Maqam Al-Iraq is the inaugural album of the newly established Brooklyn-based record label Maqām Records, an initiative of multi-instrumentalist and composer Amir ElSaffar. The label, which produces “high-quality recordings that document traditional Maqam repertoire while also offering innovative interpretations,” is part of a broader project, Maqām Studio, also run by Amir ElSaffar. Founded in 2023, it aims to preserve maqam musical traditions and support musicians through live performances, music productions, and archiving.
The Iraqi Maqam, rooted in Iraq’s urban centers, is a vocal genre with a repertoire of compositions that have been orally transmitted for centuries. Hamid Al-Saadi has now brought this tradition to contemporary audiences with the release of his new album, Maqam Al Iraq. Born in Baghdad in 1958, Al-Saadi studied with the genre’s master singers of the twentieth century. Since the 1980s, he has performed and taught in Iraq and cities across Europe and the United States and remains the only singer of his generation to have memorized the entire repertoire of the genre. To date, the genre’s existing repertoire of Baghdad comprises 54–56 maqams. The number remains inexact because experts often disagree on whether to treat very similar modes as distinct or to consolidate them. Furthermore, the repertoire is categorized into eight overarching modal groups with each individual maqam exhibiting slight variation in its melodic content. With this album, that number has expanded to 57, as it includes a new maqam composed and recorded by Al-Saadi, a rare innovation most recently undertaken about a century ago by master vocalist Muhammad al-Qubbanchi. Composing a new maqam requires mastery of the entire repertoire and the melodic pieces that make up all the maqams. The process thus involves much selecting and reorganizing of melodic pieces, which should adhere to the traditional internal structure of a maqam.
This album represents a rare event, almost a miracle, achieved in the face of major obstructions and disruptions to the genre and its urban and social contexts that began during the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, worsened during the thirteen years of sanctions on the country in the 1990s, and deteriorated further after the US-led invasion in 2003. For decades, musicians, aficionados, and scholars of the genre have shared a collective sense of loss as they witnessed its social space deteriorate and people’s ability to support it diminish during times of war and sanctions. Many experts sought to preserve it through documentation, theorization, and transcription of its poetry and melodies for teaching and learning. Meanwhile, many musicians, especially those who left the country, continued to perform and record abroad, while amateurs began collecting old and new recordings, organizing them into collections, and sharing them among fellow enthusiasts.
Meanwhile, a few living master singers—Al-Saadi, Husayn al-Aʿdhami, and Farida Muhammad Ali—have attempted to preserve the tradition through recordings, releasing the last professional albums about two decades ago (in 1999, 2008, and 2009, respectively). Since then, only amateur-quality video recordings have sporadically captured scarce performances of the Iraqi Maqam, both in Iraq and among its diasporas. Some of these recordings are shared on YouTube by enthusiasts of the genre and circulated across social media platforms. Interestingly, many of these recordings are of generally poor quality. They mostly originate from one of the two sources: amateur reformatting of old commercial records, or direct recordings made with portable recording devices at live performances. Despite that, for audiences and lovers of this music, a thirst for more persists.
For Al-Saadi, Maqam Al-Iraq marks another milestone in his musical career. Having taught himself and memorized the repertoire by listening to radio broadcasts and cassette recordings in the 1970s, he remains today the only living master capable of performing the Iraqi Maqam’s entire repertoire. This legacy was entrusted to him by his mentors Yusuf Omar (c. 1918–1986) and Muhammad al-Qubbanchi, who considered him “the best chain [in the line of transmission] to carry on the Maqam forward” (Al-Saadi Reference Al-Saadi2018). Al-Saadi has taken this task seriously. He has spent his entire career not only performing and teaching but also reviving and recording older maqams that other singers and musicians of his generation have neglected. In 2018, he moved to New York City after receiving the Artist Protection Fund Fellowship from the Institute of International Education (IIE). Since then, he has collaborated with santur master Amir ElSaffar to perform, record, and interpret many nearly forgotten, esoteric, and idiosyncratic maqams from the repertoire; their efforts culminated in a joint album with Safaafir, ElSaffar’s ensemble. Formed in 2005 by Amir ElSaffar and joined by Deena ElSaffar and Tim Moore, Safaafir is a traditional chalghi ensemble—the type of traditional ensemble that has long accompanied Iraqi Maqam singers—composed of a santur (zither), a joza (a four-stringed spike fiddle), and a darbuka (goblet-shaped drum). For 20 years, the Safaafir ensemble also did much to bring the Iraqi Maqam to US audiences and the Iraqi diaspora in the country through tours of numerous US cities, introducing the genre to first- and second-generation audiences, releasing the album Maqams of Baghdad in 2006, and accompanying the mastersinger Hamid Al-Saadi in his US performances.
