This article probes the socially embedded musical pathways and learning strategies followed by professional Palestinian Arab wedding musicians active in the Galilee region of northern Israel from the late 1960s until the present day, from their first childhood experiences of music until the point when they step onto the platform for the first time to perform for payment at a wedding party. Following Susan O'Neill's model of the thick learning ecologies -- interconnected and situated learning environments -- that young people draw upon in order to build their musical competence (2017), and based on data from narrative interviews, we examine the processes by which young Palestinian Arab musicians in the Galilee acquire the musical, technical, social and entrepreneurial knowledge required to enter the wedding scene.