Arabic Music Days (Sponsored Content)

Occasionally history presses the fast forward or rewind button, as happened in Europe this week. Tanks rolling across European borders have revived memories of the Cold War, and nowhere more so than in Berlin, a city now experiencing PTSD-type flashbacks to an age many had thought consigned to history.

Fleeing Ukranians are met at the railway stations by Germans holding placards offering spare rooms in family homes. Berliners, no strangers to welcoming desperate souls displaced by conflict, prefer to call them ‘new arrivals’ not refugees. The talk in the city’s bars is ‘cold showers for Ukraine’ to reduce Germans’ reliance on Putin’s gas.

It was in this context that Berliners beat a path to this year’s Arabic Music Days, a fabulous week-long festival of Arabic music, poetry, painting and film.  Established five years ago by the founder of the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation (ADMAF), Her Excellency Huda Ebrahim Alkhamis-Kanoo, Arabic Music Days has become a respected fixture in the Berlin music scene.

The venue, the prestigious Pierre Boulez Saal, is a jewel of contemporary auditorium design – its audiences sit in the round, while in the gallery the seats form a gentle elliptical waveform. Intimate and modern, it’s the ideal venue for a conversation about East-West cultural relations.

With bombs raining down two-hours from Berlin, ADMAF’S mission to build bridges of understanding between cultures has never seemed so important. The theme of the festival – trios as forms of human connection and conversation – matched the mood even as events unfolded.

Gharbi Trio

The curator of the 2022 edition of Arabic Music Days, Iraqi oud player Naseer Shamma, had been prevented from appearing at Friday’s sell-out performance at the last minute because of ‘visa problems’. His fellow musicians rallied and hastily improvised a programme of ensemble pieces, a crowd-pleasing showcase of kanun, drums, ney (flute), singing and flamenco guitar.

Saturday’s oud player Bechir Gharbi, whose Gharbi Twins Trio had the audience leaping to their feet in appreciation, had missed his father’s funeral four weeks ago, also for visa reasons. The irony of a festival devoted to building bridges through the arts being upended by visa bureaucracy would have been funny if it wasn’t all too common an experience.

The Gharbi Trio gave a spellbinding, virtuosic performance. These Tunisian brothers had grown up in a musical home, voraciously listening to whichever cassette tapes they could lay their hands on, to absorb and understand all sorts of musical styles. “There is no perfect music” Bechir explained, “music is about exchange, it’s organic, ideas happen when different thoughts meet each other. It’s a language that steps in and takes over when we don’t have any other words.”

The trio’s performance ranged from expressive melody to deep, percussive, rhythmic chant, with Bechir introducing each piece and its genesis. ‘Nomade Tunisien’ evoked a mystical journey by his brother through that country’s mountains and deserts. ‘Murmures’ ranged hypnotically, with rhythms snaking around a ‘conversation’ between Bechir’s oud, Mohammed’s violin and Sami’s kanun. 

Bechir Gharbi teaches music at Abu Dhabi’s Yas school. He is passionate about improving access to music and improving music teaching for children in the Middle East. He’s been asked to advise the UAE Ministry of Education on the curriculum and his enthusiastic belief in the power of music fits neatly with the desire of ADMAF’s founder to support the next generation of musicians. Thanks to ADMAF a whole generation of young people are being gifted opportunities, education and simply the chance to hear and appreciate beautiful music.

The Berlin audience loved it. This is one of the most demanding audiences in the world, and Arabic Music Days trailblazes Arabic music for sophisticated ears and hearts. Thanks to Mrs Kanoo’s persistence, Abu Dhabi is becoming a serious player in this sort of cultural diplomacy in a world that needs it more urgently than ever before.

Arabic Music Days performances are available until March 15 on https://www.boulezsaal.de/en 

This text was provided on behalf of Arabic Music Days