theindependenteye
06-01-2008, 09:28 PM
Hi—
A few years back, we interviewed two musicians for our radio show (https://www.independenteye.org/episodearchive.html - search "Cameron & Kristina") whose current path is performing indigenous music in faraway lands. They were on the streets of Baghdad three weeks after the invasion. Right now they've been traveling in Syria & Lebanon. These are their current posts, and I forward them simply because nothing remotely like it occurs in our press.
Cheers—
Conrad
***
Arriving in Damascus two weeks ago, we were in time to see the last two evening performances of "Women in Arabic Music" headlined at the Azem Palace in the old city. We had already missed the Iraqi and Syrian evenings but were able to attend the Egyptian and Lebanese presentations during the next two nights as parts of tightly packed open-air crowds. Admission was free as the Syrian government sponsored the event. Conversations with Syrian folks in the audience revealed that, yes, they were surprised to discover that we were Americans since they haven't seen as many of us for the last few years, but that they were just as earnestly welcoming as ever. We were frequently reminded that people in this part of the world know better than to associate individual people with the governments which attempt to rule them.
We were gratified to see that ongoing love for the ancient maqam music remained predominant with very little influence from modern European and American well-tempered scales. The Lebanese music has been perhaps the most Westernized. Damascus, like Aleppo and Baghdad, claims five thousand years of cultural and musical heritage wherein lyrics have been composed in Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Turkmen, Persian, Armenian and Turkish tongues by mixtures of Assyrian, Armenian, Syrian, Shi'ite, Sunnite, Christian, Jewish, Arab, Kurdish, Turkish, Turkmen and Persian musicians. There are several hundreds of cultural, religious and ethnic groups which have been flocking to the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris and to other Fertile Crescent capitals for ages with a remarkable amount of peace and harmony. We spent an afternoon in Aleppo with a Syrian Jewish friend whom we had met on a previous trip. We met a Sabean Iraqi south of Damascus in Jarmana near Saida Zeinab where the vast majority
of the two million exiled Iraqis in Syria are now living. Christian historians sometimes acknowledge Sabean wisdom as having underlain Essene teachings which helped shape those of Jesus. Jarmana was the same neighborhood in which we had sung with Palestinian refugee children in the fall of 2003.
After a third evening in Damascus we rented a tiny little car and drove to Ma'alula and Jubadin where Aramaic is still the commonly spoken household language. Ma'alula is now becoming an important destination for Christians interested in hearing the language Jesus spoke. We spent the night in the Christian Convent of Saint Tekla, a female Saint who lived 1800 years ago. We were delighted to discover that the inhabitants of these two towns now take pride in their ancient language and are helping to be certain that it doesn't die out. Of course they are all bilingual in both Aramaic and Arabic. There are also Aramaic-speaking villages still in Iraq.
Please encourage your friends who may be interested to add their email addresses to our list at: https://www.musicalmissions.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi
Or have them just send us an email requesting to be added to the list!
Thanks and More Soon, Cameron
Please reply to this email if you are so inclined. We love to hear from you!
To support or read more about our 501c3 non-profit organization:
www.musicalmissionsofpeace.org
Cameron and Kristina:
www.musicalmissions.com press.
***
Driving down to the Mediterranean coast to Lattakia on the following day we were greeted by our friend Mohammad who is a generous young Sunni Muslim man living in the primarily Allawite part of Syria who takes pride in networking people and their projects in a global web of connections which serve the benefit of all. As is frequently the case in this culture, he has something positive to say about everyone and easily radiates enthusiastic good will. Thanks to him we met Fadhil, the new Iraqi director for our project in Syria to support Iraqi musical teachings. We met Arab music historian Ali Haddad and his son Abd al Wahab Haddad who generously offered to support our work in whatever ways possible. We met Anthony Ham who is researching and writing the Lonely Planet guidebook. He may do a feature about our work for the next edition of the Middle East book. And, again thanks to Mohammad's networking, we did a musical performance at the local Dhikrayat Restaurant in which we fea
tured songs from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.
