Confluence peddlers

>>How Iraqi-Quebecois oud
duo Qurna ran into each other

“OUD,” REVERSED:
Qurna with percussionist Pierre-Guy Blanchard

by NARCEL X

Qurna is not your average Iraqi musical group. For starters, members Omar Dewachi, a trained medical doctor from Baghdad currently enrolled at Harvard, and Nicolas Royer-Artuso, a linguistics masters student from U of M, met on the 80 bus this past year. Dewachi saw that Royer-Artuso was holding an oud, the venerable Arabic grandfather of the guitar, an instrument he harboured a passion for. The two oud players soon realized that their interests and approaches to music were similar, to say the least. They started working together on some maqam, melodic interpolations of Iraqi sentiment, and converged on a sound bridging the East and the West.

Mirror: What’s the significance of the name Qurna?

Omar Dewachi: Qurna is a site in the south of Iraq where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers meet. It is also the Biblical site of the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve’s tree of knowledge is. The site invokes for us the richness of the multiculturalism of Mesopotamian landscape, the meeting of past and present, east and west, life and death.

M: As an Iraqi, do you channel the present state of Iraq in your music?

OD: Definitely—through exploring this rich cosmopolitan tradition that has existed for centuries. The Iraqi maqam tradition is a mosaic that reflects the point of meeting of all Iraqi cultures and fragments, being united through music. It is influenced by all sorts of local traditions from all parts of the country, as well as the region. Also, in the current state of chaos and occupation, where Iraq’s representation in the media has become synonymous with violence, death and destruction, our music attempts to break out of this dangerous imagery into something more serene, invoking a tradition that has nourished and united the souls of people in that country. For me, living in exile, this is a way to relate back to the country that I had to forcibly leave, and am currently disturbed about, with its state of occupation, war and displacement of its entire population.

At le Parc des Princes (5293 Parc)
tonight, Thursday, Jan. 17, 9 p.m. $5