In progress:
Legends of the oud
By
Sherif Iskander Nakhla
Naseer Shamma, one of the world's most celebrated oud players, was born in Al-Kut, southern Iraq, in 1963 and earned a diploma from the Baghdad Institute for Music in 1987. His fame spreading, he established the Arab Oud House at the Cairo Opera House in 1998, and has acted as its director since. Shamma gave numerous concerts all over the world, producing four albums and earning nine awards. Shamma composes all that he plays himself.
I started playing the oud when I was 11. My music teacher at school was something of a hero to me, his presence in my life providing the necessary inspiration. In his class I felt at ease, it was as if I had found the place to which I really belonged. My home life was not musical, even if we frequently listened to Arabic or classical music on the radio, but my family was supportive enough. They've always supported my career decisions, I have to admit, even when they couldn't understand them.
Classical music played an important role in my ongoing musical education, Bach being my favourite, always. He makes me feel like a child discovering sound for the first time, there is this wonderful sense of innocence about it. And that's the case even though it's full of complex melodies that require a great deal of mathematical precision to achieve the right harmony. But the end result is that priceless feeling that reassures me about my choice of direction in life. To this day classical pieces I've been listening to all my life continue to amaze me .
Listeners often ask me about my techniques as a performer. How the oud can be made to produce sounds that resemble those of the guitar, the mandolin, the bouzouki? The answer is very simple: the oud is the oldest of all stringed instruments, its historical path beginning in Iraq prior to 2000 BC. The first guitar was actually assembled 3000 years later using the oud as a model.
My compositional techniques vary. Sometimes I start with a single melody, sometimes I let an incident that I have witnessed take over. I don't have a system. While attending a concert, for example, a melody might suddenly come to me, something completely different to what I'm listening to, and eventually a piece would be developed from that. Of course the more you practice the more you expose yourself to musical ideas and themes. I try not to narrow down the scope of my work. Sometimes it's simply a matter of mood. I can't just sit down and decide to write a happy or sad song, the mood has to come to me first. When the world becomes a better place I guess my music will be more joyful.
Sometimes my pieces are based on real events that I've witnessed, the most being the song It happened in Al-Amiriyya, based on a 1991 incident that happened during the Gulf War: American soldiers entered a shelter in which Iraqi children were hiding, and 800 children were killed. I don't remember exactly how I felt but I found myself going to the site of the massacre the next day. I took my oud along and started to play, letting out my feelings. The song is not a political statement. I've never been a great believer in politics and I don't like being referred to as an activist. The song is simply a record of the day I was playing in the middle of the burnt out backpacks, toys and clothes. It was the first Arabic song describing an actual event, and I tried to be as graphic as possible in the writing of the song so that the listeners would be as imaginative as they could be. In this case it wasn't about melodies any longer: the song includes siren sounds (from the oud) among other atmospheric ideas, innovations that serve that purpose.
Usually I perform solo on stage and occasionally with a group of my students or graduates of the Arab Oud House. My biggest concerts took place in Syria -- I'd be playing before a crowd of 7000 people -- but it's one kind of audience. One of the reasons I like performing in the small hall at the opera is because the audience is far more diverse, if smaller. I don't write my music with the intention of reaching a specific crowd, I want it to reach as broad a range of people as possible, from children to old people. Each person interprets a song in a different way. In some of the music reviews, critics write optimistic comments about my work, implying that listeners should be familiar with my career and the stories of my songs before they can fully appreciate them. That is not my intention. I'd rather each person came out with his or her own very private interpretation, envisioning what the song means to him or her. Even with something like It happened in Al- Amiriyya, I was actually relieved when somebody told me they felt the song was about love. The goal of my concerts is to enable the audience to go away with a sense of love, harmony, thought, and above all, hope.
My object as a musician is a bit more complex, the aim being to harmonise a person with himself. People who have a propensity for savage hatred, for crime or destruction must sooner or later realise that the problem resides within themselves, a problem that only they can settle, on their own. The purpose of my music is to help people make peace with themselves, to become better human beings, irrespective of the stories behind the songs. The purpose of all music is to drive people closer to beauty and to God.
In the next three months I'll be busy performing in Frankfurt, Vienna, Dubai, Spain and Egypt. Afterwards I plan to go somewhere isolated, away from the hustle and bustle, probably somewhere in Switzerland. I think the time has come for me to relax and rediscover my relationship with the oud, to revive the feeling that I first had when I started writing songs. I feel that I have changed a great deal during the last five years and I want to get back to my musical roots and focus once again on playing.
