AS VEGAS, Nev.,
Feb. 23 — In "Beauty and His
Love," the singer Kazem al-Sahir
confesses to his girlfriend that there is
someone he loves more than her, someone
whom he sleeps with every night, someone
whom he dreams of daily. His distraught
girlfriend begs him to reveal the name of
this lover. Her name, he finally tells
her, is Baghdad.
| Advertisement
|
.gif) |
|
"It is one of my most popular
songs," Mr. Sahir said, sitting in a
restaurant at the Palms Casino Resort
here for his first in-person interview
since arriving in the United States from
a video shoot in Morocco. "Whenever
I sing it, the audience asks that I
repeat it, again and again. But I will
only sing it twice in a concert."
Mr. Sahir, 41, is not only Iraq's
biggest pop star but also one of the most
popular singers in the Arab world, a
dashing romantic who has sold about 31
million albums. And as Iraq and the
United States prepare for war, he has
chosen to do something that almost any
thinking person would say was foolish. He
is starting an American tour.
It began on Saturday night with a
private performance for the Maloofs, the
Lebanese-American family that owns the
Palms, and their guests. Mr. Sahir is
scheduled to perform in Manhattan on
Friday night at the Beacon Theatre.
"My friends, they didn't want me
to come here now," Mr. Sahir said,
conducting his first interview mostly in
English since hiring a tutor two years
ago. "It's a difficult time."
Brian Taylor Goldstein, the arts
attorney who obtained Mr. Sahir's work
visa, said: "Getting an Iraqi singer
in right now was not the easiest thing in
the world. And the V3 category of visa,
for culturally unique performers like
Kazem, has been especially difficult,
because it often means the artist is
coming from a non-Western culture."
It helped that Mr. Sahir had a
Canadian passport, because his children
and his wife, from whom he is separated,
live there. Though he left Iraq in the
early 1990's and has become a Canadian
citizen (he has homes in Cairo, Dubai,
Paris and Toronto), he still says that
Iraq will always be his home. He said he
felt compelled to tour so that he could
"show another face of my country"
and inspire Americans to "think good
thoughts — not all bad thoughts
— of my people."
When he sat next to Kofi Annan, the
secretary general of the United Nations,
on a flight recently, Mr. Sahir said, he
handed him a CD and wrote on it, "Don't
forget about Iraqi children."
Fans of his long, symphonic, sinuous
songs of romantic love include two Grammy
winners: Carlos Santana, who has arranged
to meet Mr. Sahir after the Iraqi
singer's Berkeley show next week, and the
soprano Sarah Brightman, who sang a duet
with him, "The War Is Over,"
for her next album.
When the BBC World Service asked its
listeners to come up with the "world's
Top 10 favorite" songs, Mr. Sahir's
"Ana wa Laila" ("Me and
Laila') was No. 6, two places above
Cher's "Believe."
With close-cropped black hair, a
stocky build, a chiseled face, a hooded
sweatshirt and blue jeans, Mr. Sahir
looked more like a soccer player than a
pop singer. He moved through the casino
without bodyguards or an entourage, said
he was not worried about his safety while
in the United States, did not believe
that the government here was monitoring
his movement and seemed surprised when
asked if it was difficult for him to get
obtain a work permit.
In fact, to some degree, he seemed
almost unaware that being an Iraqi in the
United States today was far different
from what it was 17 months ago, a change
that has prevented many Middle Eastern
musicians from obtaining work permits and
visas. "He has no fear," said
Dawn Elder, his manager in North America
and Europe. "He says if something is
going to happen to him, it's going to
happen. He believes in living life to its
fullest. And I agree: you need to not be
afraid of life."
For others, to see him perform is to
make a statement. Leigh-Ann Hahn, a world-music
presenter who flew in from Los Angeles
for the show, said: "When I told my
mother I was going to an Arabic-owned
resort to see an Iraqi musician, she was
aghast. But I told her that he was a
renowned vocalist, he was carrying a
message of peace, and it was important
that I have the opportunity to see him
perform."
Continued
1 | 2 | Next>>
.gif){kind=spacer}
