{"id":26423,"date":"2023-05-22T09:46:08","date_gmt":"2023-05-22T07:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=26423"},"modified":"2023-05-22T09:47:20","modified_gmt":"2023-05-22T07:47:20","slug":"artist-at-work-maya-youssef-finds-home-in-the-qanun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/artist-at-work-maya-youssef-finds-home-in-the-qanun\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist At Work: Maya Youssef Finds Home in the Qanun"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5>Master qanunist Maya Youssef is touring the UK throughout the summer with her new album, <em>Finding Home<\/em>. For concert dates and tickets, and for album downloads, visit <a href=\"https:\/\/mayayoussef.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">MayaYoussef.com<\/a>.<\/h5>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h4>Rana Asfour<\/h4>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In the history of Arabic music the qanun \u2013 which means law in English \u2013 lays down the law of pitch for other instruments and singers (allows for the correct tuning for all notes on other instruments). It consists of a trapezoid-shaped flat hollow body over which 76 to 81 strings are stretched in groups denoting each note. Classified as a zither, which originated in China as far back as 400 BC, the first zithers showed up in Anatolia, although there is speculation that the qanun played in the Arab world may be descended from the Egyptian harp. Although Arab qanun making is not standardized and is dependent on the maker\u2019s preferences, from the number of strings to the shape and size of its levers, it remains safe to say that most qanuns in the region encompass 78 strings.<\/p>\n<p>To this day, the qanun remains predominantly a male-oriented pursuit in the Arab world, despite a growing number of women showing tentative interest in taking up the instrument in their own homes \u2014 the percentage of women to men who go on to pursue a professional career as qanunists is unknown, and as a matter of fact, in Armenia, qanun playing is only a female tradition.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, Maya Youssef is one of the fiercely determined and brave few who from a very early age heard the calling and went in full pursuit of a dream many would tell her was out of her reach. Needless to say, setting off on her path of breaking through expected societal barriers has been a difficult endeavor. And yet Youssef\u2019s self-determination and unwavering belief in joy through music has led to a trailblazing journey for a woman the media has called \u201cThe Queen of Qanun,\u201d amassing a remarkable collection of accomplishments and accolades.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ose-vimeo ose-uid-39776678ff3a1f772585eece7402af39 ose-embedpress-responsive\" style=\"width:600px; height:550px; max-height:550px; max-width:100%; display:inline-block;\" data-embed-type=\"Vimeo\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" title=\"Maya Youssef - Bombs Turn into Roses\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/291900963?dnt=0&amp;app_id=122963&title=0&color=00ADEF&byline=0&portrait=0&autoplay=0&loop=0&autopause=0\" width=\"600\" height=\"550\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"encrypted-media;accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;gyroscope;picture-in-picture fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think that the qanun is a sign of power,\u201d Maya Youssef explains to me over a Zoom call. \u201cThe minute you put a qanun on your lap, you immediately attract the limelight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, [traditional Arab] society still looks down on women who perform on stage and Youssef still gets called \u201cradical\u201d for pursuing this profession.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cArab women have historically had a significant role in the evolution of music in Middle Eastern culture. With the advent of Islam, female musicians, referred to as \u2018singing girls\u2019 or <em>qayna<\/em> in Arabic, were a special class of slaves trained in music and poetry and were responsible for the dissemination of music due to the fact that they could be sold and bought \u2014 for astronomical prices \u2014 on the open market. It is thought that many were composers of <em>muwashahat<\/em> [an Arabic form of poetry] but because of their status as slaves, or sex workers, their compositions have never been recognized or accredited.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In those days free women and women of nobility were discouraged from pursuing any form of musical study and certainly prohibited from performing in public. It was only after the 19<sup>th<\/sup> century that women started to take a more active role in music and \u201cnow more than ever, most of the students at the academy where I teach qanun, in London, are women who come from all parts of the world,\u201d says Youssef.