Nahoko Nishitani

Music as Healing

Naseer Shamma: sympathy and liberation from fear

When people want to “cure,”they try to “make the source of the suffering disappear.”

When they try to “heal,”they try to make the meaningful sensebecome less painful, easier to understand or bearable.

Healing is a much more reasonable approach to manage the suffering caused by “war.” Here I use the term “war” in a broad sensenamely “the situation in which human rights were ignored in an extreme way.”My question is how music can contribute to the healing process of those who suffer if possible....

Humanity has failed to form a true global understanding through politics -- the UN is the proof of this -- music has succeeded. Imagine a global orchestra, with people from all over the world playing music, for all over the world.

These are thewords of Naseer Shamma. He is one of the most esteemed and prolific Iraqi Oud musician inthe world.Is this view too idealistic? Does music really have such power?These questions may be asked about Britten’s War Requiem.

Here I dare to say…

■Salam (“peace”) and Naseer Shamma

-About Naseer Shamma

Born in 1963 in Al-Kut, a southern city in Iraq, Shamma studied at Baghdad’s Institute of Music and, in 1987, received a diploma in musical art. Later he specialized in the Oud, a pear-shaped, stringed instrument, commonly used in Middle Eastern music and East African music. He began to compose imagistic pieces that, while based on classical scales, diverged radically from the tradition of improvisation. Due to the difficulty of performing under the UN embargo, Shamma left Iraq in 1993. Since 1999 he has been directing a music center in Cairo. Giving concerts in various parts of the world has become his main concern.

-About Salam

My friend is our wonderful tour guide to Naseer Shamma’s music. When I heard about this Music and War project, “fortunately” I didn’t come up with anything about war as personal experience. So I decided to ask help from my Palestinian friend, Salam.We met through an NGO workcamp in Wazuka, Japan four years ago. Since then, we have been good friends. We certainly share the same sense of humor. My only complaint about him is probably he is too talkative, even though we mostly talk via e-mail, which we call “mind-visiting!”

I’d like to share his personal story. Why? Because I believe you cannot appreciate anything someone recommends to you unless you know about the person even a little bit. Also, my concern is how Shamma’s music influences Salam’s view of the world. In other words, how Slam use Shamma’s music to make sense of the world around him.

■ Listening

-Music as narrative

♪Happened at Al-Amiriyya

￭Salam says

“This is the kids and women shelter that an American 'smart missiles' targeted, resulting in 'horrible massacre during the American war on Iraq 91 ..He spent 8 days inside the shelter, to 'talk and communicate' with the innocent kids souls .. It was a musical masterpiece for their memories.. that piece was milestone cos it is done with one instrument (without supporting instruments ) and it reflects kids happy chanting, missiles voice, alarm sounds,moaning, giving last breath ..etc only by his Oud”

￭“Al-Amiriyya”refers to the bomb shelter targeted by the allies during the 1991 air campaign, where more than 400 Iraqi civilians, mostly children, died. Shamma first performed the piece in the ruins of Al-Amiriyya on the one-year anniversary of the massacre.

￭”What I try to do is make images appear in the minds of people.” Shamma says. In this piece, he conveys many distinct sounds and images on a single instrument. It starts with a sentimental melody thatis interrupted by screeching air raid sirens and people’s reactions to them, namely confusion and panic.You hear a surprisingly calm part in the middle,whichactually prepares for the coming air strike. The piece becomes slowertoward the end and turns darkly reflective before striking a final optimistic note.

-Musicfor one arm, music for the left hand

♪Oriental love story (Une histoire d’amour orientale)

￭Salam says,

“Oud is sophisticated instrument. But he made specialstyle of One-handed performance.*

Wonderful memorial piece designedespecially for the causalities of war ( those who lose their hands and arms while setting in their own homes playing and hoping for bright future)”

(* It doesn’t mean Shamma performs this entire piece only by one hand.)

￭War’send in political terms is not a synonym for the end of the suffering ofthose involved the war. This Shamma’s piece reminds me of several Western piano concertos for the left hand, including pieces by Maurice Ravel, Benjamin Britten, and Sergei Prokofiev. Many of them werealso commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, the Austrian pianist who lost his right arm during World War I. Here, I’d like to introduce a piano piece for the left by Benjamin Britten.

♪Leon Fleisher, piano Britten: Diversions on a Theme, Op.21

"Diversions" was written in Maine in 1940 for Wittgenstein. Britten had known of the performer's courage and skill in overcoming difficulties and was attracted from the start by the compositional challenges. His pacifistic beliefs ultimately led him to compose the great piece “War Requiem.”

■Sympathy and liberation from fear

￭“Ever since the first Intifada I have been vocal about Palestine -- for me the struggle for justice is restricted by neither space nor time to let them know they were not alone”Shamma’s constant attitude toward those who suffer is “sympathy.” In beauty as in suffering, humanity transcends borders, a notion he insists must be expressed through art.His sympathetic attitude is not limited to the Arabic world.In 1986, Shamma even wrote a piece about Hiroshima – “in memory of those who suffered there.”

￭Hisconstant theme is “the bid to liberate humanity of fear” which, in his words,“constitutes the greatest obstacle in the way of expression and realization.”Shamma says“he has moved further and further away from fear; to a point where he no longer acknowledges its existence anywhere in himself.” The idea is to move away from the everyday and into a private retreat in which he can play.

He made “Happened at Al-Amiriyya” based on his own experience in the shelter. In the process of music-making, he must have remembered what he heard, what he saw and how he felt. Not by avoiding or forgetting, but by facing it and reflecting what happened, he reached the point where he was able to tell his story through music. Here, what he tried to do is not to “cure” himself by removing memory of his suffering, but to “heal” himself by actively remembering his experience and creating music that tells his narrative. When his “raw” experience became his “narrative,” the experience became less painful and easier to bear. For now he is a creator. He is not at the mercy of his fate any more.

Shamma never stops his music-making. What drives him so much?During the politically silent, escapist times, while other Arab artists contributed to the illusion that poverty and injustice didnot exist, Shamma produced music that recalls the political realities. However, he paid a high price for speaking out against injustice.

"I spent 170 days in prison and I was condemned to death without the benefit of a trial. Not until the day came for my sentence to be carried out did the government give way to the demands of local and international organizations calling for my freedom, realizing that killing me could only cause trouble, particularly since they had no real charge against me.

They did decide to teach me a lesson by killing my sister and her four children -- just before releasing me. Officially, they died in a car accident. But assassinations were routinely described in this way by the authorities."

What can we learn from Shamma’sheartrending confession and his music? His sympathy toward those who are suffering comes from his ceaseless trial to liberate fear. Each of his musical pieces is the embodiment of this mental activity and evokes asympatheticresponsefrom listeners. In the case of Salam, even though he did not experience “the war,” he must have felt his life was controlled by it. This sense of lack of agencymust have troubled him. Nonetheless he has been trying so hard to make sense of the world around him after realizing “Knowledge is The Key to understand the world around you”I wouldn’t categorize Shamma’s music as “knowledge” in this case. But at least Salam seems to recognize Shamma’s music as “our music”and is inspired and encouraged by it.

Ironically, anger or suffering engendered by injustice is the source of artists’ creativity.

Ironically, even with its destruction and carnage that war can give us purpose, meaning and a reason for living.

<Reference>

-Nasser Shamma (

-Review Essay: Le lute de Baghdad. By Nasser Shamma (

-Naseer Shamma: Guardian of sound (