Issa Boulos’ ring finger slid almost imperceptibly on the nay, a flute used in classical Arabic music.
‘This is the second note of the maqam, if you’re in Egypt,’ Boulos said. His finger slid another millimeter. ‘If you’re in Syria, it’s this.’ Another millimeter. ‘If you’re in Iraq, it’s this.’
On Thursday, Boulos, a musician, composer and director of the Middle East Music Ensemble at the University of Chicago, gave a musical lecture and demonstration for NU students at 1810 Hinman Ave. Students learned a ‘maqam’ is roughly the Middle Eastern equivalent to the Western musical scale. Maqams, though, vary slightly from one region to another. But no matter where you are, each of the approximately 50 commonly used maqams ‘resonates with a philosophical idea,’ Boulos said. Each maqam evokes a different emotional response from the listener.
Boulos went on to discuss topics ranging from musical notation of Middle Eastern music to the political significance of nationalistic Egyptian music in the early 1900s.
He began his lecture by discussing not music, but language. Arabic music and language are closely related, he said. Several students were asked to clap the rhythm of their names. Everything we say has rhythm and pitch, Boulos said. Everything we say is, in effect, musical.
‘Language, from day one, always attached itself to some sort of vocalization that we can think of today as music,’ he said.
Throughout the lecture, Boulos demonstrated rhythms and musical ideas on several instruments including the tambourine-like riqq and the oud, which resembles a lute.
Boulos also discussed the state of traditional music in the Middle East today, which is very different than music in the United States.
‘When you go to learn the violin, the first thing they teach you is a nice minuet,’ he said. ‘You all know Mozart and Beethoven. It’s a given.’
The vast majority of people in the Middle East, he said, know nothing about traditional Middle Eastern music. Younger people are very interested in what they see on satellite TV and hear on the radio.
This fact made Holly Nwangwa, a Weinberg freshman, appreciate the lecture even more.
‘Since people my own age in the Middle East aren’t exposed to this music, I feel very privileged to hear this,’ said Nwangwa, who was one of more than 20 students in attendance.
Weinberg freshman Kira Hooks saw the demonstration as part of her freshman seminar course, ‘Middle Eastern Popular Culture’ with Prof. Jessica Winegar.
‘I wanted to look at the Middle East not from a political or military point of view,’ she said, ‘but from a pop culture point of view.’
Boulos is currently composing new pieces and will be performing April 11 at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St.
