Refusal to enter Iraq with the presence of US forces.. Naseer Shamma tells "The Interview" his story with the eighth string and how his talent saved him from execution

Naseer Shamma is an Iraqi of passion and identity. He feels belonging to Iraq, with all its components and aesthetics, and considers that his father being a Kurd from the city of Khanaqin and his mother being an Arab from the city of Kut constitutes for him an addition and enrichment.

Also, his small family is a mixture of a triangle they wanted him not to unite. He is an Iraqi, his wife is the Syrian writer and poet, Lina al-Tibi, and his daughter was born in Egypt and speaks her own dialect.

As for Palestine, his conscience resides, he says, and he presented it with many works, the most prominent of which is "The Jerusalem Operetta", which was composed and performed by Arab singers such as Sabah Fakhri, Mayada Al-Hanawi, Lotfi Bushnak and others.

The Iraqi musician has an outstanding talent in the field of art and music, and owns golden fingers playing the oud, the ancient oriental instrument for which he created a new chord (the eighth chord), which he says was buried in heritage and did not find anyone to give him life.

The Oud for him is a bridge to many dreams, and he presented it with a different vision.

He was able to play two buttons on the lute and once managed to play with one hand, in appreciation of his comrades whose hands were cut off by the Iran-Iraq war.

He defines music as a state of purity that leads to Sufism, and alongside the ancient Arab and Iraqi shrines, it was an important part of the rituals of Sufi scholars such as Hallaj, Ibn Arabi, Jalal al-Din al-Rumi, Shirazi and others, and they reached the peak through it.

The Iraqi musician is credited with establishing Oud Houses in several Arab cities, in Cairo (1999), Abu Dhabi (2008), Alexandria (2011), Baghdad (2018) and Khartoum (2020).

It will be the sixth house in Riyadh.

He is the founder of the Oriental Orchestra in 2008.

Bait Al Oud is a project founded by the Iraqi musician against the musical education system in the Arab world, with the aim of establishing a soloist who will be awarded a certificate unique in the Arab world.

He bets on teaching music to children and young people in order to turn them into successful projects in life.

The story of the snitch that brought him to the gallows

In his chat with Ali Al-Dhafiri, presenter of the "Al-Muqabala" program;

The Iraqi musician talks about his long musical career, his works, his prominent musical pieces, and his concerts in world capitals and cities.

One of Naseer Shamma's most prominent works was his musical instrument "Al-Amriya", which he composed as an expression of the horrific scenes of the bombing of the Al-Amiriya shelter by US forces in Iraq in 1991, and he was an eyewitness to the massacre as he was a soldier at that time.

He recalls how his unique talent in the field of music was the reason for saving him from the gallows.

He was imprisoned for a slander in which he was accused of insulting the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and was sentenced to death in 1990.

He says that on the day of the execution, a Baathist politician who had attended a concert for him - that is, Nasir Shamma - in Basra, interceded for him to cancel the sentence, after he told them that there was no recording proving the accusation against him, in addition to that he heard Arab artists speaking He is fine, including the late Egyptian actor Nour El Sharif.

Although he left Iraq in 1993, Iraq did not leave Naseer Shamma, who is haunted by the love of his country, and Shamma does not stop expressing his longing for his childhood and the golden period that Iraqis lived through, during the period of elite and leftist tide and the absence of corruption and the corrupt.

Because of his love for his country, he refused to return to Iraq until after the American forces had left it, and refused to visit the United States of America, even though he had previously received an invitation from the White House.

Naseer Shamma does not hide in his speech to the "Al-Muqabala" program his grief over the situation in Iraq today, which has been greatly affected, and he does not hesitate to say that the Iraqis have proven to the world that they are a failed state, but he hopes that the situation in his country will change, and therefore he is preoccupied with its concerns, so he launched initiatives to rebuild The squares and squares of Baghdad and to educate the children of Iraq so that they may obtain their share of education and training like the rest of the children of the world.

He has a firm belief that change is through education.