Browse content similar to Mohammed Fairouz, Composer. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
Now on BBC News it's time for HARDtalk. | :00:00. | :00:09. | |
Mohammed Fairouz, a youthful artist who has spent much | :00:10. | :00:23. | |
of his creative life defying boundaries and stereotypes. | :00:24. | :00:26. | |
His work ranges from symphonies to opera, to unique fusions | :00:27. | :00:28. | |
He's an Arab educated and resident in the West, | :00:29. | :00:34. | |
an outspoken advocate for creative freedom who nonetheless rails | :00:35. | :00:37. | |
against western cultural imperialism. | :00:38. | :00:42. | |
His aim is to foster cultural crossover rather than confrontation, | :00:43. | :00:45. | |
but can this artist avoid taking sides? | :00:46. | :01:20. | |
Mohammed Fairouz, welcome to heart talk. It is great to be here. Arab | :01:21. | :01:32. | |
parents, but schooling and residential life a lot of it in the | :01:33. | :01:38. | |
US and some in the UK. In terms of the tradition which is the bedrock | :01:39. | :01:45. | |
of your music, would you say it is Western or Arab? The truthful answer | :01:46. | :01:50. | |
is that it is much more of a mess than that. Music has no respect for | :01:51. | :01:57. | |
borders, sound has no respect for walls. You go to Jerusalem and you | :01:58. | :02:07. | |
hear the bells from the Hollis -- wholly support intermingle with the | :02:08. | :02:20. | |
mask. Put it this way, people who speak many languages, they talk | :02:21. | :02:24. | |
about the language they are dreaming. Do you have a musical | :02:25. | :02:30. | |
language which is your instinctive first language? That is where music | :02:31. | :02:38. | |
is particularly special. It bypasses all of that because you cannot have | :02:39. | :02:44. | |
figurative... I cannot paint a fork in music, it gets passed that and | :02:45. | :02:52. | |
goes to the things that are truly universal about human beings, the | :02:53. | :02:56. | |
beating of the heart, the human voice, it is energy say you cannot | :02:57. | :03:02. | |
have a monopoly on energy or sound. They have mixed for thousands of | :03:03. | :03:09. | |
years so if I am to be honest and genuine in answering that question, | :03:10. | :03:15. | |
because of what I know, I know how much of a mess it is. It is a very | :03:16. | :03:22. | |
frank answer but you have been to some very formalised musical | :03:23. | :03:30. | |
schools, you have done the conservatory school in the US and | :03:31. | :03:34. | |
also worked with classical Arabic musicians. When you say to them I am | :03:35. | :03:42. | |
a fusion kid, do they say you cannot do that because you are not respect | :03:43. | :03:46. | |
think the integrity of our tradition? When I went to the | :03:47. | :03:52. | |
conservatory, what was really fascinating was walking into music | :03:53. | :03:58. | |
history calls and you sort of start with the Greeks and then you skip | :03:59. | :04:04. | |
over, there is a blind spot and then you are in the Middle Ages and you | :04:05. | :04:09. | |
do not touch on any nonwestern using. You literally have are book | :04:10. | :04:15. | |
called following Western music but when you go to Aleppo, what you | :04:16. | :04:22. | |
discover all of the stuff from Hildegard, Mozart, Bach, came from | :04:23. | :04:30. | |
another civilisation and vice-versa. You find people saying more often, | :04:31. | :04:41. | |
wow, we recognise that. That is one of our lullabies. That is one of the | :04:42. | :04:48. | |
things we much people off the wall, to serenade our loved ones. You have | :04:49. | :04:54. | |
written symphonies and operas, works we serve associate with traditional | :04:55. | :05:04. | |
music. I am alive. I am not a classical composer. Most at was a | :05:05. | :05:13. | |
classical composer, 18th century period. I am not that old. You said | :05:14. | :05:20. | |
I could get off the plane and here put Java in music and they get to a | :05:21. | :05:27. | |
club and listen to Beyonce and then a band in Beirut and if I still | :05:28. | :05:32. | |
sounded like Mozart after all of that, it would be kind of weird. How | :05:33. | :05:38. | |
far it you take this fusion approach? I think as far as it has | :05:39. | :05:48. | |
always been taken. I think people have been exchanging ideas | :05:49. | :05:53. | |
creatively for centuries, millennia and every Renaissance has been | :05:54. | :06:00. | |
refined by the breaking down of boundaries and walls, sharing ideas, | :06:01. | :06:06. | |
discovering what people have in common and amplifying each other's | :06:07. | :06:13. | |
strengths. To give an idea of how you do this, let's play a clip. This | :06:14. | :06:19. | |
