Maya Youssef, the Syrian qanun player on the search for her spiritual home

The concept of home is undeniably complex.

For some, the word conjures images of place, a physical space that feels familiar and welcoming.

For others, it can be a feeling, a grounded mental space that acts as a connection between their inner self and their outside environment.

Others still find their sense of acceptance and belonging in communities of people with shared experiences and values.

For Maya Youssef “home is a state of being. It’s that place where you are in peace. It’s a soft space, an open space, a beautiful space. It’s a space of healing… It’s that place where you’re completely held and completely found.”

Maya Youssef (photo: Nick White)

It may be no surprise that Youssef has thought a good deal about ‘home.’

Having left behind her native Damascus, she immigrated to the UK in 2012 to escape the ongoing Syrian war that has, to date, seen 6.6 million refugees flee the country and internally displaced just as many.

It’s a reminder that sometimes ‘home’ can feel like a luxury denied to so many.

The qanun player is speaking to me via Zoom from her adopted home of London and is explaining the idea behind her new album, Finding Home. “It’s a concept album. It’s about the different ways that we find home.”

She describes it as a spiritual awakening, an arrival at peace through the grief of her first album.

Syrian Dreams, which won her a Songlines Music Award in 2018, was a document of her journey through the Syrian War and her longing for a home she was forced to leave behind.

“It was a direct response to war, and I was in a deep process of grief. I was scared of death. I used to refuse going to funerals, even the funeral of my grandmother, I was scared of facing it.”

Maya Youssef (photo: Nick White)

In contrast, Finding Home reveals an artist who has worked through the grief to come out the other side renewed.

“It’s true that grief is what made me write music, but I had to go through that hardcore low to find a place [of healing]. And in that place there is grief and there is joy.”

And this shows in the music of Finding Home. There is gratitude on the funky ‘Jasmin Bayati: To an Earth Angel’ (“an earth angel is somebody who just overwhelms you with their kindness and with their warmth, and they don’t expect anything back, they just exude goodness”); hope on ‘Walk With Me’ (about “seeing all humanity walking together towards a better future for everybody and the earth”) and grief on the moving ‘My Homeland’.

Watch a live performance of 'My Homeland':

“My musical practice and my spiritual practice are one, there is no separation,” she says, explaining how composing helped her find this place of healing.

“I still pray before I write. I’m like, ‘OK, I’m open, show me the way.’ And sometimes I’m writing and I go, ‘really? I’ve never done anything like that, that’s very not like me.’ And I just go with it.”

But she admits that it’s a process that’s taken some refinement. “With Syrian Dreams it was almost that there was this river that was flooding from behind me, and I just had to go with it. But now I feel that I can talk to this river… it’s more like a conversation, a place of active engagement with it as opposed to being completely flooded and carried away by it.”

Maya Youssef (photo: Nick White)

But this doesn’t mean the conversation can’t still be surprising. “While I’m playing,” she continues, “I feel like I’m plugged in to this column of light, and everything just disappears. Sometimes I get overwhelmed with very strong feelings. Sometimes I get flashbacks of Syria or of people that are dear to my heart. The experience manifests in so many different ways. It’s like when you dream you don’t know what to expect.”

As we speak about the tracks on Finding Home it becomes clear how many of them took her in directions she didn’t expect.

Two pieces on the album were commissioned by the British Museum to tie with an exhibition of contemporary Middle Eastern art, Reflections.

Youssef was allowed to visit the exhibition while the museum was shut and respond to the art.

“Two works immediately called to me.” The first was Unravelling by Iranian artist Samira Abbasy, which is a charcoal drawing of a woman, her face obscured by other faces, looking something like a Persian Janus, and the titles of famous Oum Kalthoum songs are written on her skirt.

Youssef tried to use these songs as her entry point, teasing out their melodies for inspiration, but nothing seemed to work.

“Then I was like, OK I’m just going to put everything aside and deeply listen to what the painting is trying to tell me. The words ‘Soul Fever’ immediately came to me and it worked. The main melody was done in two hours after that.”

