In Tuesday’s (7/1) Metro Times (Detroit, Michigan), Brett Callwood interviews several Middle Eastern musicians in metro Detroit, including Michael Ibrahim, who directs the city’s National Arab Orchestra. “Ibrahim’s parents came to the United States from Syria, and he was born here…. Besides the addition of a few Arab instruments, an Arab orchestra is much like a Western one in format. ‘An Arab orchestra has a violin section, cello, bass, five percussionists, electric guitar, the oud, which is the Arab guitar, and the qanun, which is the Arab harp,’ Ibrahim says. ‘Then we have a community choir which usually sings with the orchestra…. A big difference between coming to an Arab music concert versus a Western concert is … with Arab music … it’s participatory.’… Ibrahim is keen to get as many people involved with the orchestra as possible. ‘We recently had a concert where we featured kids from the Detroit public schools as part of our grant from the Knight Foundation,’ he says. ‘We had those students sing in Arabic with the orchestra, which was cool. People went nuts. They couldn’t believe that they saw non-Arabs singing with the Arab orchestra.” The National Arab Orchestra was founded in 2009 and comprises musicians from Arab and non-Arab backgrounds.
Posted July 3, 2014