is a fascinating performance by an Indian dancer using your music. | :06:20. | :06:30. | |
It is beautiful to look at. I wonder how much collaboration there is, | :06:31. | :07:39. | |
when you work with the beautiful dancer, you have worked with famous | :07:40. | :07:44. | |
poets, how deep is the collaboration. I have to admit, this | :07:45. | :07:53. | |
was found well before we imagined Donald Trump would ever be our | :07:54. | :07:59. | |
president but it was proposed to be in a reality TV fashion that made me | :08:00. | :08:07. | |
very suspicious. When the BBC said they wanted to do this, they said | :08:08. | :08:14. | |
you have five days. From scratch. I said, that is impossible. I have | :08:15. | :08:20. | |
never met the woman. She has never been to New York. And not only was | :08:21. | :08:29. | |
there this Bollywood dance tradition that have thousands of years of | :08:30. | :08:32. | |
baggage and history that I did not know much about, there was also | :08:33. | :08:39. | |
David cracker, the clarinettist, was bringing a Jewish tradition of... | :08:40. | :08:45. | |
You can hear it... Where you go to those Eastern European villages were | :08:46. | :08:53. | |
those people are no longer there, the Holocaust, they left the | :08:54. | :09:00. | |
country, whatever, they left the country, they are dead, or they were | :09:01. | :09:04. | |
killed by the ideas were not dead. You still here the sound. It is | :09:05. | :09:10. | |
impossible to kill that energy, impossible to kill an idea even | :09:11. | :09:14. | |
though you can kill people. There was the classical stodgy thing of | :09:15. | :09:20. | |
the quartet as well coming together and what is magical is that it | :09:21. | :09:26. | |
worked. It worked. It is like we could have not spoken the same | :09:27. | :09:31. | |
language and yet the fluidity of the human body, the universality of what | :09:32. | :09:35. | |
she was doing, she understood the reason. There were things that were | :09:36. | :09:43. | |
just be on the need to try to translate and it worked and we did | :09:44. | :09:48. | |
it in five days and I think that is sort of like a controlled | :09:49. | :09:51. | |
experiment. It is really interesting. Let's switch focus, you | :09:52. | :09:58. | |
talk with such passion about finding common ground with an artist like | :09:59. | :10:02. | |
her, here you have never met before, purely in artistic terms but a lot | :10:03. | :10:08. | |
of your work, the recent work, has had a real world political edge to | :10:09. | :10:14. | |
it. To what extent these days are you as an Arab American feel that | :10:15. | :10:20. | |
you need to use your art to explore politics? Well, I think an interest | :10:21. | :10:31. | |
in statecraft and politics has been something that has defined by work. | :10:32. | :10:39. | |
For many years. I think that when a politician comes on the show, they | :10:40. | :10:47. | |
are basically coming to sell something and they are asking people | :10:48. | :10:52. | |
to give them something - power. And an artist is doing something that is | :10:53. | :10:56. | |
very different from that. They are offering ideas and insight into the | :10:57. | :11:04. | |
internal human condition and societies are human beings | :11:05. | :11:08. | |
multiplied... Offering ideas all delivering polemics and various | :11:09. | :11:15. | |
specific critiques. Just looking at recent things, the dictator 's wife, | :11:16. | :11:20. | |
which you put on a Washington, DC just before the Trump in duration | :11:21. | :11:25. | |
seem to be a direct message about authoritarian corruption that might | :11:26. | :11:30. | |
be taken as a your feeling, Warwick, about Donald Trump coming to the | :11:31. | :11:37. | |
White House. Of course but I think that the thing about this, Kennedy | :11:38. | :11:42. | |
had a great way of putting this, if Donald Trump was in the White House | :11:43. | :11:48. | |
during the Cuban missile crisis I probably will never have been born. | :11:49. | :11:55. | |
The temperance, the idea of understanding that power has its | :11:56. | :12:00. | |
limitations, that wilting power has its limitations and indeed it | :12:01. | :12:07. | |
Kennedy did say where power corrupts poetry cleanses. There is a special | :12:08. | :12:15. | |
accountability that artists can hold people in power too. Your | :12:16. | :12:19. | |
consciousness is very much affected by being an Arab American in an era, | :12:20. | :12:26. | |
as we know, Donald Trump in particular with his travel ban on | :12:27. | :12:32. | |
certain Muslim countries, appears to associate Muslims... These are my | :12:33. | :12:39. | |
words not his... Muslims from particular countries with terrorism. | :12:40. | :12:46. | |
