Kazem Al Saher

Kazem Al-Saher, who was born in Iraq, has risen to become the foremost vocalist throughout the Middle East after moving in excess of 30 million albums across his career. His output extends from expansive romantic ballads to politically oriented pieces and from pop to Arab classical styles, attaining a degree of success unmatched since the height of Umm Kalthum.

He came into the world in 1961 in Nainawa, Northern Iraq, as one of ten children of a palace worker. Music reached him not through instruction but through radio broadcasts that introduced him to the works of composers such as Mohamed Abdel Wahab. At age ten he exchanged his bicycle for a guitar, and two years afterward he began creating songs. Shifting to the more customary oud won him entry to the Baghdad Music Academy at 21.

Intent on advancing with his own material and voice, he met refusals from producers who demanded he perform only their compositions. Access arrived instead by indirect means. Together with a television director acquaintance he produced a video for one of his songs, Ladghat El Hayya (The Snake Bite), which was inserted into an Iraqi television broadcast in 1987 right after the Iran-Iraq war. Functioning as an allegory for his own position, the track provoked substantial controversy, leading broadcasting authorities to demand lyric changes or impose a ban. He declined any alterations, yet the prohibition only increased its popularity. Concerts across the Gulf followed, along with recordings for Kuwaiti labels. The next year brought a hit with Obart Al Shat (I Crossed the Ocean). Several of his Academy professors condemned the track as sha'bi (pop) music, an affront to classical pedagogy, but resistance proved ineffective. Al-Saher had sidestepped established channels to emerge as a star on his own conditions, even completing his first U.S. tour in 1989.

After establishing dominance in pop he secured standing in the Arabic classical sphere with La Ya Sadiki (No, My Friend), a monumental piece nearing an hour that employed maqams absent from Iraqi music for several decades and thereby revived longstanding practices. The Gulf War and its immediate aftermath kept him in Iraq until 1993, when he moved his base to Lebanon and collaborated with poet Nizar Qabbani, who supplied lyrics for his music, before settling permanently in Cairo. He continued releasing albums and touring, having become the leading name in Middle Eastern music, one whose ballads grew larger and more romantic while he also produced classically influenced works even at the risk of reduced popularity.

By 1998 he received recognition as a serious artist rather than simply a pop figure. That standing expanded his visibility and international profile, securing a UNICEF award for the song "Tathakkar," which he performed in the U.S. before Congress and the United Nations during one of the earliest post-Gulf War cultural exchanges. The following year he recorded a tribute to the Pope with the Italian Symphony Orchestra. Although he favors large orchestras whose breadth shapes his sound, he has stayed receptive to technological developments, including a remix by fusionists Transglobal Underground of La Titnahad from his 2000 release El Hob El Moustahil (The Impossible Love), the first of his albums to receive official American distribution. He appeared on the Mondo Melodia tour in connection with that album.