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NASEER SHAMMA
Naseer Shamma was born in
1963 in Kut, a village on the Tigris River in Iraq. He began studying
the oud at the age of 12 in Baghdad, following in the footsteps of
Jamil and Munir Bachir. When he was 11, Shamma saw the oud for the
first time, in the hands of a stylish music teacher. Although Shamma's
father, a shop owner, was religiously conservative, he did not object
to his son's artistic ambitions. In 1985, Shamma played his own
compositions at his first concert, attended by several renowned Iraqi
artists. At the time, he worked closely with "the emir of the oud," the
late Iraqi master Munir Bashir. But Shamma wanted to blaze his own
path. Master Munir invented the technique of contemplation with oud,
but I wanted my music to carry content, an idea or image that is
shocking. He received his diploma from the Baghdad Academy of Music in
1987. He began to teach oud after three years at the academy, as
well as continuing his own studies. Shamma has composed music
for films, plays and television, and has written a unique oud
method for one hand - this is designed at for
children injured during the Gulf War. Between
1993 and 1998 he taught oud the Higher
Institute of Music in Tunisia, and in 1999 he took the
post of Director of the Arab Centre for the Oud in Cairo. His
compositions are culturally unique. He performs on the oud in a manner
which combines ancient methods with his own modern compositions. |
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