As an American citizen, how does that make you feel? I would like to | :12:47. | :12:53. | |
emphasise that I do not really think... I think Donald Trump | :12:54. | :13:00. | |
represents something that is an outgrowth of at least 60 years of | :13:01. | :13:07. | |
decline in one of our political parties in our country that has | :13:08. | :13:12. | |
refused to participate in our democratic process, the Republican | :13:13. | :13:18. | |
Party and as far as his views on the Muslims are concerned, I think this | :13:19. | :13:24. | |
cut to the heart of what we would call a clash of civilisations. This | :13:25. | :13:30. | |
is the reason why a clash of civilisations is not happening. | :13:31. | :13:35. | |
Sadiq Khan was marching in pride, the Mayor of London, and he probably | :13:36. | :13:41. | |
shares a lot of use with Angela Merkel, treating people with | :13:42. | :13:47. | |
dignity, being inclusive is, it these are global cities. Insisting | :13:48. | :13:55. | |
that someone is your enemy... I am going to stop you. I think it is | :13:56. | :14:01. | |
useful to have a representation in Sound and vision. In the Netherlands | :14:02. | :14:08. | |
you put on a show, the new prince, which played with images of US | :14:09. | :14:13. | |
politics including a character appearing to be based on Donald | :14:14. | :14:17. | |
Trump. Let's have a quick look at that now. (MUSIC PLAYING). . | :14:18. | :14:27. | |
You have tried preventing us from living. You have tried preventing us | :14:28. | :14:36. | |
from living. Chains and irons. Chains and irons. | :14:37. | :15:09. | |
Pounding of locks. Keys and bars. Keys and bars. So many arresting | :15:10. | :15:30. | |
images that I don't know where to begin almost. One thing strikes me. | :15:31. | :15:35. | |
You have put on different forms of music, particular lay operas, which | :15:36. | :15:45. | |
clearly carry a critique of power, especially Western exercise of that | :15:46. | :15:49. | |
power. But one thing you have in your career is anything that really, | :15:50. | :15:56. | |
clearly takes on, confronts, and criticises, the Arab world, you | :15:57. | :16:01. | |
don't talk about that. Why is that? I criticise political power around | :16:02. | :16:13. | |
the world. I wrote several articles criticising several Arab | :16:14. | :16:17. | |
governments. I have been vocal in my critique. What I do think is that | :16:18. | :16:26. | |
the West and the Arab world can help each other if they approach each | :16:27. | :16:30. | |
other in a more genuine way. I think there is this sense that we are | :16:31. | :16:33. | |
going to criticise imperialism coming from the West and the West is | :16:34. | :16:41. | |
going to take 40-year-old critiques of the Arab world rather than other | :16:42. | :16:49. | |
things we can solve together. There are universal values we have | :16:50. | :16:53. | |
together. You are a publicly out gay man and an artist and frankly, you | :16:54. | :17:01. | |
would find life in many parts of the Arabian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, the | :17:02. | :17:05. | |
Emirates, where your parents are from, you would find life there in | :17:06. | :17:10. | |
possible, not least because being gay, being actively gay, is a | :17:11. | :17:17. | |
criminal offence that is severely punishable in Saudi Arabia, | :17:18. | :17:20. | |
potentially by death itself. But you don't speak out about that at all. I | :17:21. | :17:24. | |
have spoken out about sexual repression in Middle Eastern | :17:25. | :17:31. | |
countries and Western countries. If I may enter up, you have criticised | :17:32. | :17:36. | |
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, for you the hour mark | :17:37. | :17:45. | |
what you regard as culturally inappropriate analysis. -- for what | :17:46. | :17:57. | |
you. You say they are using a completely Western and non-nuanced | :17:58. | :18:01. | |
understanding of homosexuality in the Arab world, but I don't | :18:02. | :18:05. | |
understand that. They are approaching it with a noninclusive | :18:06. | :18:09. | |
point of view that does not take into consideration... I mean, you | :18:10. | :18:14. | |
define me as a gay man which I don't identify with in that way... What do | :18:15. | :18:21. | |
you mean by that? There are really no Arabic words for "Gay" or | :18:22. | :18:31. | |
"Straight." And I Axley find the idea of being "straight" kind of | :18:32. | :18:38. | |
strange. There is a tradition and it is quite different. We are coming to | :18:39. | :18:42. | |
a point, I think, in the Western world, where we are talking about | :18:43. | :18:45. | |
non- binary definitions of sexuality. OK? We are talking about | :18:46. | :18:52. | |
