Music

"Caravan Festival of the Arts"
Harmony: East and West

Naseer Shamma

On 3 February 2010, the world renowned Iraqi oud (lute) master Naseer Shamma gave a solo performance at the CARAVAN Festival of the Arts, within St. John’s Church. Of the event, Naseer Shamma said, “It was always my dream to play inside at church. This had deeply moved me.”

Mr. Shamma was born in 1963 in a village on the Tigris River. When he was 11-years old, he saw an oud for the first time, in the hands of a stylish music teacher. And he began studying the oud at the age of 12 in Baghdad. It was in 1985, Shamma played his own compositions at his first concert. At the time, he worked closely with the late Iraqi master Munir Bashir. And he went on to receive his diploma from the Baghdad Academy of Music in 1987. Mr. Shamma performs on the oud in a manner which combines traditional methods with his own modern compositions. As an innovator, he has also created an eight-string oud following the manuscript of the 9th-century music theorist Al-Farabi. This new design (eight instead of six strings) expanded the musical range of the oud and gives it a distinct tonality. His innovations also include a new method of playing the oud with only one hand, so that injured children and soldiers, first from the Gulf War and now other conflicts, could play and enjoy the oud. Today he is also the founder and director of the Arab House of Oud here in Cairo, and gives concerts all around the world, and has received numerous international awards and prizes. He has also composed music for films, plays and television.