Artist: Kazem al-Saher
Genre(s):
Folk: Arabic
Discography:
Ila Tilmitha
Year: 2004
Tracks: 13
Iraqi-born Kazem Al-Saher has established himself as the biggest vocaliser in the Middle East, having sold more than than 30 million albums since the get of his life history. Ranging from bad romantic ballads to more political put to work, from pop to Arab classical, he's covered the spectrum of music with the tolerant of success not seen since the heyday of Umm Kalthum. Al-Saher was born in 1961 in Nainawa, Northern Iraq, one of 10 children of a palace worker. His interest in euphony came not from lessons, only the wireless, where he knowledgeable the works of composers like Mohamed Abdel Wahab by earshot them. When he was ten, he sold his bicycle to buy a guitar and two years afterward, began writing songs. He switched to oud, a much more than common instrument, and was recognised into the Baghdad Music Academy at the long time of 21. Keen to break through in the music business organization with his songs and vox, he found himself rebuffed by all the producers he approached, who'd only let him sing their material. Instead, he secondhand the stake door to derive entrance to the manufacture. With a tv director acquaintance, he made a video of unrivaled of his songs, Ladghat El Hayya (The Snake Bite), which was slipped into a disseminate on Iraqi tv in 1987, simply after the Iran-Iraq war. An allegory to his position, it caused a major contestation and the powers that ran goggle box offered him a pick -- change the lyrics or get it banned. He refused to change anything, simply the ban only made it more popular. He began giving concerts all over the Gulf and recording for labels in Kuwait. A year afterward, he had a hit with Obart Al Shat (I Crossed the Ocean). Some of his professors at the Academy denounced it as sha'bi (pop) euphony, anathema to those world Health Organization taught classical euphony. But protesting was pointless. Al-Saher had managed to circumvent the system and had become a star on his possess terms -- he even undertook his first U.S. enlistment in 1989. Having conquered pop, Al-Saher turned around and conventional himself in the Arabic classical world with La Ya Sadiki (No, My Friend), a magnum opus that lasted near an hr and base him using maqams (scales) that hadn't been put-upon in Iraqi music in several decades, renewing a tradition. The Gulf War and its immediate aftermath unbroken him pinned in Iraq, but in 1993 he transferred his base of operations to Lebanon, on the job with the poet Nizar Qabbani, wHO wrote lyrics to his music, ahead subsidence for good in Cairo. Al-Saher continued to waiver albums and go, having get the biggest identify in Middle Eastern music, one whose ballads grew bigger and more than romantic, but world Health Organization would too drop a line classically influenced works, even when they power spite his popularity.
By 1998 he was lauded as an creative person, non merely a pop asterisk. That prestigiousness brought him wider celebrity and a growing international reputation that won him a UNICEF awarding for his song "Tathakkar," which he performed in the U.S. for Congress and the United Nations -- one of the first actual post-Gulf War cultural exchanges. The following year, he recorded a testimonial to the Pope with the Italian Symphony Orchestra. While still a fan of big orchestras, whose sweep helps define his euphony, he's remained clear to technological design, even going so far as to provide a remix (by fusionists Transglobal Underground) of his call La Titnahad, taken from his 2000 waiver El Hob El Moustahil (The Impossible Love), the first of his albums to be given an official American press release. To co-occur with it, he performed on the Mondo Melodia circuit, which crossed the U.S.