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI grew up in Damascus in a house surrounded by books and music,\u201d declared Youssef when I asked her to walk me back to where her story with the qanun began. She was raised by parents who not only worked with words (her mother is a translator and her father is the celebrated journalist and writer Hassan M. Youssef) but who also shared a love for music, thereby opening young Youssef\u2019s world to a wide palette of music that ranged from the experimental to jazz, and from western classical to her mother\u2019s beloved Arabic music from the likes of Sabah Fakhri and Umm Kulthum.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI basically grew up tapping and singing all the time, so my parents enrolled me in a music institute,\u201d she explained. \u201cIt was only when I was eight years old and I\u2019d completed two years of training that the pivotal moment arrived when I had to pick one musical instrument and my parents suggested the violin.\u201d And the violin it would have been had it not been for a fateful taxi ride that would ultimately determine the course of Youssef\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was headed to the music institute with my mother in a taxi when the driver turned on the radio and there came the sound of a solo qanun that immediately captured my heart. It was then and there that I announced, excitedly and loudly, to my mother and the driver that I had found the instrument I was going to play. The driver actually laughed at me. <em>This instrument is for men ya ammo and you\u2019re a girl. Forget about it. It will never happen<\/em>, he chuckled. <em>It will<\/em>, I responded defiantly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It seems the heavens were listening for as it so happened a qanun class had just opened up at the institute that very same day. With the blessing of her parents and a second-hand qanun, Youssef was the first of 25 students to sign up for the course. It wasn\u2019t long before she won the Best Musician Award in Syria&#8217;s National Music Competition for Youth at the age of 12.<\/p>\n<p>After graduating from The Higher Institute of Music in Damascus in 2007, Youssef moved to Dubai where she believes practicing for 14 hours a day provided the perfect opportunity for her to find her unique voice. In 2009 she was offered a post to teach the qanun and\u00a0Arabic <em>maqamat<\/em> at Sultan Qaboos University in\u00a0Oman. When the war in Syria broke out in 2011, the university didn\u2019t renew her contract, and she\u2019d just had a baby. So, when in 2012, she stumbled upon and applied to the UK\u2019s Tier 1 Exceptional Talent Scheme, she was awarded entry into the country as a qanun virtuoso. She settled in London where she and her son reside today and where she has \u201cgiven birth\u201d to two albums, collaborated with other performers and was featured on BBC Proms and WOMAD and more recently at the iconic Leighton House in London, which is where I first heard of her.<\/p>\n<p>Maya Youssef\u2019s first album <em>Syrian Dreams<\/em> constituted a milestone in the qanunist\u2019s career as it marked her first forays into music composition. Never having considered such a move before, the key moment arrived one day as she sat watching TV in her living room in London beside her sleeping son, who was about four years old at the time, when the news of a small girl \u2014 who she said looked so much like her own little one \u2014 was reported to have died in her bedroom in Damascus as a result of the shelling.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was sobbing, covering my mouth with both hands so no sound could escape that would wake my son up, and I left the room closing the door behind me. I picked up my qanun and music started to gush out with the tears.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"ose-youtube ose-uid-0b0439ca4bd4d6a9e8ff01b85eaa2043 ose-embedpress-responsive\" style=\"width:600px; height:550px; max-height:550px; max-width:100%; display:inline-block;\" data-embed-type=\"Youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" title=\"&#039;The Seven Gates of Damascus&#039; by Maya Youssef\" width=\"600\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NplUDKSwvQU?feature=oembed&color=red&rel=0&controls=1&start=&end=&fs=0&iv_load_policy=0&autoplay=0&mute=0&modestbranding=0&cc_load_policy=1&playsinline=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; encrypted-media;accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;gyroscope;picture-in-picture clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In 2017, <em>Syrian Dreams<\/em> would become the title track of her debut album of the same name into which Youssef poured out her memories, feelings and longings throughout the six years she had watched her country\u2019s descent into chaos. The tracks lend themselves to evocative titles such as \u201cBombs Turn Into Roses,\u201d \u201cHorizon,\u201d and \u201cThe Sea,\u201d among others, that convey a breathtaking range of emotions that yo-yo between the desolate and the sublime. \u201cThe Seven Gates of Syria\u201d \u2014 my favorite \u2014 takes listeners on a sonic tour of the capital\u2019s history via seven different units of music.