Oud artiste's concert in Abu Dhabi

Naseer Shamma's performance today will be message of hope for fellow Iraqis


I still have reasons to refuse to play in my home country because Iraq continues to be occupied by a foreign power," an angry Naseer Shamma, renowned oud player and Iraqi exile, said at a press conference yesterday at the Ministry of Information and Culture in Abu Dhabi.

Naseer Shamma took the opportunity to express despair about the situation in his country. "I was not for the deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussain since I had to leave the country because of him. But I still refuse to return to my country and play because it's occupied by another country.

"We have paid dearly for being liberated from Saddam Hussain," he continued. "There's been endless destruction, pain and martyrs. How can I return to my country in such a situation?

"We knew that one day the dictator will be pushed out by force from our country but we had hoped that this will come from within. The removal of Saddam has cost us our freedom. I'm tremendously pained about the situation in my country," he said.

Shamma will perform at a concert organised by the Abu Dhabi Music Foundation in the National Theatre today. During the concert, he will highlight his belief that Iraq will rise once again.

Recalling his incarceration in Iraq, he said that despite being the "worst period in my life, the suffering made my soul pure and made me understand my music better".

His concert in Abu Dhabi - the third in the city - titled Letter to Iraq will thus centre around the pain Iraqis feel over the war and the occupation and the will to restore their country to its former glory. The one-and-a-half-hour concert will start with his own composition Baghdad by Night. This piece, Shamma revealed, poetically sketches the reflections of the light on the Dijla river in Iraq following the destruction of war.

Other songs that he will perform include Freedom, composed long before the invasion and makes a heartfelt plea for freedom; Violets, which refers to the martyrs who died fighting for freedom from the dictator; On the Edge of Pain is a salute to the story of a determined Palestinian lady who stood her ground against the occupying power to return home; and Discourse with Adults will take listeners through the history of Arab civilisation.

Shamma will also play his all-time classic, Once Upon a Time in Al Amiriya, an ode to the memory of innocents who were killed in the bomb shelter in the 1991 war.

Shamma will be accompanied - for the first time - by a banjo, tabla and rik. The new melody that will emerge from these instruments is aimed at popularising Arabic music around the world, he said.

Shamma - credited with making an eight-string oud based on the specifications provided in a manuscript by the famous 9th century music theorist, Al Farabi- will play the six-string oud at the concert. He is also known for reproducing the sounds of birds and animals on the oud. At the Abu Dhabi concert too, he will play the oud to conjure up various images for the listener.

"You will get to hear the silence of the war in my concert," he said.

Born in Kut, Iraq, on May 7, 1963, Shamma graduated with a degree in music from the Institute of Musical Studies, Baghdad, in 1987. If you ever question this musician about his tryst with the oud, his reply is: "It was my destiny. I was destined to play the oud, I do what I was meant to."

Shamma held his first concert in 1985 at the Orphaly hall in Iraq and went on to give well-received performances in Iraq and abroad.

In 1988, he even won the Best Arab Musician award in Jordan at a music festival. The next year Shamma was jailed for having spoken out against the Iraqi government.

Shamma, who has given concerts in most places around the world, has just returned after performing in Britain, Italy, Norway, Belgium and Egypt.