Kathem Al Saher is the top-selling singer in the Arab world today, both in terms of recordings and concert ticket sales. His music is rich with the melodies, rhythms, and complex sonic textures of Arabic classical music, but at the same time, his compositions are strikingly contemporary, and his superb voice and good looks have helped to make him a pop icon throughout the Arabian Gulf, the Middle East and beyond. Kathem's success playing classical, romantic songs in an era of electronic pop music is that much more remarkable in light of the fact that he comes from Iraq. Kathem has built his phenomenal career in the face of two wars, an international embargo, and a condition of unprecedented isolation in his homeland. "I am a man of love," says Kathem, "a man of romance. I have memories of politics, but almost all of my songs are about love, in the manner of Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet.'"

Today, the distance between Iraq and the United States is as great as that between the rival clans in Shakespeare's tragedy, which as we know was not only about love. Kathem has played major US concerts for Arab people living in America, but few other Americans know him. In some of the nation's most distinguished concert halls, non-Arab Americans will have their first opportunity to experience Kathem and his majestic 35-piece orchestra in concert.

Kathem Al Saher was born on December 9, 1961 in a village called Nainawa in northern Iraq. His father worked in the local palace, and although his government wage did not make him a rich man, he sired ten children. The youngest of seven brothers, Kathem took a keen interest in classical music as a boy. He sat by the radio and learned to sing works by masters like Mohamed Abdel Wahab, Abdel Halim Hafez, Nazim Al Ghazali, and Fairuz. At age ten, he sold his bicycle to buy his first instrument, a guitar, but after a year of study on guitar, he switched to the old, the principle composers' instrument in the Arab world. Kathem wrote his first song at twelve, a romantic piece in the classical style, composed for a girl he liked. Six years of study at the Music Academy in Baghdad and a battle to enter Iraq's tightly controlled music industry lay ahead, but already the essence of Kathem's art was established.

Discography

Kathem Al Saher has many releases on the market, some of which are available as imports in the United States, including his latest first American release, "El Hob El Moustahil" ("The Impossible Love"). Here are some of his previous selected discography:

1989 Ghazal (Music Box)

1990 Al-Aziz (Al-Nazaer)

1992 Haza Allon (Stallions)

1993 Banat Alaebak (Stallions)

1993 La Ya Sadiki [Sometimes listed as "L'Embleme De La Jeunnesse"] (Music Master, Virgin/EMI)

1994 Salamtek Min Al-Ah (Rotana)

1995 Baad Al-Hob (Relax-In)

1996 Ighseli Belbarad (Rotana)

1996 Fi Medreset Al-Hob (Rotana)

1998 Ana Wa Laila (Rotana)

1999 Habibeti Wa Al-Matar (Rotana)

2000 Impossible Love (Mondo Melodia/Ark21/ Rotana)

2001Abbathu Anki ( Rotana/EMI)

2002 Ousat Habebain ( Rotana/EMI)

2003 Hafiat Al Kadamain- Barefooted ( Rotana/Stallions)

By the time Kathem entered the Music Academy at 21, the Iran-Iraq war had forced his father to leave the palace and take up work in a furniture factory. The future looked uncertain. "Of course, my family worried," he recalls. "They would have preferred that I become a doctor or a lawyer. I was very good in school, so they thought I could take on a profession. But my mother was in my corner for music. She always encouraged me."

As he studied Arab classical music and Iraqi folklore, Kathem continued to compose music, but the producers who controlled the all-important outlets of radio and television in Iraq refused to help him. "I would go to music promoters and they would say, 'We'll work with you only if you sing our songs. They would let me compose for other people, but to actually compose and sing? No---which they would not allow."

Other young artists had wealthy backers, but Kathem could scarcely afford the bus fare to go and visit these promoters, let alone to bribe them. Kathem got his first break at 26 when a keyboard-playing friend from the academy introduced him to a television director. Without getting permission, they went on location and shot a video for one of Kathem's songs. When they slipped it into the broadcast, the song made a sensation all over Iraq and around the Gulf.

"The song was called 'Ladghat El Hayya,' (The Snake Bite)" Kathem recalls. "I wrote it the year that the war finished with Iraq, 1987. It was about someone who has been threatened and prevented from proceeding, someone who is afraid." The television producers were naturally impressed with Kathem's reception by the public, but not with the words to his song. They gave the young artist a choice: change the lyrics and rerecord the song, or else they would ban it. Kathem refused to change his song. Predictably, banning the song only made it more popular. Requests for collaborations and concert appearances began to come from around the Gulf, and in the brief interlude between Iraq's two recent wars, Kathem launched his career in earnest. The producers of a nighttime television soap opera gave him his next break when they used his music in the program's title song. The show's popularity blossomed, and Kathem began recording for record labels in Kuwait and in Iran. In 1988, Kathem's final year at the Music Academy, he composed a hugely successful pop song called "Abart Al Shat" ("I Crossed the Ocean"). Some of the more conservative professors objected and tried to get Kathem expelled from the school for composing lowly "shaabi" (pop) music. But now Kathem had defenders, professors who recognized his extraordinary gifts as a composer, and he completed his degree. In December of 1989, Kathem performed major concerts in Kuwait and also the United States, filled with Arab audiences.

