Mounir Bashir

Mounir Bachir was born on 28 September 1930 at Mossoul in Iraq, his father of Orthodox Syrian origins and his mother Kurd. His father, a carpenter, was also a singer and oud player. He encouraged the young Mounir’s leanings towards music, sending him to Baghdad’s school of music when just 6 years old. He would soon become a student of the school’s director Chérif Muhieddin Haydar. He performed his first concerts in 1953 playing a 5 double-stringed oud with an extra bass string, one of the inventions of the beginning of the 50s. He also changed the instrument’s façade adding two oval openings underneath the main one.
Mounir went to Hungary to finish his studies where he obtained his PhD in musicology from the University of Budapest in 1960. He then left for Lebanon and decided to begin a career as a solo artist. His international career began in 1971 when his albums were released by Ocora and EMI. He went back to Baghdad in 1973, becoming the ambassador of the classical and instrumental Middle Eastern Arabic tradition. His favourite style would be improvised pieces (taqsim). He then founded Al -Bayariq, a group playing the music of the ancient Abbasid culture. Contrary to the rules of Egyptian music, he gave free rein to the solo oud player’s performance, founding his musical expression on a free and meditative interpretation of Iraq’s classical 'maqâm'.
In 1989 he was awarded the Unesco-CIM prize before going into exile in 1991 following the war and the ensuing embargo against Iraq. He lived between Amman in Jordan and Budapest. In 1993 he received the Prize for North-South Cultural Communication and died in Budapest on 28 September 1997 at the age of 77 just before a concert to be given in Mexico and a date at the Theatre de la Ville in Paris in duo with Julien Weiss, his disciple.

Sophie Guérinet