning over my recorder. “There is immense dignity in this place where even crossing the street to get a coffee is an act of defiance of the racism, the occupation, the Zionist project, the international cruelty of this world.”

He’ll be saying as much throughout his forthcoming international tour, breaking fourth walls with his wryly framed questions and spoken and sung poetic philosophies. He might paint a picture, as he does for me, of what a night out with friends (such as Ramallah poet/DJ/producer Julmud) in Gaza involves, likening it to being at a gig in south London, trying to get home to east London and having to go via Kent, with checkpoints and potential arrests and dangers along the way: “And you’re visiting from another country and are going to be fine, but your friends may be hurt and that’s what’s scary.”

He pauses, and changes tack. “We are all wounded in our way”, he says. “I made this album to help people address grief and loss, to help them in their healing. Grief can plug you back into living.”

He nods at my recorder. “You are doing so well, you who are reading this. Life is tricky. But it is also more noble than we think.”