Driving back up into the Northern highlands we arrived in Aleppo where we met with Ibrahim Sukar and discussed methods for providing traditional Arabic musical instruments to the Iraqi music students who become involved with our project. We met an oud player who sings both Syrian and Iraqi maqam music in a local restaurant and joined in the singing with him when our repertoires overlapped.
But it was back in Damascus, with Fadhil leading us that we were, as reported in our last email update, able to establish a framework for our program.
Visiting the parts of Damascus where most Iraqi refugees live, we walked down "Little Iraq Street", we ate Iraqi food and we visited the incredible Saida Zeinab Mosque. Saida Zeinab is a popular destination for people from all over the Islamic world. It is teeming with multi-ethnic populations and the evening ecstatic activities in the Mosque are unlike anything I have even imagined. A fervor of prayer and singing builds to uproarious devotional proportions. Kristina joined women and children on one side of the internal shrine who romped and prayed while Fadhil and I entered the men's side passing through groups of young men singing vocal chants while striking their bodies as if they themselves were the drums. Sparkling lights reflected in multicolored chandeliers of crystals underneath a golden dome illuminated everything with indescribable brilliance while the men moved and undulated in trance as they rubbed themselves against the shrine.
Out in the streets we are again surrounded by an Iraqi majority. Again and again we find that the these people know and adore singers like Nazem al Ghazali whose ecstatic performances of maqam music seventy years ago, at the dawn of the era of recorded music, helped perpetuate this part of the Iraqi soul. They are enchanted to hear that our Musical Mission of Peace aims to help support the teaching of these musical styles so that the younger generations can carry this legacy forward while simultaneously providing employment for these displaced Iraqis.
Please encourage your friends who may be interested to add their email addresses to our list at: https://www.musicalmissions.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi
Or have them just send us an email requesting to be added to the list!
Thanks and More Soon, Cameron
Please reply to this email if you are so inclined. We love to hear from you!
To support or read more about our 501c3 non-profit organization:
www.musicalmissionsofpeace.org
Cameron and Kristina:
www.musicalmissions.com
A few years back, we interviewed two musicians for our radio show (https://www.independenteye.org/episodearchive.html - search "Cameron & Kristina") whose current path is performing indigenous music in faraway lands. They were on the streets of Baghdad three weeks after the invasion. Right now they've been traveling in Syria & Lebanon. These are their current posts, and I forward them simply because nothing remotely like it occurs in our press.
Cheers—
Conrad
***
Arriving in Damascus two weeks ago, we were in time to see the last two evening performances of "Women in Arabic Music" headlined at the Azem Palace in the old city. We had already missed the Iraqi and Syrian evenings but were able to attend the Egyptian and Lebanese presentations during the next two nights as parts of tightly packed open-air crowds. Admission was free as the Syrian government sponsored the event. Conversations with Syrian folks in the audience revealed that, yes, they were surprised to discover that we were Americans since they haven't seen as many of us for the last few years, but that they were just as earnestly welcoming as ever. We were frequently reminded that people in this part of the world know better than to associate individual people with the governments which attempt to rule them.
We were gratified to see that ongoing love for the ancient maqam music remained predominant with very little influence from modern European and American well-tempered scales. The Lebanese music has been perhaps the most Westernized. Damascus, like Aleppo and Baghdad, claims five thousand years of cultural and musical heritage wherein lyrics have been composed in Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Turkmen, Persian, Armenian and Turkish tongues by mixtures of Assyrian, Armenian, Syrian, Shi'ite, Sunnite, Christian, Jewish, Arab, Kurdish, Turkish, Turkmen and Persian musicians. There are several hundreds of cultural, religious and ethnic groups which have been flocking to the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris and to other Fertile Crescent capitals for ages with a remarkable amount of peace and harmony. We spent an afternoon in Aleppo with a Syrian Jewish friend whom we had met on a previous trip. We met a Sabean Iraqi south of Damascus in Jarmana near Saida Zeinab where the vast majority
of the two million exiled Iraqis in Syria are now living. Christian historians sometimes acknowledge Sabean wisdom as having underlain Essene teachings which helped shape those of Jesus. Jarmana was the same neighborhood in which we had sung with Palestinian refugee children in the fall of 2003.
