For students in my class and other students of cultural geography (which should be everyone), I recommend Jen White's interview with Ibrahim Maalouf on the radio program 1A. Produced by Haili Blassingame and originally broadcast earlier in 2024, the staff of 1A selected it as a highlight for rebroadcast during the holiday-week of Independence Day.
The title of this episode is French Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf blends sound and defies genre. It is an hour well spent.
GEOG 298 students, please take notes about what you notice in this discussion/performance. Meanwhile, I will mention a few of the highlights in what I heard.
Around 7m30s, he talks about the variety of understandings that can be found within a single country or tradition. His words here remind me of Chimamanda Adichie's TED Talk, The Danger of a Single Story (itself another indispensable font of insights about how to approach learning about people and places)
Throughout the interview, he emphasizes the role of music in building for him what is the most important thing: empathy. This is something both more important and more complicated than sympathy. He is embodying the motto my friends at the Polus Center use to describe their worldview. Despite the importance of the multitude of good and bad human experiences, the remind us that "People are more alike than different."
At about 34m he explains why finds teaching to be an important way to continue as a learner.
Early in the interview, he describes the legacy of his father, a self-taught musician who invented a trumpet that makes Lebanese jazz possible, for technical reasons I do not fully understand. He holds his father's legacy both in his being and literally in his hands. At 39m20s he answers a question about what. legacy he hopes to leave for his daughter. The first few words of his answer could describe what every parent should want:
"I would like her to feel comfortable in this planet...."
He then elaborates with a more detailed answer that sets out guideposts for any parent. He then explains how travel with his daughter helps them to attain this goal.
Jen White observes that he is an optimistic person and asks how this is possible. Optimism is in short supply everywhere these days, and his own lived experience would give him more cause than most of us to reject optimism as folly. Again, please listen to his entire reply, but consider this excerpt a good glimpse into his thinking:
"There is no day I'm not crying these days. There is no single day that passes without tears going on my cheeks. No one. But I am optimistic, of course. Again, because I have no choice."
These are important words from someone who speaks every day with friends in Gaza, and who has lived similar traumas himself.
The program ends with his performance of what he calls a very small part of his music with a song called "Our Flag," which he wrote with musician Sharon Stone.
Lagniappe
As someone who endeavors to communicate in other languages, I am always impressed with people who do it exceptionally well. This interview is in English and Maalouf discusses very complex ideas with great clarity, despite this being at least his third language.
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