Kazem Al Sahir: Iraqi Star Tours U.S. and Sings of Baghdad

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Kazem Al Saher -- Singing for Iraq and Its Children:
<http://www.cairotimes.com/content/people/kazart.html>

*****   New York Times  February 26, 2003

Iraqi Star Tours U.S. and Sings of Baghdad

By NEIL STRAUSS

LAS VEGAS, Nev., Feb. 23 - In "Beauty and His Love," the singer Kazem
al-Sahir confesses to his girlfriend that there is someone he loves
more than her, someone whom he sleeps with every night, someone whom
he dreams of daily. His distraught girlfriend begs him to reveal the
name of this lover. Her name, he finally tells her, is Baghdad.

"It is one of my most popular songs," Mr. Sahir said, sitting in a
restaurant at the Palms Casino Resort here for his first in-person
interview since arriving in the United States from a video shoot in
Morocco. "Whenever I sing it, the audience asks that I repeat it,
again and again. But I will only sing it twice in a concert."

Mr. Sahir, 41, is not only Iraq's biggest pop star but also one of
the most popular singers in the Arab world, a dashing romantic who
has sold about 31 million albums [Yoshie: Yeah, he's really cute! --
<http://www.romanysaad.com/kazemelsaher/pictures/elhobelmostaheelcdpage01.jpg>]
. And as Iraq and the United States prepare for war, he has chosen to
do something that almost any thinking person would say was foolish.
He is starting an American tour.

It began on Saturday night with a private performance for the
Maloofs, the Lebanese-American family that owns the Palms, and their
guests. Mr. Sahir is scheduled to perform in Manhattan on Friday
night at the Beacon Theatre.

"My friends, they didn't want me to come here now," Mr. Sahir said,
conducting his first interview mostly in English since hiring a tutor
two years ago. "It's a difficult time."

Brian Taylor Goldstein, the arts attorney who obtained Mr. Sahir's
work visa, said: "Getting an Iraqi singer in right now was not the
easiest thing in the world. And the V3 category of visa, for
culturally unique performers like Kazem, has been especially
difficult, because it often means the artist is coming from a
non-Western culture."

It helped that Mr. Sahir had a Canadian passport, because his
children and his wife, from whom he is separated, live there. Though
he left Iraq in the early 1990's and has become a Canadian citizen
(he has homes in Cairo, Dubai, Paris and Toronto), he still says that
Iraq will always be his home. He said he felt compelled to tour so
that he could "show another face of my country" and inspire Americans
to "think good thoughts - not all bad thoughts - of my people."

When he sat next to Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United
Nations, on a flight recently, Mr. Sahir said, he handed him a CD and
wrote on it, "Don't forget about Iraqi children."

Fans of his long, symphonic, sinuous songs of romantic love include
two Grammy winners: Carlos Santana, who has arranged to meet Mr.
Sahir after the Iraqi singer's Berkeley show next week, and the
soprano Sarah Brightman, who sang a duet with him, "The War Is Over,"
for her next album.

When the BBC World Service asked its listeners to come up with the
"world's Top 10 favorite" songs, Mr. Sahir's "Ana wa Laila" ("Me and
Laila') was No. 6, two places above Cher's "Believe."...

Iraq is considered by some to be the cradle of classic Arabic poetry
and music, a tradition carried on by the Musical Institute of
Baghdad, where Mr. Sahir studied. Born in northern Iraq, he lived in
austerity with nine siblings. At age 10 he sold his bicycle to buy a
guitar and started inventing romantic stories for his girlfriends. By
age 13 he was not only writing love letters for his older brothers to
send to girlfriends but also composing classical-based songs for his
own girlfriends.

Known primarily as a songwriter for other musicians, he worked for
several years to persuade the music establishment there to let him
both compose and sing his own songs. And when he finally appeared on
television with his own "Ladghat el Hayya" ("The Snake Bite") in
1987, it was banned for lyrics that discussed Baghdad's atmosphere of
fear and restriction near the end of the Iran-Iraq war.

He soon earned a reputation for being an exacting, detail-oriented
composer with one foot in the classical world and the other in the
pop world. He revived traditional romantic classical music and
incorporated out-of-use Arabic musical scales, paved the way for
other contemporary Iraqi singers to seek fame outside the country,
collaborated with some of the Arab world's finest poets and refused
to replace his large orchestra with synthesizers. He is composing an
opera based on the "Epic of Gilgamesh."

The Persian Gulf war and the ensuing embargo, however, had a heavy
impact on his art and career, which was derailed for several years.
"There was no electricity and no petrol," he recalled. "I had to bike
two or three hours to see my friends. But I composed my best songs in
this time."

During the bombings, he continued, he put all his music in a part of
the house as far from his bedroom as possible. He wrote a note that
he placed on top of the recordings, instructing whoever found them to
release the music. This way, he said, if the house was bombed during
the night, "either me or my music would survive."

When the interview turned political, Mr. Sahir politely sidestepped
the questions, as he has throughout his career. But when asked what
he would like to say to President Bush, he answered: "Think about the
children and the innocent people. Don't let them suffer."...

<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/26/arts/music/26SING.html>   *****

"Kazem Al-Saher in Rare Tour":
<http://www.pollstar.com/news/viewnews.pl?NewsID=2404>

Niraj Warikoo, "Songs of Love, Hope: Iraqi Musician Wants to Break
Down Barriers through Heartfelt Lyrics," _Detroit Free Press_,
February 28, 2003:
<http://www.freep.com/news/metro/nkazem28_20030228.htm>

Aaron Cohen, "Musician Bringing Iraqi Culture to U.S.," _Chicago
Tribune_, February 24, 2003:
<http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0302240025feb24,0,5903909.story>

Kazem Al Sahir Concerts:

* Sunday, 03/02/03, 8:00 pm, Chicago Theatre, Chicago, IL:
<http://www.ticketmaster.com/artist/857162/> &
<http://www.asianvibrations.com/cgi-bin/getGigNews.cgi?newsNumber=10&db=Artist>

* Friday 3/7/2003, 8:00 pm, Berkeley Community Theatre, Berkeley, CA:
<http://www.cityboxoffice.com/ordertickets.asp?p=746> &
<http://www.cityboxoffice.com/eventperformances.asp?evt=574&pg=>

* March 8, 2003, Holiday Inn on the Bay, San Diego, CA:
<http://www.asianvibrations.com/cgi-bin/getGigNews.cgi?newsNumber=13&db=Artist>
--
Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus:
<http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>
* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>

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