Ahmed “Muin” Abu Amsha is a Palestinian musician, sound engineer, composer, and music educator from Gaza. Known for his warmth, resilience, and ever-present smile, he has dedicated his life to spreading music as a message of peace, love, and dignity. He believes deeply that art is a universal language — one that transcends borders and connects hearts beyond differences.
Before the war, Ahmed taught guitar performance, music production, and music education at The American International School of Gaza, The Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, and The Delia Arts Foundation, inspiring a generation of young artists through his creative and emotionally driven teaching. He also founded Awtar for Sound Production Studio, where he composed, produced, and engineered music ranging from children’s songs and commercials to wedding music and popular tracks.
After losing his home and studio to the war and being displaced multiple times with his wife, five children & extended family, Ahmed turned to music as a source of resilience and healing.
Borrowing a guitar, he began visiting refugee shelters to sing with children and ease their trauma. This initiative grew into Gaza Birds Singing (GBS) — a musical ensemble composed of displaced children and fellow educators who, in makeshift tents, learn to sing and play instruments – including guitar, violin, ney, (a type of flute) percussion, and oud (a lute like stringed instrument).
Through music, Ahmed restores the children’s voices, offering them hope, joy, and emotional expression in the midst of devastation.
Ahmed is widely recognized for his innovative and deeply symbolic work teaching children to harmonize with the ever-present sound of military drones. One of GBS’s most powerful performances — a haunting rendition of the Palestinian song Sheel Sheel Ya Ajmal Sheel sung in harmony with a drone overhead — went viral on social media, turning fear into beauty and noise into song.
His work has been praised internationally, and he has been featured in numerous media outlets as well as in Iyad Alasttal’s documentary For the Honor of Gaza, screened at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris in 2025.
In addition to his educational and community work, Ahmed is developing Songs From the Rubble, an ongoing project supported by a global network of friends and collaborators. This collection brings together songs he has composed and recorded since 2023, alongside re-releases of earlier work remixed in partnership with musicians and producers worldwide who share his love of music and his desire for peace and freedom for all.
For Ahmed, music is more than an art form — it is resistance, healing, and testimony. As he says:
“We don’t carry weapons — we carry melodies. We don’t spread hate — we spread love. We believe the world can be a better place, if only it listens to the voice of art.”
