***** 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/>
