The original release with excelent photos is here.
http://www.ameu.org/uploads/vol39_issue5_2006.pdf http://www.ameu.org/printer.asp?iid=269&aid=580

Below is a copy of the release with other photos which i picked up fm internet

by: Simon Shaheen
December - December 2006
The Link - Volume 39, Issue 5

One month after 9/11, I was invited to go on the Bill Maher show “Politically Incorrect.” The comedian quoted from President Bush’s speech in which the commander-in-chief declared that the nations of the world were either with us or against us in the war on terror. What did I think of that? Maher asked me.

I’m a musician, so I answered using a musical analogy. The distance on a piano between two adjacent keys is a half-step, or a minor second. The Arabic scale, however, allows for intervals smaller than a half-step which are called quartertones. These many intervals have no equivalent in Western music and are difficult for Western ears to hear. It is here, beyond the minor second that the richness and diversity of a culture, with its wide range of emotional experiences, is truly expressed. Politically speaking, I said, the danger of looking at the world in black and white is that it can easily lead to totalitarianism.

Also on the “Politically Incorrect” panel that evening was an F.B.I. agent, who came up to me while we were waiting in the Green Room, and said: “I know you are a Christian.” Then he added: ”We support Christians who live in the Middle East.”

What my “ear” heard were the sounds of a black and white keyboard. Christians versus non-Christians. Christians versus Muslims. It was not the keyboard I knew in pre-1948 Palestine, where Christians and Muslims respected, even celebrated, each others’ traditions.

Tarshiha

As a child in the Galilean village of Tarshiha, whenever I performed on the ‘oud or the violin with my father’s ensemble or at a friend’s house, people exclaimed in amazement among themselves and to my father: “Imagine this kid playing in Beirut, Damascus, or Cairo!” Those words rang in my ears, and the innocent questions to my father followed: “Why don’t we go to Beirut? I want to play there! Can we go?” After all, the distance between my village, Tarshiha, and Beirut was only a one-hour drive.

However, I was young and living in the isolated atmosphere of Israel. It would take me years to understand why it was not possible to travel freely between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries. Still, I nurtured that dream—sparked by the comments of those adults—to perform on the stages of Beirut, Cairo, and beyond.

It would take 27 years for those dreams to come to fruition by way of performances at the City Theater in Beirut and the Opera House and the Sayyed Darwish Theater in Cairo. Formed in the spirit of my childhood, this dream to move and freely perform across borders and to live in an open space with no restrictions and limitations continues to inform my vision.

The village of Tarshiha lies tucked into the mountains of the Northern Galilee, close to the border of Lebanon. This is my village, where I was born and spent my earliest years.

The village is situated on a mountain and its foothill called Mjahed. From the top of the mountain, we could see the Mediterranean Sea, the extensive terrain of the lush upper Galilee Mountains, and parts of southern Lebanon. Valleys and fields in which farmers grew wheat, vegetables and tobacco surrounded the village. My birth took place in our house, a structure made of many arches (Qanater, the plural for Qantara) attached to the church with a well in front of the house and a large backyard.

Tarshiha has been a center for craftsmanship and the arts and has produced many talents in music and visual art. In 1999, the Tarshiha Music Ensemble, consisting of twenty musicians, joined me for a performance at the Cairo Opera House. The performance included three instrumental selections from my own musical repertoire, something Egyptians were not used to since their music traditionally emphasizes vocal repertoire. After the performance, interviewers from Radio Cairo and Al Ahram newspaper asked me about the musical group that performed with me, assuming it was a national Palestinian ensemble. When I told them that the ensemble was from one little village in the Upper Galilee called Tarshiha, it was apparent that they had difficulty understanding how a single village could produce such an abundance of talent!

Within that musically-charged environment of my childhood village, I vaguely remember my grandfather, Najib, who was the deacon and the head of the choir of the village church. He had a distinctive and warm singing voice with a great command and sweet undertones. He used the ‘oud to accompany his singing of traditional Arab vocal music, from 9th-century Andalusian to 19th-century Egyptian. In addition to the influence of his own voice, my grandfather owned a gramophone that played the old cylinder wax recordings of the greatest Arab singers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as Abu Al-‘Ula Mohammad and Sayyed Safti.

All of my uncles and aunts were musical, with beautiful voices and good musical instinct. I remember in particular two of my aunts, Fahum and Shafiqa, participating in various secular and religious ceremonies and events such as weddings, holidays, harvest celebrations, and funerals. As a child, I used to follow them and watch them interact with people in lively call and response. Their repertoire included hundreds of folk songs as well as improvised vocal selections. I was fascinated with their ability for improvising the melodies and the lyrics in a moving and expressive way that corresponded with the theme of each occasion.

