Meeting Simon Shaheen

I was in the midst of some google search, with at least 40 tabs open in my browser window - as usual - when I landed on the page of the Manhattan School of Music and found an announcement for a lecture on Arabic music with Simon Shaheen. I had found out recently that Shaheen lives in New York City and I was trying to find a way to get in touch with him for a project I’m working on.

It was 10 am, and the lecture was going to be at 12:00 that same day. Luckily the Manhattan School of Music is just down the street from Columbia, so without any hesitation, I told my friend Zahra, and we headed there.

(Photo by Joe Tabacca for the Boston Globe)

I don’t know what I was expecting, but when we walked into the small classroom where the lecture was held, a professor handed us some music sheets and we realized that it was going to be more technical than we thought.

Shaheen began talking about what distinguishes Arabic music - he explained the maqamat, and how they’re different from Western scales. He was demonstrating on his violin how the maqams allow for an abundance of modulations and melodic sounds, which makes Arabic music very melodically rich and different in that it does not rely on harmonic structures. Then he explained the rhythms and forms, and played his Oud and sang, all the while explaining the cultural and social context for these different forms.

I loved it, and because I have a little bit of background in music and music theory, I managed to follow a good portion of what he explaining. I had my first introduction to the world of maqams through a friend of mine in Jordan, and we often discussed what a shame it is that many young people in Jordan who get the chance to study music, end studying only classical western music. Granted, the piano is a western instrument and you can’t learn the quarter tones and microtones while playing it, but what you see in music education in Jordan is that the worlds of Arabic music and Western music are completely separate, and very few musicians have a solid base in both. It doesn’t even have to be a solid base, but at least some understanding. I don’t have concrete numbers, but I bet you if you compare the number of students in the Oriental music department at the National Music Conservatory with the number of those studying classical western music, the disparity will be huge. So for example you have many violin players who simply don’t know how to play Arabic music.

Sure, studying classical western music is important, but it gets disproportional emphasis in our music institutions (the few of them that we have anyway). Personally, I found the bits that I learned through my friend and in yesterday’s lecture to be fascinating and eye-opening.

Simon Shaheen has been doing an incredible job as an ambassador of Arabic music here. He organizes an annual Arabic music retreat in Massachusetts where students get an intensive session of Arabic music with ear-training, instrument and vocal lessons, and Arabic music theory. He recently composed a concerto for Oud that will premiere with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra soon and will be performed in Carnegie Hall next spring.

I was so glad I made it to the lecture. As Zahra put it, he's "so quintessentially Arab." I had an interesting chat with him afterwards and we agreed to talk again for this story that I'm working on (more on that later).

On a tangental note, I love the random opportunities and encounters this city offers, and I love the amount of creative energy in every corner.

Snippets from New York

I can’t believe it’s been a month since I updated this space. I know it would sound lame to say I’ve been busy, because I’ve probably always felt busy one way or the other - but grad school and life in New York City is a completely different type of busy. And I’m loving it :)

I’m sitting outside the Journalism School building, working on my pitch for the New Media Masters project while watching some kids playing on the lawn and enjoying the gorgeous Fall weather. This campus just feels like a park sometimes.



A tiny mouse just passed by. I got so used to these by now, and they’re a much more tolerable sight than the big rats you occasionally see crossing the subway rails. Those are some of the rare moments where I actually miss Amman’s stray cats. You don’t see stray cats on the streets here, but I’d take cats any day over rats and mice.

But this doesn’t make me love New York City any less. One of the amazing things about this place is that it takes you in as one of its own very quickly. Just give yourself one week of living here and you no longer feel like a foreigner. You get on the subway and you see people of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds imaginable. No one is too different in New York. It’s a city of sub-cultures, and whatever your niche, you can be sure to find enough like-minded people who share your interest.

That said, communities are still somehow segregated, and there definitely is a sort of housing apartheid. One of the most eye-opening experiences of the city for me was the hunt for an apartment. A rent of $1,200 per month for a very tiny studio or a room share is considered very reasonable. Columbia University is located on the upper west side of Manhattan, and housing in the immediate vicinity of the school is quite expensive if it’s not university housing. But then you go a few blocks up and you’re in Harlem - the historical heart of African-American culture in New York. Harlem has changed so much over past years, as has the rest of the city with the work of Rudy Giuliani. He gets a lot of credit here for making New York a much safer place, but also a more expensive place. Harlem has been undergoing waves of gentrification, as have many other neighborhoods, especially in Brooklyn. It’s the common story you hear all over the city. It usually starts with artists, who, looking for cheaper space to rent and work, move into poorer neighborhoods. Students and educated young people looking for inexpensive rent follow. Suddenly the neighborhood becomes an interesting destination for more affluent people. Real estate developers move in. Condominiums rise up. Rent becomes higher. The ratio of racial minorities goes down or are driven out by the higher cost of living.

But I digress. I ended up finding a really nice apartment on the edge of Washington Heights, four subway stops away from Columbia. It’s a mini Dominican Republic up there, and even though I don’t spend much time in the neighborhood, I love the Latin American culture around me. Not to mention Latin American food. My new favorite thing is arepas :)

One of our main classes at Columbia this semester is “Writing and Reporting I”, and what basically happens is that you are assigned a beat to cover - a neighborhood that you report and write stories on all through the semester. My beat is Red Hook, in Brooklyn, and I find the place so fascinating and interesting. In a way I feel that beat reporting enriches my experience of New York, because I get to explore aspects that I would’ve probably not explored otherwise.

But Red Hook deserves a post or two on its own, so I’ll stop here, and go work on that pitch. I promised myself though that I’ll make some time for blogging more often, if only for myself, because I want to keep track of the thoughts and observations throughout the year. Whether or not I’ll be able to keep that promise remains to be seen :) If I don’t then I will at least try to post more photos.