After a third evening in Damascus we rented a tiny little car and drove to Ma'alula and Jubadin where Aramaic is still the commonly spoken household language. Ma'alula is now becoming an important destination for Christians interested in hearing the language Jesus spoke. We spent the night in the Christian Convent of Saint Tekla, a female Saint who lived 1800 years ago. We were delighted to discover that the inhabitants of these two towns now take pride in their ancient language and are helping to be certain that it doesn't die out. Of course they are all bilingual in both Aramaic and Arabic. There are also Aramaic-speaking villages still in Iraq.
Please encourage your friends who may be interested to add their email addresses to our list at: https://www.musicalmissions.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi
Or have them just send us an email requesting to be added to the list!
Thanks and More Soon, Cameron
Please reply to this email if you are so inclined. We love to hear from you!
To support or read more about our 501c3 non-profit organization:
www.musicalmissionsofpeace.org
Cameron and Kristina:
www.musicalmissions.com press.
***
Driving down to the Mediterranean coast to Lattakia on the following day we were greeted by our friend Mohammad who is a generous young Sunni Muslim man living in the primarily Allawite part of Syria who takes pride in networking people and their projects in a global web of connections which serve the benefit of all. As is frequently the case in this culture, he has something positive to say about everyone and easily radiates enthusiastic good will. Thanks to him we met Fadhil, the new Iraqi director for our project in Syria to support Iraqi musical teachings. We met Arab music historian Ali Haddad and his son Abd al Wahab Haddad who generously offered to support our work in whatever ways possible. We met Anthony Ham who is researching and writing the Lonely Planet guidebook. He may do a feature about our work for the next edition of the Middle East book. And, again thanks to Mohammad's networking, we did a musical performance at the local Dhikrayat Restaurant in which we fea
tured songs from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.
Driving back up into the Northern highlands we arrived in Aleppo where we met with Ibrahim Sukar and discussed methods for providing traditional Arabic musical instruments to the Iraqi music students who become involved with our project. We met an oud player who sings both Syrian and Iraqi maqam music in a local restaurant and joined in the singing with him when our repertoires overlapped.
But it was back in Damascus, with Fadhil leading us that we were, as reported in our last email update, able to establish a framework for our program.
Visiting the parts of Damascus where most Iraqi refugees live, we walked down "Little Iraq Street", we ate Iraqi food and we visited the incredible Saida Zeinab Mosque. Saida Zeinab is a popular destination for people from all over the Islamic world. It is teeming with multi-ethnic populations and the evening ecstatic activities in the Mosque are unlike anything I have even imagined. A fervor of prayer and singing builds to uproarious devotional proportions. Kristina joined women and children on one side of the internal shrine who romped and prayed while Fadhil and I entered the men's side passing through groups of young men singing vocal chants while striking their bodies as if they themselves were the drums. Sparkling lights reflected in multicolored chandeliers of crystals underneath a golden dome illuminated everything with indescribable brilliance while the men moved and undulated in trance as they rubbed themselves against the shrine.
Out in the streets we are again surrounded by an Iraqi majority. Again and again we find that the these people know and adore singers like Nazem al Ghazali whose ecstatic performances of maqam music seventy years ago, at the dawn of the era of recorded music, helped perpetuate this part of the Iraqi soul. They are enchanted to hear that our Musical Mission of Peace aims to help support the teaching of these musical styles so that the younger generations can carry this legacy forward while simultaneously providing employment for these displaced Iraqis.
Please encourage your friends who may be interested to add their email addresses to our list at: https://www.musicalmissions.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi
Or have them just send us an email requesting to be added to the list!
Thanks and More Soon, Cameron
Please reply to this email if you are so inclined. We love to hear from you!
To support or read more about our 501c3 non-profit organization:
www.musicalmissionsofpeace.org
Cameron and Kristina:
www.musicalmissions.com