Search - Naseer Shamma :: Baghdad Lute

Unusual and beautifully expressive playing

greg taylor | Portland, Oregon United States | 09/19/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I am not as expert as many of the other reviewers are on oud playing. I have listened to a fair number of players and like many of the reviewers below, I was surprised at the playing on this disc. This music does not fit the stereotype of Near Eastern music- in point of fact, in many ways this disc is more reminiscent of a bravura recital by a musician from the Western classical music tradition.
The lute playing to my ears in nontraditional. Naseer Shamma's style incorporates techniques from many different instruments not least classical and flamenco guitar strumming techniques. The harmonic base is traditional to the Iraqi school of oud playing and is wonderfully interesting to these jaded Western ears.
One last note- there is one way that I would like to take exception to many of the reviewers below. I bought this album, as I frequently do, sound unheard and listened to it without benefit of much on the information below as to the stories behind the songs. This music stands alone. I fell in love with it before I read of Naseer Shamma's attempts to convey stories of the Gulf War. The piece about the bombing of the orphanage is quite obviously about something like that and belongs to the international tradition of protest music that uses instrumental sound effects to convey horror- does anyone else remember Jimi Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner during the Vietnam war?
Enjoy this album as pure music or enjoy it as protest or both.
What we do have here is a innovative musician steeped in an ancient tradition conveying the vitality of that traditon for the present day. The fact that he is from a nation whose government my government is trying to demonize is perhaps a bonus in that it helps to remind us that behind the Iraqi government is a people from whom we have much to learn and whom remain our brothers and sisters."

Naseen Shamma the golden fingers of lute

Moneer Cherie | Australia | 03/17/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"NASEER SHAMMA, one of the greatest lute soloist players in the world, Came out of a school that dats back to 2350 BC from MESOPOTAMIA. NASEER a native babylonian from IRAQ has nine (9) music pieces in this CD all composed by him & each of them has a story to go with, he play them live on stage, showing his style and a very nice music rhythm to them. In track 6 on this CD which is called (Babylonian prayer) played in pentatonic scale he put you in a pryer atmosphere creating what might have been a Babylonian music in ancient times, his inspration was a Babylonian bas-relief. track 9 is a very famous iraqi golfwar tragedy, A shelter with a number of kids taken refuge was bombed killing every one, NASEER play this piece as a soundtrack to this tragedy telling it in music how it happened. track 1 is called Memories, track 2 is An oriental love story( qissat hubb sharqyya),track 3 is Soft breezes(a dansing peice), track 4 is A quiet night in baghdad ( didn't have a lot of in the past years), track 5 called from Ashur to Seville (ASHUR the great king of ASSYRIA the king of the world),track 7 iraqi song (an improvisation in maqam bastanikar purely oriental in nature and typical of traditional music from Iraq) track 8 is a Dialogue between two great Iraqi poets El Mutanabbi and El Sayyab ( This dialogue between old and new, tradition and modernism EL Mutanabbi of an Abasid poet of the golden age & El Sayyab (1926-1964)... It is very a nice music stories, I recommend this CD to every one that loves lute or just love music in general it is a wonderful CD. all the best to you Naseer! ps: we need more lute cd's of you on Amazon.com!"

Tone Poems

Raven Among Crows | Cairo, Egypt | 02/05/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Naseer Shamma teaches music in Cairo, Egypt and is a well known performer at the Cairo Opera. The piece "Amiriyyah" that another reviewer likens to a siren is just that -- a tone poem or picture of Baghdad under US bombing attacks. Shamma was one of the rescue workers who went into the bunker, said to be an Iraqi command center, that housed only children. If you listen closely, you can hear the sirens, and the bombs falling and children crying. His other tonal works (more mundane)has you hearing a horse running through a meadow or a conversation between lovers. He is a virtuoso, who deserves a wider audience for both his classical renditions and his own compositions."