Away from all the Valentine's day hoopla today, celebrate the art of music and head out to the Naseer Shamma concert tonight at the MUST Opera House at the Misr University of Science and Technology in Sixth of October.
Dubbed the King of oud, Shamma is one of today’s most renowned oud musicians worldwide. Shamma was also the only musician to have constructed an eight-string oud instead of six to maximize the musical range of the oriental instrument. He has combined traditional and modern techniques in oud playing and composing and promoted the importance of including those with physical disabilities in the music scene by often performing on his our with one hand only.
He was born in 1963 in Iraq and studied music at Baghdad’s Instituted of Music, specializing later in the oud. A composer, player and well-rounded musician, Shamma has brought the love of oud to various countries in and outside the Arab World. He is also the founder director of Cairo’s Beit Al-oud Al-Arabi at Al-Harawi.
On his Facebook page, Shamma says he was reluctant to hold a concert in such turbulent times in the Arab world, but this concert carries a message he would like to put out: “A message of love to the Arab people, to the Arabic human being […] everywhere, to those suffering from death, murder and displacement, to the entire Arab nation,” wrote Shamma.
The concert, to him, is especially “a message of love to my noble Iraqi people and a message of love to my family in Egypt and Tunisia.”
