Mohammed Fairouz: Cross-Cultural Counterpoint

Mohammed Fairouz retains an optimistic outlook as he aspires to create music that carries a larger social meaning. And the 26-year-old composer has managed to garner an extraordinary array of performances for his deeply charged music all over the country-from over 100 art songs to a nearly 80-minute symphony for orchestra, soloists, and a nearly 100-voice chorus. The urgent message that comes across in Fairouz's music is one of inclusivity and a broadening of cultural horizons. An important source for his music has been his own Arab heritage-he grew up hearing legendary singers Umm Kulthum and Fairuz (no relation) alongside Mozart and Beethoven. In a conversation with Frank J. Oteri for NewMusicBox, Fairouz even describes Schubert-with whom he deeply identifies-as an "Arabic composer" because of Schubert's devotion to the primacy of the melodic line, also a hallmark of Middle Eastern music. But the American-born Fairouz would contend that his aesthetics are more symptomatic of the multicultural society we now live in.
Read the full interview: newmusicbox.org/?p=12396
Video presentation by Molly Sheridan

[@labemolmineur]

I can't help but feel that Fairouz’s middle eastern elements are orientalist and exotic rather than the natural expression of one's identity and culture. I feel a bit of prejudice when I hear him pronounce Darwish with a heavy American accent, and then set Darwish to music with the same disregard for the language's natural stress. Or when I hear him talk about Arabs and Jews, conflating ethnicity with religion, or calling occupation, oppression, mass murder and dispossession a “family fight".