In the television studio, Kathem met Aziz El Rassam, the first of many prominent lyricists he would compose with over the years. Rassam wrote lyrics for eighteen of Kathem's early songs, including "Obart Al Shat." The two proved as effective a team as Lennon and McCartney. In 1990, Kathem teamed up with the Cairo Symphony to record "La Ya Sadiki" ("No, My Friend"), a fifty-minute opus that established him as a major contemporary composer, although its length and complexity confounding radio programmers. "I did this for myself," says Kathem. "I would rather write a symphony or a concerto than a five-minute pop song. I wanted to prove that I could do it as well as the masters." And he succeeded. Critics have even credited him with reviving certain maqam (Arabic scales) that had fallen into disuse by modern composers.

The Gulf War proved a major obstacle for Kathem's burgeoning career. "For two years, I couldn't do anything," he recalls. "I couldn't even travel to the Middle East, only to Jordan, where I lived during that time." As in the Iran-Iraq war, Kathem had lost friends to the fighting, and this period still holds dark memories for him. Later, he would sing about the pain of war and especially its effects on children in the song "Tathakkar" ("Memory"), with lyrics by poet Karim Al Iraqi.

Back in 1993, Kathem met Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani and began perhaps the most important artistic collaboration of his career to date. Prior to his death in 1998, Qabbani wrote lyrics for some 30 of Kathem's songs. Having once created poems that were sung by the legendary Um Kalthum, Qabbani contented himself during his final years writing lyrics exclusively for the young Iraqi singer he considered "the son of his heart."

In the late '90s, international honors and accolades rolled in for Kathem. He performed a charity concert at London's Royal Albert Hall. He received the UNICEF award in England for the song "Tathakkar" and in 1999, he performed the song in the United States before members of congress and UN diplomats. "Tathakkar" was then recorded in five languages and released along with "Al Amal" ("Hope"), Kathem's anthem to optimism in the face of turmoil. At Christmas of that year, Kathem performed and recorded a tribute to the Pope. With the National Italian Symphony and a choir of children, he performed "Al Amal" and also "Ya Albi" ("My Heart") a song he composed especially for the occasion.

At last, Kathem earned the attention of an American record label, Mondo Melodia, owned and operated by Miles Copeland, who also managed Sting. Following the success of Sting's collaboration with Algerian rai singer Cheb Mami, the song "Desert Rose," Copeland recruited a new vice president for his label, an expert on world Arabic music, Dawn Elder. Keen to establish the label's credentials as a leader in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern music, Elder promptly signed Kazem Al Sahir for an American label release of the Impossible Love in the US. And now Elder has signed on as his exclusive World Wide Artist Management Team. As Kathem's fame has spread, he has been faced with constant pressure to modernize his music with electronic drums and synthesizers. He has experimented with this direction in Cairo, but the results have only strengthened his steadfast belief in live musicians. He recently recorded duet recordings with Sara Brightman, "The War is Over Now", and with Lenny Kravitz, and Simon Shaheen on "We Want Peace. He plans to work with several renowned International artists including Grammy Award winning producer KC Porter, Kathem says he is open to fusing his classical idioms with dance pop as long as it holds the integrity of the Arabic music. But he insists that synthesizers will never replace the splendid string and brass players and the percussionists in his ensemble.

The American audience represents a new challenge for Kathem. He hopes that listeners will discover that Iraq, a country they mostly associate with intransigence and war, has also produced some of the world's greatest philosophers, poets, composers, musicians, and artists.

He recently completed a successful and highly historic concert tour of 6 cities in the United States just prior to the latest challenges Iraq faced with War bringing a message of not to forget the people, and the especially the children of Iraq. He received unprecedented critical acclaim for his performances in the American and International Media. And high praise for his efforts to bring through music to diverse audiences around the US another face and side of the Iraqi people not always shown in the general media.

"I challenge whoever captured your heart and offered you the sun I challenge all the ones you have loved to love you as madly as I do And I bet that you would never find a warmer home than in my eyes For love is my existence." (Nizar Qabbani, from Kathem Al Saher's "Attahaddiat" ("Challenges")

After the Gulf War, Kathem moved to Lebanon, and today he divides his time between France, Canada, Dubai and Cairo where he does most of his recording. He recently participated in a unique interdisciplinary project at Ohio State University. The program uses a multimedia environment to introduced students to Middle Eastern cultures through contemporary songs. Kathem created the flagship module, a celebration of his favorite city, Baghdad. Ironically, Kathem has not been able to visit that city since 1997.