Articles
Iraq
Iraqi music-in-exile flourishes in baghdad
by Ahmad al-Sa’adawi
22 July 2007
Source: Niqash
The songs of Husam al-Rasam - a member of Iraq’s latest generations of musicians - blare out from public spaces and marketplaces all over Baghdad. He is immensely popular with teenagers and young people. Funnily enough, al-Rasam has never performed in Iraq, doesn’t live there, and records his songs elsewhere. Like most Iraqi singers of his generation, he originated there but blossomed outside its borders.
The Iraqi music boom outside the country is tightly connected to the worsening security situation within the country, the atrophy of artistic activity and the complete cessation of many of its facets after the hegemony of fundamentalist religious currents over the political and social scenes in the country.
Before the fall of Saddam’s regime, an aspiring singer could get a visa for the artistic circuit merely by recording a song praising Saddam. The song would subsequently be aired on state television. Many young singers had to resort to this in the 1990s, sometimes having to repeat this in order to confirm to Ba’thists within the art scene that they were loyal to the regime. Often, a singer would only be allowed to leave the country - for a concert, or to film a music video - after various security measures involving interrogations were taken. Those who accompanied major singers or performed in bands often complained that they were constantly being shadowed and scrutinized wherever they went, in any Arab capital. These procedures were mostly just for observation purposes, to make sure of the singer’s loyalty to Saddam.
Two trends marked the music of young Iraqis during the 1990s, the era which saw the rise of Kathem al-Saher as an Iraqi singer on the Arab scene, whose persona and performance influenced young singers inside Iraqi.
The first phenomenon was that the songs in praise of the regime and its leader plummeted to new depths of degradation, as singers began to extol the leader’s mustache, as well as those of his children. It reached such an extent that songs like this would appear a day or two after the leader would give a speech or improvise a few words at a routine meeting with officers or tribal leaders - the new song would use words from that speech or talk for its main lyrics. Such songs were performed by young people, for the most part.
The second phenomenon was the predominance of populist music; loud beats and rhythms dominated these new songs, and a number of singers emerged onto the scene, who had previously been known through tapes of their performances at weddings and other occasions. Then, at the turn of the millennium, we began to experience a revivalist trend, a return to the Iraqi music of the 1970s and their reinterpretation by young singers, despite the fact that the original singers were still alive and performing.
Certain people concerned with the music scene in Iraq consider the variety of performances and influences, in addition to the willingness to borrow from world and regional music (Kurdish, Turkish, Greek and Gulf Arab) to have opened up an unprecedented space for new talent. On the other hand, you could just as easily find a music critic, such as Adel al-Hashimi, who considers the whole matter to be catastrophic, a true disaster that befell Iraqi music. Other, more tolerant critics accuse al-Hashimi of being stuck in the age of Rida Ali and Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab (the romantic and classical eras), of inflexibility and an unwillingness to understand the new trends in Iraqi music.
Husam al-Rasam, he of the immense popularity, began his career emulating Um Kulthum and Muhammad Abd alWahhab, and Iraqi singers from the 1970s, considered to be the most talented in Iraq’s history of music and song, such as Yas Khudr, Hussein Na’meh, Kahtan al-Attar, Fuad Salem, Fadel Awad and others. But al-Rasam did not make much of an impact with this style of music, and so he veered from extreme right to extreme left (or maybe, the other way!), and began to appear with loud music with populist tones. Within a short period he achieved all the fame he had dreamed of, particularly with the young people who seem to be his widest, and biggest, audience.
Al-Rasam is certainly among the lucky ones since he never had to sing for Saddam and did not endure that harsh period when singers were forced to perform bare in front of the leader or his son Uday. He also never had to face threats, imprisonment or beatings at the hands of the leader’s son’s bodyguards on a whim. But he seems unable to sing inside Iraq at the moment, something he has in common with the pioneers of song, who have also left for Dubai or Syria or Amman, moving their professional activities there as well.
The environment in Iraq is untenable for work of this sort, and for artistic activities like theater performances and film projections. These activities usually have to happen at night, which is currently a dead time in Baghdad, because of the security threat. Moreover, no artist can really be sure of his safety, that he will not be attacked at the hands of extremist groups.
Also young artists’ tapes and videos continue to be broadcast on Arab satellite channels, available everywhere in Iraq, omnipresent, and supported by a limited social courage that tries to overcome the armed groups’ prohibitions. One example of this courage is the audio material that is now played at parking lots in the capital; compared with the period immediately following the fall of the regime popular songs have slowly replaced religious songs and chants. Hearing a song by Husam al-Rasam, Majid al-Muhandis and other Arab singers emanating from a young person’s mobile phone is common, even in those areas controlled by extremist groups.
Compared to the 1970s, which is considered to be the golden age of Iraqi songs, everything has changed drastically now. Some compare the Iraqi music currently flourishing in Arab capitals to Iranian music, which has been exported to Iran from its European and American places of exile for over a quarter century. Others consider the exile of Iraqi music to be natural, since the Arabic music production houses are exclusively located in cities like Dubai, to which most Arab singers flock. The globalization that has taken the Arab world by force has made the virtual geography of the satellite channels the natural and central location for singers and their music, which considers national borders to be one among many cultural sources.
What’s missing from this picture is the social impact of this music upon Iraqis’ lives, like the tales that older people tell of concerts and soirees that they used to attend in casinos and theaters in Baghdad, where they would watch a singer perform until the early hours. These stories quickly seem to be dream-like, dissipating almost immediately with the sounds of anonymous gunfire that Baghdad’s citizens have now become used to hearing every night as they sit in their homes.
Personally, the last concert I attended was a performance by the Kurdish Symphony orchestra in Sulaymaniyah. That evening, my heart was torn between the Kurdish singers’ magical performance and thoughts of Baghdad at that moment. Joining these two images together creates an unforgettable contrast.
Most of the Baghdadis there that night at the concert were united by a common sorrowful hope that one day they would be able to attend similar artistic events in the capital.
