“The Levant is a concept of multi-identities — a certain attitude that is not trapped in one race or one religion or one state,” Philip Mansel, a historian and the author of Levant: Splendor and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean, said at the beginning of the New Levant Initiative’s (NLI) conference in Washington on March 1. Given this definition, Ibrahim Maalouf, Franco-Lebanese composer and trumpeter, may well be one of the people who embodies this multicultural identity.
“Some people think you cannot have double or multi-identities, which is what I find scary. It is just the opposite of my understanding of the world,” said Maalouf as he prepared for the rehearsal of Levantine Symphony N°1, which he composed especially for the NLI inauguration. “It is [like] the 1930s — it stinks.”
Born in Beirut, in the midst of the Lebanese civil war in 1980, Maalouf’s dream at the age of 12 was to become an architect to rebuild his war-town country. Instead, he followed in the footsteps of his father, Nassim Maalouf, a Lebanese musician known for his adaptation of the trumpet to Arabic music, and took up a musical education in France.
Born into an artistic and multicultural family, Maalouf is also the nephew of Amin Maalouf, the first Lebanese novelist to be accepted in Académie francaise, the Paris-based custodian of the French language, since the academy’s foundation in the 17th century.
“On Identity is my bedside book,” Maalouf said of his uncle’s work, referring to the writer’s 1998 nonfiction work that examines the notion of personal, religious, ethnic and national identity. “This book should be taught in schools, particularly now, when we see conflicts everywhere.”
“There are different circles in our lives and in our culture — Arab, Lebanese, French. … I am where those circles intersect. In this world of planes and the internet, we are all [touched] by different cultural influences,” he explained. “Some fear the intersection of cultures, worrying that some culture — perhaps their own — will fade and disappear. I do not think that at all. Cultures are modified and changed throughout history. A culture is made to be modified — culture, science, art, cuisine and literature need to change with time. If they do not change, something is wrong. It is not a sign of a healthy society if [its culture] does not evolve.”
Levantine Symphony N°1 is the result of Maalouf’s ability to improvise, merge, modify and take elements from other cultures.
“When I was asked by Jamal Daniel [the founder of the Levant Foundation] to write a song for [the NLI inauguration concert], my first thought was to compose a short melody that people would remember,” he said. “After thinking about it for many days, I started to compose a melody that would be some sort of a hymn of the Levant. I did not presume that it would be a melody that people would remember for centuries, but nevertheless I wanted people to think of the Old Levant and the New Levant Initiative when they hear it. In other words, I wanted to create the musical identity of the New Levant.”
But coming up with a melody was just the beginning. He added, “I played it in various ways. Finally I said, why not compose one piece that would play this melody in more than one way?”
Thus, what started as a 15-minute melody became a symphony of 1 hour and 15 minutes, which Maalouf describes as “both delicate and powerful, both Near Eastern and influenced by the West, seeking to link all of the Levantine cultures in its commonalities and modern spirits.”
The symphony reflects the variety and the fluidity of the Levant, Maalouf noted, adding, “This is the way I see the Levant. We are all very different, but we make up a symphony. Some of this music is like jazz, some of it is like Chopin, some of it is Arabic music, and altogether we belong to one culture. This is how I define the Levant — with music. My contribution to the project is to bring a musical definition [to the Levant].”
Maalouf, who was awarded the UNESCO title of Young Artist for Intercultural Dialogue between Arab and Western Worlds in 2011, released his first album Diasporas in 2007 on his own label. Since then, he has produced and arranged more than 15 records for himself and other artists. He has worked with many international artists including Sting, Marcel Khalifé and Vanessa Paradis. In November 2017, he released a new album — Dalida by Ibrahim Maalouf — that reinterprets 12 tracks from Dalida, the Italian-Egyptian singer, on the 30th anniversary of her death.