Maqam Al-Iraq features four tracks spanning over two discs. The album’s Bandcamp page offers an additional radio edit, bringing the streaming total to five. The first, “Maqam Al Iraq,” is the new maqam composed by Al-Saadi. A maqam is a structured arrangement of selected melodic motifs that allows space for vocal and instrumental elaboration and ornamentation. Melodically, “Maqam Al Iraq” is a compound maqam; its main melody is made up of two basic melodic motifs, bayat and segah. About 100 such short melodic motifs form the repertoire, called qutaʿ (melodic piece) and awṣal (melodic connectors), which, in different configurations, create a fully developed maqam. The instrumental introduction of the maqam was composed by Amir ElSaffar, also a rare addition to the repertoire. For 26 minutes, the listener experiences a virtuosic exploration of maqam complexity, carried with an ornamented vocal performance which is beautifully sung, along with exquisite santur runs and expressive joza interjections. The vocalist’s haunting voice resonates at every melodic modulation, driving the instrumentalists to engage in a semi-improvised call-and-response that keeps the listener waiting for what comes next. Beyond the melodic content, the maqam celebrates an ode to Baghdad by Iraqi poet Dr. Niʿma Husayn; a poem that is an expression of yearning for the city. During the release concert on July 27 at the Maqām Studio in New York City, Al-Saadi explained how the maqam is the product of inspiration from when he was in Baghdad and during his time in the US. “Here the [stable] situation made it possible to complete this maqam […] including the presence of master musician Amir ElSaffar,” he continued.
The second track features a performance of “Maqam Al Saʿidi Hijaz,” which al-Saadi also composed about two decades ago, and it was only professionally recorded and released for this album. Unlike the first track, which is in free rhythm, this maqam is accompanied rhythmically—a characteristic of several other maqams in the repertoire—and its main melody seems to spin through a breathtaking, loop-like progression. The last two maqams, “Maqam Al Qazzaz” and “Maqam Al Mansuri,” are already canonical maqams in the repertoire. In “Maqam Al-Qazzaz,” the singer sustains a higher register and carries an unmatched passion—a passion appropriate to the awe inspired by the beloved’s beauty as described in the poetry. “Maqam Al Mansuri” is known for its solemn, melancholic character, and the singer’s voice inhabits this emotional space throughout, lamenting the distance from a beloved, as expressed in the poetry. Across its four tracks, the album fully expresses the elements of the Iraqi Maqam repertoire, in which each maqam is defined by a free or structured rhythm, the linguistic register of its poetry, and its progression through short melodic pieces. All maqams are followed by a pastah, a short rhythmic song traditionally performed after a maqam, and the album features seamless transitions between rhythmic and free passages, colloquial and classical poetry, and the full potential of modulation.
The liner notes are relatively brief, written in Arabic with English translations. They include one paragraph listing the recorded maqams, a sentence highlighting Al-Saadi’s contribution to three maqams, and brief credits for the poets whose work appears in the album. Adding more explanation would have helped listeners better understand the album’s significance, and providing the texts of the poems and the lyrics of the pastah, along with their translations, would have greatly supported the understanding of the rich poetic themes, since the new label’s local market is predominantly English-speaking. Additionally, an explanation of Al-Saadi’s creative process could have offered rare insight into the composition of an Iraqi maqam—a process only one living master is practicing today—thus offering a blueprint for younger performers and students. The liner notes might also have included an introduction to Maqām Records, its goals, and its production scope to engage musicians, interested audiences, and related music communities since such information is only available on the label’s website.
After a 20-year-long recording hiatus, Hamid Al-Saadi has returned to create a new masterpiece by reimagining the old. Although this album was created away from his homeland, its production was directly inspired and encouraged by his move to the United States in 2018 and his artistic collaboration with Amir ElSaffar. For lovers of the genre, this new album offers hope and a possible future for an endangered tradition.