My father, Hikmat Shaheen, was the only one among his brothers and sisters to formally study music and become a professional musician. He started his musical journey in the mid-thirties by studying European music theory with a German musician who lived in Haifa at the time, and later Arab music theory and ‘oud performance with Salim al-Hilou, who later became the head of the Lebanese National Conservatory of Music in Beirut. In 1941, my father established the first Arab school of music, The Center for Oriental Music, in Haifa while continuing his music workshops and private teaching in Tarshiha.

One of my father’s valuable achievements was his contribution to music education. He established a curriculum for teaching music in elementary, middle, and high schools in Palestine and composed close to 400 school songs that covered many themes such as nature, cleanliness and holidays including Christmas and Ramadan. Many generations of musicians studied with my father in schools, conservatories, teachers’ seminars, and privately. He nurtured generations of remarkable musicians who later became professionals and played an integral role in the development of Arab and Palestinian music in the region today. Even now, more than forty-five years later, when I walk in the streets of Haifa, Nazareth, and other towns and villages, I always stumble upon many people who studied with “’Ustaz Hikmat” (Master Hikmat). They talk to me with kindness, warmth, and esteem, as if they want to pay me back or reveal some of the sentiments they inherited from “Master Hikmat.”

In addition to his teaching and educational contributions, my father’s legacy continues through his work with the revival of folkloric music during a crucial era when Palestinians had been displaced and an intellectual vacuum had been created by the Jewish state.

This was my environment as a child. I was surrounded by art and music at home, in the village, and everywhere I accompanied my father. I lived the musical experience by listening to him, observing him, and living with him.

A month ago while I was visiting in California, my mother, Victoria, told me a story that occurred when I was two-and-a-half years old. She said: “As I finished baking the bread in the backyard, I heard some noise inside the house. I entered the room and found you trying to climb up the closet. I wondered why you were trying to climb, but, as I followed the direction of your gaze and tried to make sense of what you couldn’t say, I understood that you wanted the rishi (a pick used for the ‘oud) in order to strum the strings of your mandolin.” I vaguely remember when my father got me a small ‘oud that fit my small size. I sat on the edge of the well in front of our house and kept trying to produce some melodies I had heard my father playing.

Two years later, when I was still less than five years old, my father regularly included me in his monthly concerts with his ensemble. It became a custom that I perform a solo on the ‘oud after the intermission. My performances featured an instrumental composition with a free improvisation for 7-8 minutes. I always insisted on playing my father’s ‘oud, which was larger than me at that time. Whenever I look at photos from that period, all I can see of myself is the top of my hair and my hands holding the ‘oud. This is the same ‘oud whose top I painted with black shoe polish a year later as revenge for not being allowed to practice it at home.

Haifa

When I was six years old, my family moved to the city of Haifa. Haifa is a port city that is situated on Mt. Carmel and a narrow stretch between the mountain and the bay of Akka in the Mediterranean Sea. Our house was close to “Abu Nassour,” a beautiful beach where I spent much time as a child. It was my daily practice to go for a morning swim with my friends from the neighborhood and then ride my bike directly to school. The view of the city and the port from the top of the Carmel Mountain is breathtaking. A person can see as far as the other side of the bay, including the old city of Akka, Al-Naqoura (a border point between Israel and Lebanon), and the extensive terrain of the Upper Galilean mountains.

In Haifa, my father held many positions: instructor at the conservatory of music; professor of music at the Haifa teachers’ seminary; and director of his Arab music ensemble. I used to go with him twice a week after school to “Bayt al-Karma,” (the Vineyard House), a cultural center where he conducted his musical activities.

Initially, I only played with the ensemble on the ‘oud. A few months later, my cousin George Shaheen introduced me to the violin. He helped me with some technical instructions, and in a short time, I started to play violin in the Arab style. Before long, I had a greater affinity for the violin, which led to my joining the Rubin Conservatory of Music in Haifa. For six years, I studied classical European performance with Abi Leyya, a violin teacher and human rights advocate, who nurtured my talent as a violinist and expanded my understanding of the European classical music repertoire. After Leyya’s death, I continued my studies with the Russian violin master Kagan for another five years.

Living in Haifa was extremely important to my artistic development. I was exposed to Western classical music at the Conservatory, traditional Arab music with my father’s ensemble, and religious musical repertoire in the church, specifically Byzantine chants. At the Italian Carmelite private school I attended, there was emphasis on all of the arts, including music and theater. I remember school ceremonies at the end of each semester and during religious holidays in which I played solo performances on the ‘oud and the violin, and accompanied the school choir in Arabic and Italian school songs.

In our elementary years, we were required to learn five languages—Arabic, English, Hebrew, Italian and French—along with the sciences and humanities. Despite a demanding curriculum and the hectic schedule at the school, my late afternoon and early evening hours were dedicated to various musical activities during the week and performances on weekends.

As a kid, I attended the weekly Sunday mass at our Melkite Catholic Church with my parents and participated with the church choir, which was led by my father. A large percentage of the religious chants at our church came from the Byzantine Orthodox church. I learned and memorized this entire repertoire, which later became an essential source of my musical vocabulary and creativity. As I grew older, I came to understand certain elements relating to the nature of our church. Centered in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, the Melkite Catholic Church technically belongs to the church of Rome, yet our practices are clearly influenced by the Eastern Greek Orthodox church.