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was always fascinated by Al Kindi\u2019s theory of cosmology whereby he speaks about the connection between the different planets and the <em>maqamat<\/em> (or modes) and their effect on the human psyche. This idea was very intriguing to me especially that I was born and raised in Damascus and consider myself a Damascene through and through. So when I read historian Ibn Asaker\u2019s account on how the seven gates were built in alignment with seven planets in order to bring peace and prosperity to the dwellers of the city, I was hooked. To this day the name of each planet is visibly etched on the corresponding gate it is aligned with. And that\u2019s where my idea of a sonic tour of my city came from, whereby I aligned each gate with a maqam and a rhythm that best expresses it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Although Youssef\u2019s compositions are based on the Arabic maqam, there are playful nods to jazz (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7qj083P85i0&amp;ab_channel=VariousArtists-Topic\">Hi-Jazz<\/a>) and even flamenco (Awatef). Influences streaming into her work come as no surprise knowing that she trained with the likes of Syrian composer and qanun player\u00a0Salim Sarwa, Azerbaijani musician Elmira Akhundova and Turkish qanun player\u00a0G\u00f6ksel Baktagir. And yet she maintains that \u201cwriting music is a very intuitive process that doesn\u2019t come from the logical mind. Some claim the source of music comes from the muse, others say it comes from the spirit.\u201d Regardless of the music\u2019s inspiration, Youssef recognizes all interpretations contending that her main job is to surrender to the voice of inspiration, to be its conduit and to allow what wants to come through to do so. This process has allowed for what she describes as \u201csurprising results\u201d that have led to pairing her compositions with a backup choir (Leighton House performance in London), and the introduction of chamber music to accompany the qanun (\u201cWalk With Me\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>When Maya Youssef is not playing the qanun, she\u2019s teaching it. With a self-professed zeal for creating systems, she has come up with a unique universal method she uses to teach maqam using Lego blocks. In a bid to demystify Arabic music, her rationale relies on the playfulness of the act of creating music regardless of whether one is performing to an audience or not.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am playful by nature and enjoy Lego parties with my son as we listen to music. In Arabic music, one deals with a cluster of notes \u2014 three or four or five notes \u2014 and there is basically a certain musical interval, or steps if you will, that come in different sizes, so the steps between the notes is what makes the character of the note, such as Bayati and Hijaz maqams, among others. And so these building blocks \u2013 the sonic Lego pieces as I call them \u2013 are what create Arabic music. The method relies on a core understanding of how these sonic Lego pieces work when you put them together or switch them around to create different musical models.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"ose-youtube ose-uid-0e789673c3f791fb9ffa7fc2c50daef1 ose-embedpress-responsive\" style=\"width:600px; height:550px; max-height:550px; max-width:100%; display:inline-block;\" data-embed-type=\"Youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" title=\"Walk With Me (Quartet Version)\" width=\"600\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RezlucujR9o?feature=oembed&color=red&rel=0&controls=1&start=&end=&fs=0&iv_load_policy=0&autoplay=0&mute=0&modestbranding=0&cc_load_policy=1&playsinline=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; encrypted-media;accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;gyroscope;picture-in-picture clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Youssef\u2019s latest \u201ccreative baby\u201d as she refers to her albums is <em>Finding Home,<\/em> which was born when the loss and grief of losing a homeland to the ravages of a civil war necessitated an urgent search for a new sense of belonging. Youssef\u2019s album is fully concerned with finding a state of reconciliation between the nostalgia for the past and the hope within an uncertain present whilst transcending all universal definitions of home, ultimately declaring earth and humanity to be the landscapes for her new sense of belonging.