'I am the last link': Hamid Al-Saadi's fight to save a centuries-old Iraqi musical tradition

Exiled vocalist who released his first album, Maqam Al-Iraq, in 25 years this month does not know who will follow him

Hamid Al-Saadi is recognised as the final master of Iraqi maqam, a musical tradition that dates back centuries. Photo: Sachyn Mital

Hamid Al-Saadi is worried he might be the last one in the lineage, the final master of a musical tradition that dates back centuries.

The 67-year-old is recognised as the most prominent practitioner of Iraqi maqam, the only vocalist to have mastered the tradition’s entire repertoire of 56 pieces. He is also the author of the first two new maqams to have been composed in the past century – both appear on Maqam Al-Iraq, Al-Saadi’s first album in 25 years, which was released on July 18.

Yet it’s not clear to Al-Saadi when, or if, the next additions to the canon will come.

“I remain the last link – I carry all the traditions of maqam with me,” says the exiled musician. “There's nobody else alive who knows this entire tradition and nobody who's actively performing it, or taking on the responsibility to pass on the maqam.”

Elements of Iraqi maqam can be traced back to the Abbasid golden era of 750 AD to 1258 AD, when Baghdad’s place at the heart of Islamic civilisation was akin to modern London or New York as the “centre of inspiration for artists from all over the world”, says Al-Saadi.

While the Arabic maqam can be considered a system of modes, Iraqi maqam refers to a repertoire of compositions, where each maqam has a specific episodic structure. Its preservation has been inscribed on Unesco’s Intangible Heritage list.

Unique to Iraq is Maqam Mukhalif, reputed to have first been sung after the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258, ending 500 years of prosperity. “A lot of Iraq has seen pain and suffering, and most maqams were born from a specific story that affected the singer or musician,” explains Al-Saadi. “It’s a malleable form that can adjust to current events – that's what keeps maqam alive, able to persist throughout many generations.”

Yet there is no set text for each musical composition, with the lyric the choice of the performer. “You could have three different singers perform the same maqam, following the same musical structure, but each choosing a different poem,” adds Amir ElSaffar, a member of Al-Saadi’s band and founder of Maqam Records, which is releasing Maqam Al-Iraq. “One could be an extremely sad poem, the other could be joyful or divine, one could be very secular – that keeps it dynamic and constantly changing.”

Al-Saadi was one of the last musicians to grow up amid affluence and intellectual freedom. It was a time when maqam performances were regularly heard in Iraq’s concert halls and coffee houses, and performers were supported by institutes and conservatories.

Born in 1958, and having mastered the entire repertoire by his mid-twenties, Al-Saadi became an in-demand performer on stage and television throughout the 1980s. Yusuf Omar, the most recorded Iraqi maqam singer in history, eventually named Al-Saadi his successor.

Before him, Omar had learnt from Mohammed Al-Gubbanchi, who in turn studied with forefather Ahmed Zaidan – a ceremonial torch-passing that dates back centuries. But Al-Saadi is not sure there is anyone to pass the torch to next. “I became the link from those masters to the generation that I live in,” says Al-Saadi, humbly claiming he did not ascend to “even one quarter” of Omar’s technique.

Hamid Al-Saadi performs with Safaafir: The Maqam of Iraq at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Centre on March 28, 2019. Photo: Sachyn Mital

After the UN Security Council imposed sanctions in 1990 and the first Gulf War, Iraq’s civil society crumbled and, unable to support himself as a musician, Al-Saadi fled to London in 1999. He busied himself writing a book about Iraqi maqam, Al-Maqam wa Buhoor Al-Angham.

In 2003 he was approached by ElSaffar, a young and hungry Iraqi-American jazz trumpeter who had already made a name for himself performing with free jazz pioneer Cecil Taylor. Raised in Chicago and on a mission to reconnect with his roots, ElSaffar arrived in London fresh from six months of fruitless study in Iraq.

“I went to Baghdad at a very difficult moment – 35 years of dictatorship, 12 years of sanctions – and it was a very tense time politically post 9/11,” remembers ElSaffar. Moreover, all the teachers he approached refused to take a novice Arabic speaker seriously.

When it became clear a second invasion was inevitable, ElSaffar decamped to London and tracked down Al-Saadi, who took him on as a student. “Hamid was my dream teacher because he would sit and teach me, phrase by phrase, and he wouldn't let me move on until I mastered it,” adds ElSaffar.

The knowledge he gleaned enabled ElSaffar’s later experiments with Arabic music – witnessed in Abu Dhabi with a performance of his 17-piece Rivers of Sound ensemble at NYUAD in 2016.

The album cover of Hamid Al-Saadi's Maqam Al-Iraq. Photo: Maqam Records

In 2018, ElSaffar repaid the favour, bringing Al-Saadi to the US on an Artist Protection Fund Fellowship. Now based in Brooklyn, New York, Al-Saadi has held teaching positions at Sarah Lawrence College and Rutgers University, and lectured through institutions including Lincoln Centre, the Smithsonian and Kennedy Centre.

His greatest influence may have been on stage, leading Safaafir, the only Iraqi maqam ensemble in the US – a family affair featuring ElSaffar on santur, his sister Dena ElSaffar on violin and joza, and her husband Tim Moore on percussion.

It was this group that recorded Maqam Al-Iraqi via ElSaffar’s continuing Maqam Studio preservation initiative. The 87-minute, four-track album is named after its first piece, a maqam of longing Al-Saadi composed since moving to the US, based on a text by the highly regarded Iraqi poet Ni'mah Hussain. “I lived in exile for seven years,” adds Al-Saadi. “I missed my homeland, my people – the essence of longing comes from the poem and the text.”