Last year, my group Qantara and I were touring in Europe and one of the concerts was scheduled at the Megaro Performing Arts Center in Athens. After the concert, we were invited by the artistic director of the center for a drink at a nearby bar. It was explained to me that this old, small bar had served as a meeting point to many active underground personnel from World War II up until the late sixties. As we enjoyed our drinks, I noticed a few older men sitting at the bar who looked like devoted customers. Alex, our companion, introduced me to one of the gentlemen who had difficulty understanding English. When I discovered that he was the head of the choir in one of the Byzantine churches in Athens, I immediately started humming some of the Byzantine tunes, which for me was an even better form of communicating and relating. As I progressed deeper into the tune, I heard other voices joining me. Their faces shared looks of joy and amazement. This was the beginning of a long night of Byzantine chanting with my Greek friends at the bar, chanting that continued until five o’clock in the morning, leaving my musicians and me only two hours to shower, pack our luggage, and catch a plane to Vienna.

Undergraduate Studies

In 1975, after I graduated from the Carmelite high school in Haifa, I entered Tel Aviv University for my undergraduate studies. I took a double major in music performance, with a specialty in violin, and comparative literature. The university is located in the northern outskirts of the city, not far from the sea shore. I rented a three-bedroom apartment next to the campus and shared it with two Palestinian students, Ziyad and Zahi, originally from Nazareth. This was a period in which acceptance of Arab Palestinians was difficult, and the total number of Palestinian students at the university was close to only 90 out of an overall student population of twenty thousand. Prior to renting the apartment, I had applied for the student dorms and was denied. In fact, only seven Palestinian students were accepted to live in the dorms out of three thousand available residencies. In addition to academic standards that were high and challenging, the political environment was extremely challenging for Palestinians.

During my four undergraduate years at the university, I was involved with the Arab Student Association. Our primary concern was to push for Arab students’ equal rights including admission, scholarship, and housing provisions. This was an ongoing battle in which we achieved small increments of progression. In addition to our academic priorities, we, as a student body, were involved in wider human rights activities. We worked closely with various progressive Jewish organizations, including Peace Now, in a struggle for full equal rights for Palestinians.

One of the most vivid events inside and outside of the university’s campuses in 1976 was Land Day, in which all Palestinian students, professionals, and labor workers went on strike and demonstrated against the Israeli government’s policies regarding the confiscation of land owned by Palestinians. As a result of these activities, many Palestinian students, including myself, were harassed in various ways by Israeli police authorities. Some demonstrators were picked up for interrogation and kept hours, days, or even weeks in prison. Others would be picked up in the early morning hours before an exam or presentation and taken to a police center for few hours and then released. By then, these students had missed their exam or project, jeopardizing their academic status.

As is still the case, the mid-1970s was a time of overwhelming discord and lack of communication between Palestinian and Jewish students as well as the segregation of Arab and Jewish communities. There was an amazing level of denial of existing Palestinian culture, which in fact, informed a large part of their way of living and identity. This was most true of the Sephardic Jews who were trying to disassociate themselves from Arab populations. Both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews chose to ignore and disregard Palestinian culture as they usurped our traditions and claimed them as their own. Ironically, today there is something of a renaissance among Sephardic Jews in Israel who are rediscovering their Arabic traditions.

Back in the mid and late 70s, however, in conjunction with my intense activities for social justice and equality, I worked extensively toward promoting communication and awareness of Palestinian culture through the development of my work, particularly in the Jewish sector of Israel. I played solo concerts, performed with an Arab music ensemble, and conducted Arab music workshops in many Jewish and Arab cultural centers in villages, towns, cities, and kibbutzim. I also performed as a classical violinist with various chamber groups and did a number of experimental projects, utilizing my knowledge of both Arab and Western classical music.

Through music, I attempted to connect our cultures even in the midst of intense political turmoil. But, an effective bridge must have a foundation on both sides. I tried to establish a starting point, but felt there was no sincere or serious attempt from the other side to communicate during my years in Tel Aviv. The United States

The United States

I moved to New York City in 1980 with two objectives in mind. The first was to pursue graduate studies in music education at Columbia University and in music performance and composition at The Manhattan School of Music. My second objective was to start my international career as a performer and composer. Upon my arrival in New York City, it was clear to me that most Americans had not been exposed to traditional Arab music, nor were there many musicians performing such repertoire.

In earlier cabaret scenes in the big cities such as in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Boston during the 1960s to the 1980s, people misidentified the music that was played as pure Arab music when, in fact, it was a mishmash from various regions and countries, including Turkey, Armenia, Egypt, Greece and Lebanon performed by musicians from those various regions. In these cabaret or nightclub settings, musicians played music for “belly dancing,” which many American