BETWEEN IRAQ AND SYRIA

Songs of Jazîra

Jazîra (‘island’ in Arabic) is an ancient province of Mesopotamia that straddles Iraq and Syria. As a path of passage between the East and the West, Jazîra seems to be a land where indigenous and migrant populations have never stopped mingling over the course of centuries.

The music that comes from here arises as a sort of necessity, and an advantageous one at that, because it offers the opportunities for exchange between cultures and the sharing of identities.

The gifted multi-instrumentalist and polyglot Ibrahim Keivo holds the poetic and musical richness of this region within: whether they are Arab, Armenian, Assyrian, Chaldean, Kurdish Syrian or Yezidi, his religious and seculars songs celebrate the words of people who are generally known in the West through the tragic images of war and exile.

As if a bard of modern times, he went out into the field, travelling from village to village, in order to collect the memories of a people generally forgotten, sometimes even exiled in their own land.

It’s with inspiration and conviction that he fills the stage with the sole force of his voice, which grows with the nuances of the ud as well as several great Eastern lutes, such as the baghlama, buzuq, jumbus and the saz.

Ibrahim Keivo : song, baghlama, buzuq, jumbus, saz and ud

This concert is followed by the concert Free song of Iran. Manushan, with Aïda Nosrat and Babak Amir Mobasher

The double concert is preceded by the lecture of Reza Afchar Naderi, Persian songs: near and far.