The winding strings and intensity, mixing with the moonlight, and occasional mysterious glowing places in the distance, where I imagined people sitting through the night in plastic chairs, left an indelible impression on me. I wanted to sit there too!

It was just me, the moon, the Red Sea, and this beautiful music in a perfect moment that lasted for a couple of hours.

II.

On returning from that trip I found myself in the Barbican Library in London. They had Nabeel Shuail’s album 2000. Why? I don’t know. They had very little else of Arabic music. But it was perfect, because the plastic-sounding “trumpets”, the chorus, the keyboards, reminded me exactly of the pop music I’d heard in Egypt. And Nabeel’s voice really spoke to me, it still does, I think he’s a phenomenal singer.

III.

Fast forward to an ‘Introduction to Arabic Music’ course for my BA, during which the running joke was: at whatever point the lecturer pauses the tape and asks “What maqam is this?”, the correct answer is always “maqam beyati”. The lecturer was not in on the joke, but maqam beyat was always right!

Around this time, I began composing inspired by the iqa’at and maqamat, in my own style, and this then fed into my decision to do a masters specializing in maqam music.

Unexpectedly, that year, I had also received an oddly-shaped Christmas present. As I unwrapped it, I could see the grin on my mum’s face, and felt an impending sense of doom as I figured it out. It was an oud. And I knew I had no idea how to make it work. I didn’t know how to even tune it. I was worried that my mum would be disappointed as I carefully placed it to one side. “I thought it’d look nice on the wall if nothing else,” she said.

I began my research, interviewing the brilliant Syrian qanun player Abdallah Chahadeh and his band, and oud player Attab Haddad, who was extremely kind to me in the time he spent, even feeding me his own lunch one time! But in order to ask useful questions I’d already decided I needed to learn to play the oud.

Online, in those days, there was a database of a charity called “cultural cooperation”, of musicians in London from around the world. At the top of the list, beginning with ‘A’, was Ahmed Mukhtar: oud player. And that was probably the single biggest stroke of luck I had. He was an excellent teacher and opened the doors to me for Arabic music.

If you’ve studied music at university, you know that they don’t really teach you anything at university. They mark you on essays, but never teach you how to write them. They expect you to analyze Arabic music, but never teach you the language or the repertoire or details. Ahmed was my university. For the thousands of pounds for bits of paper from prestigious universities, Ahmed was the only teacher I had. And I will always be so grateful for the chance I had to learn from him.

And like most oud students of the Iraqi school, I dreamed of becoming the next Munir Bashir.

IV.

After a few years, I started working with Ahmed at the Taqasim School based at the Arab British Centre. And with my good friend ‘Ustad’ Mike Smith, we’d laugh about how unlikely it was that we’d ended up teaching Arabic maqam music. But that was a credit to Ahmed, and his trust in us. And some of my happiest times were teaching there, with a good group. I’d cajole someone into playing the darabuka (not the oud they were there to study!) and I’d scratch away on my violin, as the others played along on their ouds together, songs and dulabs and samais, sometimes hours beyond the official end of the class.

V.

When the pandemic happened it led me to stop performing and teaching in person. My poor immune system will never just ‘adjust’, so it’s probably for good. But in a strange way, teaching one-to-one online suits me much better than the group classes, as fun as they could be.

I’ve always preferred talking to one friend at a time, to get to the heart of things, rather than making small talk in a group. And as a teacher, I personally always felt like I was letting some students fall through the cracks in a group, because I had to stay in the middle.

The whole point of Cotton Thistle Studio is to go at the pace of each student, and follow their lead, as and when they are ready to take it. I find it a lot more rewarding.

And the other point of Cotton Thistle Studio is that I think my face is the least interesting thing about what I do. For me, the music is the most important thing. (It took me over a year to post my face on the website!). I would be most happy to be forgotten, and people just enjoy the music. But some of you like to know about people and hear their stories, so here we are! That was briefly mine.

Let me leave you with my favorite song, sung by “the Princess of Tarab” Nadira Amin, composed by Daud Husni. I’ve fallen completely in love with the older tarab styles of the 1920s and 1930s these days, and if YouTube is to be believed, this was recorded in 1932.

Good Websites For Arabic Music