Biography
Maya Youssef stands among the world’s foremost exponents of the qanun, the 78-stringed Middle Eastern plucked zither, having been born in Damascus, Syria. She has made her home in the U.K. since 2012, appears frequently on BBC programs, and took part in a BBC Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall within an ensemble that also featured tabla player Kuljit Bhamra and double bassist Adam Oscar Storey. The outbreak of civil war in her native country prompted her to record Syrian Dreams, her first album, which Harmonia Mundi released in 2017. That year she also contributed to Solomon Grey’s original score and soundtrack for the BBC series The Last Post. Two years later she issued her second album, Finding Home, on her own label after securing support from Arts Council England and a PRS Women Make Music Award.
Raised in Damascus within a forward-looking household of writers and artists, Youssef began formal music lessons at age seven at the Sulhi al-Wadi Institute of Music. From the outset she intended to devote her life to performance. At nine, following her mother’s suggestion, she took up the violin, though she later described the choice as reluctant. One afternoon, while traveling to the Institute, she heard a qanun recording in a taxi; the sound, she wrote on her website, “blew my mind.” After learning the instrument’s name from the driver, she announced her intention to master it. He replied that girls could not play the qanun, since it belonged to men. Undeterred, she declared she would learn anyway. Later that same day the Institute’s director entered her solfeggio class to announce that qanun instruction was now available; she enrolled at once, and her parents replaced the violin with the new instrument.
The qanun traces its lineage through the ancient Egyptian harp and such related zithers as the psaltery, dulcimer, and European zither. Youssef’s own instrument comprises a trapezoid-shaped walnut sound box fitted with 78 strings arranged in 26 triple courses. At twelve she received the Best Musician Award at the National Music Competition for Youth. She pursued a B.A. in Music with qanun specialization at Damascus’s High Institute of Music and Dramatic Arts while simultaneously completing a B.A. in English Literature at the University of Damascus. In 2003 she formed the Syrian Female Oriental Group with five fellow musicians, presenting solo recitals and leading the ensemble across Syria as well as in Dubai, Beijing, Bologna, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Athens, and other cities.
After finishing her music degree in 2007, having absorbed the classical Arabic, Western, and Azerbaijani qanun traditions under masters Salim Sarwa of Syria and Elmira Akhundova of Azerbaijan, she relocated to Dubai to concentrate on her solo work. In 2009 she joined the faculty of Oman’s Sultan Qaboos University in the Department of Music and Musicology. Three years later she was selected for the U.K. government’s Exceptional Talent program, which each year endorses three hundred international artists through Arts Council England. At the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, she began doctoral research on music’s therapeutic applications, collaborating with Syrian refugee children in camps in Jordan and Europe. She joined the Harmonia Mundi roster at the close of 2016; Syrian Dreams appeared the following November, and she performed again on Solomon Grey’s music for The Last Post as well as on the soundtrack for the film Gold.
In 2018 she received the Newcomer Award at the Songlines Music Awards in London and appeared at both the BBC Proms and WOMAD as a soloist and ensemble member. The British Council invited her to the European Cultural Festival in Algiers in May 2019. Two years later she was appointed director of the SOAS Middle Eastern Ensemble at the University of London, where her research continues to examine music’s role in supporting children displaced by the Syrian conflict. With funding from a PRS Women Make Music Award and an Arts Council England grant, she recorded the ten-track album Finding Home, released independently in March 2022. Its pieces trace her mourning for the Syria she had lost and her reclamation of that homeland as an interior, spiritual realm reached through awakening—an odyssey that is at once collective and personal, a search for the non-physical place that offers memory, peace, comfort, and healing.
Raised in Damascus within a forward-looking household of writers and artists, Youssef began formal music lessons at age seven at the Sulhi al-Wadi Institute of Music. From the outset she intended to devote her life to performance. At nine, following her mother’s suggestion, she took up the violin, though she later described the choice as reluctant. One afternoon, while traveling to the Institute, she heard a qanun recording in a taxi; the sound, she wrote on her website, “blew my mind.” After learning the instrument’s name from the driver, she announced her intention to master it. He replied that girls could not play the qanun, since it belonged to men. Undeterred, she declared she would learn anyway. Later that same day the Institute’s director entered her solfeggio class to announce that qanun instruction was now available; she enrolled at once, and her parents replaced the violin with the new instrument.
The qanun traces its lineage through the ancient Egyptian harp and such related zithers as the psaltery, dulcimer, and European zither. Youssef’s own instrument comprises a trapezoid-shaped walnut sound box fitted with 78 strings arranged in 26 triple courses. At twelve she received the Best Musician Award at the National Music Competition for Youth. She pursued a B.A. in Music with qanun specialization at Damascus’s High Institute of Music and Dramatic Arts while simultaneously completing a B.A. in English Literature at the University of Damascus. In 2003 she formed the Syrian Female Oriental Group with five fellow musicians, presenting solo recitals and leading the ensemble across Syria as well as in Dubai, Beijing, Bologna, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Athens, and other cities.
After finishing her music degree in 2007, having absorbed the classical Arabic, Western, and Azerbaijani qanun traditions under masters Salim Sarwa of Syria and Elmira Akhundova of Azerbaijan, she relocated to Dubai to concentrate on her solo work. In 2009 she joined the faculty of Oman’s Sultan Qaboos University in the Department of Music and Musicology. Three years later she was selected for the U.K. government’s Exceptional Talent program, which each year endorses three hundred international artists through Arts Council England. At the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, she began doctoral research on music’s therapeutic applications, collaborating with Syrian refugee children in camps in Jordan and Europe. She joined the Harmonia Mundi roster at the close of 2016; Syrian Dreams appeared the following November, and she performed again on Solomon Grey’s music for The Last Post as well as on the soundtrack for the film Gold.
In 2018 she received the Newcomer Award at the Songlines Music Awards in London and appeared at both the BBC Proms and WOMAD as a soloist and ensemble member. The British Council invited her to the European Cultural Festival in Algiers in May 2019. Two years later she was appointed director of the SOAS Middle Eastern Ensemble at the University of London, where her research continues to examine music’s role in supporting children displaced by the Syrian conflict. With funding from a PRS Women Make Music Award and an Arts Council England grant, she recorded the ten-track album Finding Home, released independently in March 2022. Its pieces trace her mourning for the Syria she had lost and her reclamation of that homeland as an interior, spiritual realm reached through awakening—an odyssey that is at once collective and personal, a search for the non-physical place that offers memory, peace, comfort, and healing.
Albums
Singles