Kuwaity, one of the greatest figures in 20th century Iraqi and Arab music, was born in 1908 to a family of Iraqi Jews living in Kuwait. Saleh and his brother Daoud became famous musicians in Iraq and beyond, but their musical careers were disrupted when they left for Israel in 1951. “When their plane took off into the Baghdad skies, it signaled for Saleh and Daoud Al-Kuwaity the end of their rise and the beginning of their decline,” says Saleh's son Shlomo. However, the songs of Saleh Al-Kuwaity remained popular in Iraq, Kuwait and beyond, and there is today a growing appreciation of his musical legacy. This was shown by the enthusiastic reaction to the 18-track double CD “Daoud & Saleh Al-Kuwaity: Their Star Shall Never Fade” produced two years ago by Shlomo and other family members. “The album was sent, among others, to some prominent Arab figures around the world and in Kuwait and Iraq in particular,” says Shlomo. “We were very surprised at the positive responses from the Kuwaiti, Saudi, Lebanese and Iraqi press, and also from a whole host of online websites which specialize in Arabic music.” A further sign of the revival of interest in the Al-Kuwaity brothers was the holding in December of a special day at the Brunei Gallery of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London University, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Saleh, who died in 1986. An organizer of the event, the London-based Iraqi oud master Ahmed Mukhtar, paid tribute to “the genius of Saleh Al-Kuwaity” who “created new styles of Iraqi maqam music and freed the maqam from its restrictions and mixed some of it with urban music.” The finale of the day was a packed-out concert by Iraqi musicians which opened with Mukhtar's performance of variations on several of Saleh Al-Kuwaity's compositions. The Iraqi singer Ismail Fadhel, who lives in Australia, delivered in rousing style a succession of Al-Kuwaity songs, accompanied by the London-based violinist Taher Barakat and two musicians living in the Netherlands: qanoun player Jamil Al-Assadi and percussionist Ali Khafaji. The concert was a joyous occasion, with the audience clapping, singing and at times dancing along. In his welcoming speech at the concert, Mukhtar said: “We commemorate Saleh Al-Kuwaity as a person of artistic value not as Iraqi or Kuwaiti, but as of great human value. He managed with his rich compositions to establish some very valuable music in the area, and in particular for the Iraqi people: all the Iraqis tend to sing his songs, and they are still attached to his classical compositions.” At the concert Mukhtar presented a 100th anniversary award to Shlomo Al-Kuwaity, who later described the celebration of his father's music as “incredibly exciting. I was totally surprised and touched to see that he is still present in people's hearts.” He added: “For our family and for me, of course it was a great honor. But most important for us is restoring his place in the history of Arab music. We think he deserves it. The response of the audience was overwhelming and I felt at home.” He added: “I hope that a door has been opened without differences of religion and without politics. Just for the Arts!” As Shlomo recounted in his address at the centenary day, the musical gifts of Saleh and Daoud became apparent after an uncle returned from a business trip to India with a violin for Saleh and an oud for Daoud, two years his junior. In lessons with the Kuwaiti musician Khaled Al-Baker they mastered the elements of Kuwaiti, Bahraini, Yemeni and Hijazi music and song. They became famed for their performances at gatherings of dignitaries. In the late 1920s a club owner in Basra invited the brothers to work at his club, where they started to perform with the legendary maqam singer, Muhammad Al-Qubbanji. They moved to Baghdad in 1930 and worked in the Malha el-Hilil club accompanying the famous Jewish singer Selima Murad, wife of fellow vocalist Nazem Al-Ghazli. She asked Saleh to write songs for her, the first of which was “Qalbak Sakhr Jalmoud”(“Your Heart is Rock Hard”). Over the next two decades Saleh Al-Kuwaity was the pre-eminent song writer in Iraq, writing songs for stars such as Zakiya George, Munira Al-Hawazwaz. Afifa Iskander and Zohour Hussein. When the great Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum toured Iraq in 1931, Saleh taught her “Qalbak Sakhr Jalmoud”. Another towering Egyptian performer, the singer and composer Mohammed Abdel Wahab made trips to Iraq in the early 1930s. He was fascinated by Iraqi and Kuwaiti music, and would sit with Saleh after performances so the two could learn from each other. In 1936 Daoud and Saleh were asked to found an orchestra for the new Iraqi broadcasting service. They were also favorites of King Ghazi, who had his own radio station in his palace. The king gave Saleh a personally inscribed watch, which remains in the possession of the Al-Kuwaity family and is still working. In those days the majority of instrumentalists in Iraq were Jewish. According to Shlomo, the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, himself a keen amateur musician, switched on the radio one day in 1945 and found there was no music. “When he contacted the radio, he was told that it was Yom Kippur and the Jews did not work. And so it was decided to set up another orchestra with non-Jewish musicians under the direction of Jamil Bashir.” The tumultuous politics of the region shattered the position of the Jewish community in Iraq. Most of its members emigrated, and in 1951 the Al-Kuwaiti brothers left for Israel. This was despite the Emir of Kuwait's sending messengers on the day of their departure asking them to move to Kuwait, with guarantees they would be treated with the utmost respect. Like many immigrants from Iraq, the Al-Kuwaity brothers faced a difficult time settling in Israel. To make ends meet, Saleh set up a store selling household items in the market of Tel Aviv's Hatikvah neighborhood. Eventually the brothers had their own radio program on the Arabic service of the Kol Israel radio station, and were able to reconnect with their lost listeners in Iraq, Kuwait and elsewhere in the Arab world. In a film screened during the Brunei Gallery day, Ahmed Mukhtar interviewed Yeheskel Kojaman, a London-based Iraqi-Jewish expert in Iraqi music, and Baher Al-Rajab, the musician son of the Iraqi-Jewish musician Hashim Al-Rajab. It was stated during the film that a committee was formed in Iraq in 1973 to “remove the impurities in the Iraqi heritage.” Many names vanished, including those of the Al-Kuwaity brothers, although their music was still widely listened to. Also screened during the day was a studio discussion of Saleh Al-Kuwaity's work originally broadcast by the US-sponsored satellite TV channel Al-Hurra. In the program a panel of three experts on Iraqi music, including the conductor of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra Abdul Razzak Al-Azzawi, identified Saleh as the definitive Iraqi composer of the 1930s and 1940s. Shlomo Al-Kuwaity notes that at the 8th conference of Baghdad University's Faculty of Fine Arts, held in 2008, Ibrahim al-Jazrawi presented a paper entitled “Saleh Al-Kuwaity and his work in Iraqi music and poetry”. Al-Jazrawi proposed the establishment of a library to preserve all material related to Saleh. The Al-Kuwaity family is preparing a book on Saleh and Daoud which includes fresh material from sources in countries including the Netherlands, England, Iraq and Kuwait. Like the double CD, the book is likely to become a treasured collector's item among connoisseurs of Iraqi and Arabic music.