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I was writing my first album <em>Syrian Dreams<\/em>, I felt like the waters of life were gushing behind me and I was helpless to do anything to stop them from sweeping me away and I had no choice but to surrender. With <em>Finding Home<\/em>, I feel I\u2019m in a gentler place where my music has become part of my spiritual journey. Home is really within me, a state I can tap into whenever I reach a level of calm and soothing through musical practice. And as a state of being, this means that it remains with me wherever I am, regardless of whom I\u2019m with or where I am physically. As such, <em>Finding Home<\/em> is an ode to all these facets that have helped me reach this state of being.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"ose-youtube ose-uid-080e8e1d7f04346c028799df10738cdd ose-embedpress-responsive\" style=\"width:600px; height:550px; max-height:550px; max-width:100%; display:inline-block;\" data-embed-type=\"Youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" title=\"Fuuse Voices: Maya Youssef. Syrian Qanun Player.\" width=\"600\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zy4y4DV5zVI?feature=oembed&color=red&rel=0&controls=1&start=&end=&fs=0&iv_load_policy=0&autoplay=0&mute=0&modestbranding=0&cc_load_policy=1&playsinline=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; encrypted-media;accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;gyroscope;picture-in-picture clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Imbued with what she describes as \u201ca tormented sense of responsibility\u201d Youssef\u2019s work has gone beyond performance halls in a bid to connect with the community, particularly the refugees trickling into the UK from Syria. During most tours Youssef allocates a number of tickets for refugees to attend her concerts not only for the musical experience but also to bring communities together in spaces, like traditional concert halls, that can be quite intimidating for most people. She visits schools with high populations of refugees and runs workshops bringing her qanun into the classroom, where she enjoys watching the disbanding of prejudices and judgment as people from diverse backgrounds enjoy the music disseminating throughout the shared space.<\/p>\n<p>Listening to Maya Youssef\u2019s tracks, one senses a quiet insistent power at play that elevates the experience to one that is almost cinematic. One is rendered as if witness to the actual realization of \u201cBombs Into Roses,\u201d the fulfillment of a \u201cPromise of a Rainbow\u201d and is inspired by the magic of a \u201cSilver Lining,\u201d central to Maya Youssef\u2019s general outlook on life. Youssef assured me that in every live performance, she regales her audience with the stories behind the conception of every piece of music before she performs it, not only to lend it context but also because, in her own words, \u201cshe loves telling stories\u201d \u2014 for example \u201cSamai for trees\u201d was written after spending time listening to the rustle of leaves under a tree; \u201cLullaby: A Promise of A Rainbow\u201d was inspired by an image of a mother cradling a baby as she soothes it with a lullaby in the aftermath of an explosion; and \u201cWalk With Me\u201d was written during the Covid-19 lockdowns during which Youssef relied on prayer to see her through the uncertainty and worry.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ose-youtube ose-uid-ffa5ef91e085675c4c9d51e44a1ff6ec ose-embedpress-responsive\" style=\"width:600px; height:550px; max-height:550px; max-width:100%; display:inline-block;\" data-embed-type=\"Youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" title=\"Silver Lining (Ensemble Version)\" width=\"600\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/F127rV8irjw?feature=oembed&color=red&rel=0&controls=1&start=&end=&fs=0&iv_load_policy=0&autoplay=0&mute=0&modestbranding=0&cc_load_policy=1&playsinline=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; encrypted-media;accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;gyroscope;picture-in-picture clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>\u201cMusic is the way to open up to the divine to come through and therefore there is no separation between who I am as a person and the music I make. Despite all the hardships I\u2019ve faced as a single mother, a survivor of domestic abuse, a woman displaced from her homeland, when I play music I am home. Music is my prayer for a peaceful world, one that I hope can find healing. When I play I\u2019m locked to the source of all things and in that embrace I am home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rana Asfour talks to Syrian-born and raised qanunist Maya Youssef, who now lives and teaches in the UK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":26424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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