fluidity in sexuality. The Arab world, go back, thousands of years | :18:53. | :19:01. | |
of tradition in this form. There are a lot of people in the Arab world | :19:02. | :19:05. | |
who would like to identify with the tradition that they belong to and | :19:06. | :19:11. | |
enjoy equal rights with their fellow citizens. I believe that all Arab | :19:12. | :19:17. | |
nations must guarantee equal protection is for all citizens of. | :19:18. | :19:29. | |
Would your work, could it be put on in your country of heritage, the | :19:30. | :19:38. | |
United Arab Emirates, or Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain, is there any | :19:39. | :19:42. | |
ability for you to do this in the Arab world itself? My song cycle, | :19:43. | :20:01. | |
called Songs From Ibin Havesh, based on his same-sex love poetry. They | :20:02. | :20:05. | |
have been done in the United Arab Emirates. I have another song with | :20:06. | :20:09. | |
baritones and male singers in the West who have identified and seen | :20:10. | :20:18. | |
this. And it has been done over there. And they are not only done, | :20:19. | :20:24. | |
they are taught and memorised by people over there. I will ask you | :20:25. | :20:28. | |
before we end about something very current and relevant for you being | :20:29. | :20:33. | |
in the UK. You put on a performance at a big Manchester Arts Festival, a | :20:34. | :20:41. | |
musical performance. You are doing it only weeks after a man of Libyan | :20:42. | :20:47. | |
origin, a young man, a militant, appearing to be loyal in his own way | :20:48. | :20:53. | |
to so-called Islamic State, he put a bomb inside an Ariana Grande | :20:54. | :21:00. | |
concert, killing women and children. Do you believe your music and your | :21:01. | :21:04. | |
message about the bridge building and the cultural cross-fertilisation | :21:05. | :21:10. | |
that can happen through music, do you think about, right now, can make | :21:11. | :21:15. | |
a difference to the thinking of people in a city like Manchester? | :21:16. | :21:19. | |
Not why itself. I mean, it has been said you must love one another or | :21:20. | :21:26. | |
die. He meant it. We have two options. We have a serious issue | :21:27. | :21:35. | |
with violence erupting throughout the world. Some of it is linked to | :21:36. | :21:40. | |
extremist thought and to radicalisation. I would urge an | :21:41. | :21:49. | |
uncoupling of what is, as a matter of fact, a small number of people | :21:50. | :21:56. | |
from the second-largest civilisation in human history. That gives them | :21:57. | :22:01. | |
legitimacy that they crave. It gives them association they do not need to | :22:02. | :22:07. | |
have... But they are Muslims and they are coming out of a very small | :22:08. | :22:11. | |
number of mosques inspired by a very small number of militant imams and | :22:12. | :22:17. | |
other leaders, and... Absolutely. Absolutely. You cannot deny the | :22:18. | :22:23. | |
Muslim origin of this problem. Absolutely not. But what you can say | :22:24. | :22:28. | |
and understand are once again fact. You know, we have had zero suicide | :22:29. | :22:38. | |
attacks in most countries. The Netherlands, UAE, we have just had | :22:39. | :22:44. | |
under 3000 people die of suicide attacks between 1982 and 2015 in the | :22:45. | :22:52. | |
United States. We have had, in the United States, at least 30,000 | :22:53. | :22:56. | |
people die as a result of gun violence every year since 1982 at | :22:57. | :23:06. | |
least. I see the crosses, the KKK, I see they have them and burn them. I | :23:07. | :23:10. | |
do not associate them with such a mainstream movement as Christianity, | :23:11. | :23:14. | |
because the majority of people, Christians, have nothing to do with | :23:15. | :23:18. | |
that. What you need is people who believe in civilisation, believing | :23:19. | :23:21. | |
perversity, who believe in inclusion, people from all | :23:22. | :23:27. | |
backgrounds, Sadiq Khan, Angela Merkel, from the UAE, to come | :23:28. | :23:30. | |
together and oppose people who incite hate. They need to do that in | :23:31. | :23:35. | |
the US, especially against people like Donald Trump. Your music is a | :23:36. | :23:41. | |
part of that? It is forced to be a part of it because I am living in | :23:42. | :23:45. | |
this age. Mohammed Fairouz, we have the end it there. But thank you so | :23:46. | :23:49. | |
much for being on HARDtalk thank you. Thank you. | :23:50. | :24:13. | |
Plenty going on with our weather in the next few days. | :24:14. | :24:19. | |
Ups and downs to come during the week ahead. | :24:20. | :24:21. | |
If you like sunshine, the weekend ended on a high note | :24:22. | :24:25. |