My Strategy became asking questions: not to evade the elephant in the room, but to DEAL with it. To not accept the 'status quo', be comfortable and just get on playing some, whatever music, but rather seeking an understanding of what the music I play, learn and compose signifies in the world I exist in. To not be passive, but to become an activist - actively shaping this what I want the world to be within the scope of my own possibilities. To actively pose questions means, to have a wider array of possibilities to be consciously responding to the world I am presented with. To ACTIVELY CONSTRUCT MY OWN IDENTITY - a long overdue task in my own biography. Taking my education as a means for emancipation.  

So here I am, with the Oud in our world, learning about 'othering', identity, colonial impact and history (and the influence it had and has on musical expressions), trying to listen to others experiences and realities. Forced by the instrument to engage with the world and try to understand myself really, my place and position in the world I find myself in. The Oud truly is TEACHING me about myself, the world and others. The Oud is a tool capable of decolonising my mind and thought. 

Debunking myths, uncovering unconscious assumptions, not taking things at words value, questioning Imaginaries. Ultimately again arriving at questions of WHAT is this instrument, which captivated my life so deeply, that all its course changed direction and is lead by it? What is its charme and sound, which keeps me engaged for such a long time now without end in sight? 

What are the components, the 'ingredients' (as Amin Maalouf might say), which make up the SOUND of the OUD? Not, what people (whoever people) assume it is, but what they truly are? 

When a professor in an exam is quick to make judgment about sound asking: "Is THAT typical Oud?" while listening to an example of an ornament in musical context (isolated), adding: "It sounds like a guitar", not quite approving of my example, sounding doubtful - it is very telling about how exotifying and orientalising of imaginary and expectations still exist today, even in environments as academic as mine, in our very centres of knowledge - even the ones, in which an influencial contemporary Oud player today, is present in since decades.   

And I wouldn't want to fall into that trap - so I listen, dissect, observe, question and analyse. I want to know, what is that, which I am dealing with? What does it REALLY say? 

What are the moments, that I do not feel, I expressed the instruments essence? Why I didn't feel I use its true expression and potential? What do the expressions of the Oud contain and consist of? What elements I can NOT ommit, to be truthfully satisfied while playing it? What is the voice of the instrument? What makes up the beauty of its sound?  

´

 

Reflecting upon questions of Identity 

I question, I ask, I listen, I read, I analyse coming to my own unique conclusions about what the Oud is and can be, who I am and want to be with it. What sounds and voice I want it to strengthen and sound. On a smaller scale too, actively playing a part in shaping the instruments unique and rich identity. Getting to know my partner in life, my companion, the friend, which took my hand and was here, quite suddenly and surprisingly. Paying my debt to the love, which made me be seen and heard in my darkest times, creating a sense of connection when there was none and continues being a means of communication in my life.  

as part of the Focus Seminar Spring '23

On my journey I keep asking myself: what is the essence of the Oud? What is, what makes up the instrument's identity?

Often in the foreground of my practice is a connotation and expectation I  am being met with or face, one I can barely escape , of how the instrument is being assigned to be representative of a cultural entity, which on the other side, I can barely (not at all, really) claim.

But then there are the modes (Maqam - a far too big of a word to be fathomed!), the rhythms (Iqa), the ornaments, the Improvisation paths (Taqsim), certain aestetics of sound. Its rich history and widespread presence and influence over a whole collection of instruments spanning between the European Lute and the Pipa. And the functions of the instrument within different repertoires and constellations and much of those have geographical and historical origins.

It is music, which in the context I mostly exist in in Europe, represents something, that is NOT European (so the imaginations I face constantly... based on flawed and incomplete historically inaccurate concepts of our world) - an instrument representative of 'the other'. And here it is, the omnipresent (mostly still unreflected) colonial reality and history, and an unequal power dynamics seeking into my music making every single day. 

There are different strategies to approach this reality I find myself in  ( by chance ... ? ) Having been 'othered' myself in my formative years and this experience having a central impact on my difficulty to successfully construct a sense of self and identity as a young person in Germany, failing at developing a sense of belonging and inclusion, later being the invisible 'other'* I am sensitized and receptive to things, which are not addressed, to the unspoken, the in-between the lines, to the unseen, untold and to dynamics of this very kind.  

* (being white by looks, not necessarily by socialisation, having inherited different sets of values and imaginaries of the world, having had a different experience of myself in it.  Always caught between the expectation of 'to 'assimilate', to NOT DISRUPT, to NOT EXPRESS MY REALITY and a need to rebell and be heard and seen)
 

During my explorations I came to the very surprising realisation and understanding that: FOR ME PLAYING THE OUD IS AN ACT OF
REBELLION. 

Visible disruption in progress, Identity under construction. 

- it seems: just as the Oud can be and also is. 

Gebauer, Mirjam, Vitting-Seerup and Wiegand. Introduction: Reinventing Identities, Languages and Institutions. In: Reframing Migration, Diversity and the arts - the postmigrant condition, pp 135-139. New York, 2019.  

Maalouf, Amin. In the name of identity: violence and the need to belong. New York, 1996, 2012.

Racy, Ali Jihad. The Many Faces of Improvisation: The Arab Taqāsīm as a Musical Symbol. Ethnomusicology, vol. 44, no. 2, 2000, pp. 302–20. 

Ring Petersen, Anne and Vitting-Seerup Sabrina. Identity and Cultural Representations in the Postmigrant Condition. In: Reframing Migration, Diversity and the arts - the postmigrant condition, pp 140-169. New York, 2019.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. 1978/2019.