Naseer Shamma - His Life

His Life

• Naseer Shamma was born in the city of Iraq in 1963 . And took the first lessons of playing Oud on the hands of his first teacher, Saheb Hussien AlNamoos.

• He completed his undergraduate studies at the Institute of Musical Studies "tonalities" in Baghdad in 1987. Later,Oud became his specialty instrument.

• He obtained, on his graduation year, "The best melody of an emotional song in Iraq" award; he played his first concert at the first Arabic music forum in France with a selection of top artists Iraq.

• He presented his first solo musical concert, at a very early age, on Iraq theaters. The most famous concert was in 1985, conducted in the hall of "Orfali" in Baghdad. Mrs.Wedad El-Orfali invited the top artists, writers, musicians and critics to the party despite the novelty of his experience at the time.

• His first concert outside of Iraq was in the ArmenianTheater in Paris in 1985. He then gave 6 concerts with the artist Munir Bashir in, at the time, West Germany. Then another concert in Geneva / Switzerland in 1986, before graduating from the institute with three of his colleagues. And in 1988, he presented a concert in Athens / Greece with Iraqi fashion designer "Hana Sadiq". Afterwards hisconcerts outside the Arab world massively increased, until it became difficult to count.

• He accomplished his elegant Oud based on the thousand years old designs of "Farabi". He then presented it toprofessionals in Iraq at a grand ceremony in 1986.

• He traveled to reside in Jordan for a full year. He made thesoundtrack for the play "The country asked the people" by Abdul Latif Akl and directed by Al Monasef El Souissi. He received for it an award at the Carthage Festival the following year of 1988. He, afterwards, returned to Iraq again.

• Naseer Shamma was fond of Sufism ever since his youth, perhaps because of his family's religious nature and hismusic perspective. So he deepened his knowledge in this field, by reading about the ten ways of Sufism, what derived from them and the biography of top Sufis. He then passionately went into the readings of Ibn Arabi, Ibn El Fared, Suhrawardi, Rabaa El Adaweya and loved Al halag.

• In 1993, he moved to work as a professor of Oud at theHigher Institute of Music, University of Tunisia.

• He founded the "Arab Oud House" in Egypt in 1999. Helives in Cairo ever since.

• He organized and headed Egypt's first Oud forum, in theCairo Opera House in 2010.