‘Soul Fever’ starts with a melody played by keys wiz Al MacSween (of Kefaya fame) that seems to interrupt itself and restart, as if stuck on the record player.

The qanun picks up the same melody and then the piece alternates between beautiful searching passages of improvisation and moments of swirling and, well, feverish pitches of fast notes and glissandi.

Youssef had the opportunity to speak to Abbasy about the artwork and was amazed to hear that she had somehow channelled the artist’s state of creative ecstasy.

“When she was drawing she said she was pretty much in a state of soul fever, a feverish state of searching for spiritual peace.”

The other artwork that grabbed her attention was Silent Letters by Lebanese artist Huguette Caland, an abstract painting of straight lines stacked on top of each other described by the artist’s daughter as ‘an invitation to her daydreaming.’

“Letting your imagination roam is one of my favourite hobbies,” Youssef says.

Drawing on this almost throwaway line in the exhibition’s notes, she wrote the album’s opener, ‘An Invitation to Daydream’.

The eight-minute track starts with the juxtaposition of vertical qanun chords over a horizontal wash of synths that seems to mimic the lines of the painting.

“This is the track that morphed the most before I planned it. But I knew that the vibe of it was a deep breath, letting your imagination roam in this beautiful, magical space where you’re filled with wonder.”

While some of the songs had been gestating for awhile, Youssef really leaned into the project in December 2019 when she started applying for funding.

“Because I knew I wanted to do this independently. And I knew it was going to be very collaborative.”

When the pandemic hit, lesser musicians may have been deterred, but it only made Youssef lean in harder.

“You only need to tell me that I can’t do something and my appetite for doing it increases tenfold. So with COVID, you can’t do stuff? Great, let’s get busy!” She laughs.

She also didn’t allow COVID to get in way of the collaborative aspect of Finding Home.

Considering the album’s concept, she explains that she wanted to translate the essence of ‘home’ with musicians she “felt at home with.”

So, while Syrian Dreams was a much more intimate affair with Youssef’s qanun supported only by oud, cello and percussion, Finding Home features a much larger cast including MacSween, percussionist Elizabeth Nott, Mikele Montolli on upright bass (“I don’t know why I didn’t work with a double bass before, it’s just one of the most delicious instruments on earth. It’s like chocolate to my ears”), Shirley Smart on cello, members of Opera North’s Orchestra, the voice of Hamsa Mounif and Leo Abrahams as co-producer.

Youssef notes that ‘My Mother’s Sweet Embrace’ marks the first time she’s ever worked with a vocalist: “I used to be annoyed that the traditional view of the qanun player needs to be behind the singer. With this album, obviously I grew up and was like, ‘OK you need to just get over it’.”

The results are stunning. Mounif’s voice soars achingly over the string arrangements, calling ‘oh, mother’ over and over in elegant sighs. “Hamsa brought so many tears in the studio and so much warmth to that track.”

The album was launched at the end of March as part of the two-day Finding Home Festival at the Wiltshire Music Centre, where the album was recorded, and the local refugee community was very much at the centre of the festival.

“The qanun, for somebody from the Arab world, is the sound of home. I get people coming to me after concerts saying, this music brought them back to a memory, and we often share hugs, and laughs, and tears. So creating spaces where people can come together is something small but powerful.”

We are offered a glimpse of how powerful these musical evocations of home can be in ‘My Homeland’.

The title is a translation of the famous melody, ‘Mawtini’, on which the song is based. The adopted national anthem of Iraq, it is the only cover on Finding Home. “Most people play it in a very extraverted, loud way, but I always saw it like a little bird, very tender, very fragile.”

Something to be cherished, looked after. “When I brought it to Al, it was raining, and we played it, and we both were crying. I said, this is a eulogy, this is the goodbye to a world that never existed. And with the rain on my window while playing that tragic melody, there was so much emotion in that moment. It felt very special to be open; I felt like my whole being was cracked open in a way, like that little bird.”

This interview originally appeared in the May 2022 issue of Songlines magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today