Understanding Maqam - Maqam Rast, with Sami Abu Shumays

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Understanding Maqam - Maqam Rast, with Sami Abu Shumays

Sami has taught workshops on Maqam and Arabic Music at Yale University, Lincoln Center, Wesleyan University, The New School, the college of William and Mary, Lark Camp, Alwan for the Arts, Lotus Music and Dance, Global Youth Village, Folk Tours, and more. He is a violinist and vocalist based in NYC, founder and director of the ensemble Zikrayat, co-author of the new book Inside Arabic Music, creator of the website Maqam Lessons, and contributor to the website Maqam World. He studied Arabic music with many teachers including Alfred Gamil, Mohamed Qassas, Simon Shaheen, Yousuf Kassab, Abdel-Basit Bakkar and Abdel-Minaim Sinkary.

Saturday June 6th, 2020 4pm https://brooklynmaqam.com/livestream-sami-abu-shumays Donations highly encouraged!

Sami's new approach to teaching and analyzing maqam is much clearer to understand than traditional maqam theory, because it is much closer to oral tradition and performance practice. Using an accessible call-and-response format to teach the basic melodies of Maqam Rast, Sami will put together the building blocks, known as ajnas, so that students will understand the concepts of modulation (moving from jins to jins) and sayr (the overall melodic direction of a maqam).

This class is suitable for both experienced Arab musicians as well as complete beginners. It is accessible to beginning and intermediate students because of the simple format used to understand the building blocks of maqam: call and response of the basic melodic vocabulary. It is suitable for advanced musicians because Sami's approach to understanding maqam is so new that most musicians will benefit from having another look at what they know already, through his form of analysis.