My Strategy became asking questions, not to evade the elephant in the room, but to DEAL with it. To not accept the 'status quo' and 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 of decolonising my mind.
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 it really, truly is?
What are the moments, that I do not feel, I expressed its 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?
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.
Actively playing a part in shaping the instruments unique and rich identity.
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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.
Rossini, Manuela. Cultural Transfer: An Introduction (with Michael Toggweiler). Word and Text: A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics Vol2., p.5-9. 2014.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. 1978/2019.
During my explorations I came to the very surprising realisation and understanding that:
FOR ME PLAYING THE OUD IS AN ACT OF REBELLION.
On my journey I keep asking myself: what is the essence of the Oud? What is, what makes up the instrument's identity?
What often is in the foreground of my practice and a connotation and expectation I constantly am being met with and face, I can barely escape is, how the instrument is being assigned to be representative of a cultural entity, which on the other side, I can barely (or 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, certain aestetics of sound, the functions of the instrument within different repertoires and constellations and much of those have geographical and historical origin.
It is music, which in the context I mostly exist 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 very receptive to things, which are not addressed, to the unspoken, the in-between the lines, to the unseen 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)