Sami Abu Shumays is not only Flushing Town Hall’s Deputy Director, he is also a leading force in Arabic music, well known for his teaching and scholarly writings on the subject, his compositions and playing. On Sunday, March 13th, our dear colleague will be performing in the mini-global mashup “India Meets Egypt” alongside Grammy-nominated musician Falu and her husband Gaurav Shah.
MEET SAMI ABU SHUMAYS
When and how did you first get started in music, and what draws you to Arabic music in particular?
I started learning piano at five years old and violin at eight, in Pittsburgh PA where I grew up. I learned classical music and was interested in composing, and I got an undergraduate degree in music theory and composition. In my final year of college I was introduced to Arabic Music, and was immediately drawn to it for many reasons – first there was the connection to my own Arab heritage, which I wanted to deepen. In addition, I was really interested in improvisation and ornamentation and different musical modes and scales, and I found a lot to learn there because Arabic music has one of the most interesting and complex scale systems from around the world, much like Indian music practiced by my friend Falu. Where European classical music has basically 2 scales, in Arabic music has more than 30. So there’s a lot to explore, and I think that exploring something new has been a really compelling journey for me over the last 25 years. Overall it’s not new to me anymore, but I am still discovering new things every day in my musical practice.
You are the co-leader of Zikrayat. Tell us a bit about this ensemble. Where can people come and see you perform?
The word “zikrayat” means “memories” in Arabic, and we started the ensemble with the idea of “remembering” forgotten repertory, especially from the mid-20th century “movie musical” period of Egyptian Cinema. Most people in the US don’t know that, but Egypt had a major film industry that cranked out a huge number of movie musicals starting in the 1930s and running at least through the 1970s. Every important singer, composer, instrumentalist, dancer, etc. in the Arab world in the mid-20th century worked in film, so there’s a lot of amazing repertory, some of which remains very popular to this day in the Arabic music community, and some of which has been completely forgotten. So we perform this repertory – imagine if we were a jazz band performing repertory from the American song book, that would be the closest equivalent to what we’re doing in the Arabic music context. Sometimes Falu performs with her “Bollywood Orchestra” – and Bollywood, and that repertory, is another analogy for what we do in Zikrayat.
As for the ensemble itself, we’re usually a 4-6 piece ensemble of traditional Arab instruments like Oud, Qanun, percussion, and violin (which I play, and which has been used in traditional Arab music since the late 19th century). We work with different vocalists, and also often perform with dancers. The dance we present is what most Americans know as “Belly Dance,” but which is known in Egypt as raqs sharqi – it is a traditional dance form based on indigenous movement vocabulary which was stylized into stage presentations in the late 19th/early 20th century. We work with a number of dancers who focus specifically on the style of the great dancers of the film era, especially the 1940s-60s. There are a number of different styles of “Belly dance” being practiced in the US at this time; Zikrayat’s dance presentations generally focus on the Egyptian style.
As for where people can see us perform, I highly recommend people follow me at
https://www.instagram.com/abushumays/ or https://www.facebook.com/sami.abu.shumays
You can also follow Brooklyn Maqam which is a great organization that promotes Arabic Music events in New York City at https://instagram.com/brooklynmaqam/ or https://www.facebook.com/brooklynmaqam/
What are you most excited about for your Mini Mashup collaboration with two-time GRAMMY nominated singer-songwriter Falu? How is her music different from or similar to yours?
Falu is a dear friend, and I’ve been fortunate to perform with her many times over the last decade and a half I’ve known her. She’s one of the most skilled musicians I’ve ever worked with, so I look forward to EVERY time I get to play with her – she’s a true master.
Comparing Arabic Music to Indian music would take a few books, not a blog post, but what I can say here is that there are a lot of similarities: both music traditions are very old, and have a lot of complexity and depth. Both traditions are highly improvisatory, but that improvisation is rooted in particular vocabularies shared by the music communities. Both traditions have a focus on melodic delivery, and don’t use harmony, or don’t use it very much. There’s also a lot of similarity in some of the musical vocabularies, due to centuries of cross-pollination and influence going both ways. And there’s even more recent influence, in that Egyptian cinema actually influenced Bollywood (and we’re going to perform together a song from a 1935 Egyptian film that was covered in a 1951 Indian film).
So there are a lot of points of intersection – but of course on another level, the actual music is completely different, different scales, different beats, different instruments, and completely different song repertories. I’m lucky that I’ve gotten to learn some of Falu’s repertory over the years, and that she’s invited me to play with her on her songs, even though I’m an Arab violinist rather than an Indian violinist. So when we play some of that repertory together on this show, it’ll be something we’ve done before, but we have a great chemistry together that I think Flushing Town Hall’s audience will find delightful.
When not working as a musician or music scholar, you serve full-time as deputy director at Flushing Town Hall. How do you juggle those different roles, and how do they complement one another?
Work/life balance is always a challenge, and juggling a side hustle with a full time job always takes lots of focus and effort. I’m very fortunate that Flushing Town Hall’s Executive and Artistic Director, Ellen Kodadek, wants to make space for her staff’s artistic pursuits, and allows enough flexibility in work to enable that to happen. But it’s not easy! As for how those roles complement each other, I’d say that it is my understanding of the challenges that traditional immigrant artists face in NYC that drew me to Flushing Town Hall, because of its mission to elevate global art forms. I guess I’m saying it’s complementarity in its mission. But I’m not involved in the programming or curation at Flushing Town Hall – in fact I try to stay out of it as much as I can. Instead, I’m involved on the administrative side, where my responsibilities are government relations, Human Resources, finance, Board relations, and other aspects of legal non-profit compliance. The part of that where I get to speak about our mission is really on the advocacy side to government, and my personal experience as an immigrant artist is what animates my advocacy on behalf of Flushing Town Hall and the arts sector as a whole. Not a lot of artists participate in direct advocacy to government and other funders, and I’m grateful that Flushing Town Hall has provided me with that platform and that opportunity.
What’s on the horizon for you in your music career?
What’s growing at the moment is my reputation as a teacher of Arabic Music. I’m co-author of a book, Inside Arabic Music (Oxford University Press 2019), which came out just before the pandemic hit, and a lot of people have read it over the last two years. During the pandemic, I did a lot of online teaching, and then finally realized a goal I had for several years, to develop a series of video lessons for YouTube that complement the book. Those have been a big hit, and it’s helping me to build an audience, bring in more students, and more opportunities for teaching and traveling. I’m also hopeful to be doing more gigging with Zikrayat and other groups as the performing arts start to open up more over the coming year. I guess I can’t totally predict what will happen, I’m just hoping to have more music work this year as it is really my passion. And I love teaching, so I’m really excited about the growth of that side of my career.
Join us on March 13 at 1 PM EST for our “India Meets Egypt” mini-global mashup concert. Purchase your in-person tickets HERE. $15/$12 Members. Those unable to attend in person can join our livestream for free at: https://www.youtube.com/flushingtownhall/live. Donations are greatly appreciated.
CULTURAL CROSSROADS @ Flushing Town Hall 