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Iraqi music business reflects hardships
16.3.2007 |
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March 16, 2007
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan region (Iraq), --
Farouk Hassan‘s eyes well up with tears as he cranks
his car‘s CD player and sings along with the latest
hit, a lament to his lost love: violence-torn
Baghdad.
The pop star singing the tune, the young man
listening to it and even the music shop employees
who sold him the CD are all among the thousands who
have fled the Iraqi capital.
"A song can wrap a person in all these emotions,
it‘s really amazing," said Hassan, wiping away the
tears from his eyes. The music can "truly move
people who are missing home," he added.
Approximately 1.8 million Iraqis have fled the
country in nearly four years of violence since the
fall of Saddam Hussein . A similar number have left
their homes to take refuge elsewhere in Iraq , many
in Sulaimaniyah and other parts of the northern
Kurdistan region, which has largely been spared the
turmoil.
In Kurdistan at Sulaimaniyah‘s Aldar Albaidaa music
store, where Hassan is a regular customer, one of
the employees — Ammar — knows all too well the
dangers of the music business.
"You infidel and devil-follower ... you deserve to
die for pushing Muslims to corruption and adultery,"
said the letter they left.
A few days later, he left his family and college
studies behind and fled to Sulaimaniyah, where he
took up his job at Aldar Albaidaa.
The Aldar Albaidaa chain of music stores is itself
something of a refugee. It opened a branch in
Sulaimaniyah because it was no longer safe to sell
music in central and southern Iraq, said the
branch‘s manager, Ahmad al-Ahmad.
He negotiatied with them to keep the store open, but
under a strict set of conditions: No hanging
pictures of female singers on the storefront and no
loudspeakers playing music outside.
Al-Ahmad, the Sulaimaniyah branch manager, said the
best selling CDs of 2006 were those evoking emotions
of Iraqis who had fled from violence, with titles
like "So we don‘t forget Iraq" and "The pains of our
people."
Among the most popular is Hossam al-Rassam, the
Iraqi singer that Hassan was listening to in his
car.
"What a pity, it (Baghdad) was the jewel of the
Arabs, but it was sold away in an auction," al-Rassam,
who now resides in Syria , weeps in one tune.
In others, al-Rassam plays the oud — an Arabic
instrument related to the lute — and sings in the
traditional poetic style of the maqam to wrench the
most emotion out of lyrics, pleading with his
homeland to forgive those who fled.
Faced with the dangers of purchasing music, many
Baghdad residents now turn to the Internet.
Anwar Getan, who lives in eastern Baghdad, says he
downloads songs and saves them on his mobile phone
memory card, exchanging them with neighbors and
friends.
"Using the mobile to listen to songs is way safer
than endangering ourselves by going to the music
stores," he said.
AP-reporter Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah also
contributed to this report.
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