By: Punish Studios | Date: September 25, 2025 | Youtube.com
A slow-burning 6/8 jazz piece laced with smoky lounge piano, brushed drums, and echoes of Arabic melody. Lost in Palestine follows my journey to Haifa in search of my mother’s ancestral home—erased after the 1948 Nakba, when my family was forced into exile.
Our family is from Haifa and has been since its founding. Before that, AKKA, a town over 5000 years old. Like 90% of Palestinians, our DNA comes from the Ancient Hebrews. We are the indigenous peoples….
Sadly, I was the first of the Palestinian clan born in the United States. The first in our family to be ethically cleansed by the USA/Zionist Settlers, I grew up speaking Palestinian Arabic, loving the unique, amazing foods, and hearing the music of a place I’d never truly known. When I finally made an attempt to return, the borders were closed to people like me.
I have been told that our home is gone, streets bulldozed, streets renamed to fit the Euro-Zionist settlers, and history paved over. Yet the scent of olives, the jasmine night air, and my mother’s lullabies still called to me. I know it’s there! I can feel it.
I dedicate this track to peace, love, and brotherhood in hopes that someday, I will be able to find Palestine for our family and plant a tree where we stood for 5000 years. FREE PALESTINE! Free the People, all the people from this bondage!
This track blends upright bass, warm jazz chords, and a hint of oud to capture that longing—part memory, part resistance. It’s a love letter to a homeland that lives on in spirit, even when maps and borders try to erase it.
Signed, Johnny Punish
Style & Mood: Slow jazz ballad with modal Arabic touches (Dorian/Phrygian).
Instrumentation: Upright bass, brushed drums, jazz piano, soprano sax, and subtle Middle-Eastern textures.
Theme: Displacement, memory, and the unbreakable bond to one’s roots.
Press play, close your eyes, and drift through the echoes of a Haifa that still sings beneath the silence.
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LYRICS
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Zee bop a zen Un-nah min wen
Midnight air on an empty street
Maps don’t match the dust beneath my feet
Names erased, stone by stone
I search for a doorway that was once my own
Every sign is a stranger’s tongue
But my mother’s lullaby still hums
Through the jasmine and the broken walls
I hear her calling…calling
I’m lost in Palestine, where the echoes hide
Haifa dreams on a restless tide
Roots like smoke in a wind that won’t stay
Home is a memory they can’t take away
Grandmother’s laughter, a cedar night
Photographs faded to silver light
Seventy-Eight long years of exile rain
Still her heartbeat whispers my name
I’m lost in Palestine, where the echoes hide
Haifa dreams on a restless tide
Roots like smoke in a wind that won’t stay
Home is a memory they can’t take away
I’m lost in Palestine, but my soul still knows
The scent of the olives, the path where it goes
Streets renamed, but the sky’s the same
No map, no border can erase that flame
Zee bop a zen Un-nah min wen
Written and Performed by Johnny Punish
Produced by Punish Studios
Enhanced by AI
FREE PALESTINE!
