Laura Bashraheel Saudi Gazette Creating music to the ears, taking you back to the Andalusian and Abbasid era with the beauty of formal Arabic poetry expressed with oriental music, Al-Farabi band has succeeded in creating its own genre. Consisting of five members - Ahmed Al-Eid, Anas Gaboori, Saher Samir, Emad Mujallid and Diya Azzony – the band was named after Al-Farabi, the renowned scientist and philosopher of the Islamic Golden Age. Al-Farabi was known for his philosophical and medical achievements but he was also creative in music. “Not many people here know of Al-Farabi's contribution to music. He was a musical genius. He used to play many instruments and invented new ones too. He wrote books on music and one that is quite popular until now, The Great Book of Music, is still being taught in Europe,” said Thamer Farhan, manager of Al-Farabi and the talent manager in Libra Productions, a production house and a talent agency owned by Mujallid and Azzony. Although there are many other Islamic scientists, Farhan said that Al-Farabi is a legend since he worked on fusion music. “That's how the name was chosen, to revive his legacy,” he added. While the band composes its own instrumental music, they choose the lyrics for their songs from classical Arabic poetry, as the band believes formal Arabic is very expressive with beautiful words made of different dimensions and strong descriptions. “The range of Arabic poetry is very wide and unlimited. Today's music is limited but Arabic poetry is extensive,” said Farhan. “We can find anything; we can form a whole story. That was the idea of the first album “Story of A King” and we had three other songs, Story of Life, Story of Faith and Story of the End, where we gathered and formed stories from different poems,” Farhan explained. Mujallid who considers Metallica and rock music as inspirations, said that Al-Farabi's music style is popular in North Africa, so the band members decided to bring it to the Kingdom and mix different kinds of instruments and music. “We focus on poetry because it's our heritage and we want to promote our language. We should be proud of our folklore and legacy,” said Mujallid. The band hopes its combination of formal Arabic with fusion music will attract an international audience. Their main goal is to introduce a new musical trend and appreciation for instrumental music in the Kingdom. The band is expected to release an extended play (EP) containing five songs. “We have over 12 songs but we will include five in the album as we are still experimenting with the market and see what sort of response we get,” said Farhan. The traditional Arab ensemble consists of four main melodic instruments - Oud, Qanun, Ney and Kaman, which members of Al-Farabi use in their music. However, they have five main instruments, which they play in all their music, drums, Oud, piano, electric and classic guitar. “We are open to more instruments. We did add violin, flute, and Qanun but it's not easy to find people who play these instruments.” Just as any beginning, the band had some challenges while attempting to bind oriental music with western music. “It wasn't easy, we had difficulties with the chemistry in the band,” said Azzony. The Oud player Al-Eid is inspired by Talal Maddah, while Azzony and Mujallid are inspired by heavy metal music and Souad Masi. Although, having these two extremes in music is challenging, the band reached a level of understanding and was able to combine two different genres together. In the bonanza of social media, the band created their own success through YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. “We have an advantage here because our music is not competitive. We became popular within one year as the music industry has changed completely with YouTube,” said Azzony. “We are not aiming for TV as it is not powerful as it used to be, messages are now delivered through YouTube which is more powerful. Television is commercial but with YouTube you don't have to pay anything and content isn't being controlled,” said Farhan. Members of Al-Farabi's said this is just the beginning and for their fans, the best is yet to come.
