Dr. Ameer Jaffar

“I am a music professor at the education department in the Public Authority of Applied Education and Training in Kuwait. 

The main reason I’ve always sought to study international music was that I wanted to merge international music with Kuwaiti folk music and Arabic music in order to develop it, present it to the whole world and eventually reach internationalism. My activities during the past few years have mainly focused on composing drama music and preludes to drama series.

The oud was the main musical instrument I’ve used during these years. It is the weapon through which we can show our capabilities as Arab musicians in the West.

The West has always been impressed with the oud as it is the main musical instrument that has moved from Arabs to the West through the Andalusi music. We call it oud because the word oud means wood. When this instrument moved to the West, it was fretless, there were no frets because we play quarter a tone in Arab music. However, this music has now developed, this instrument has developed and it is now called the lute. 

This is what makes Gulf music so special; the mixture of styles and the effect on the Gulf song and Gulf music. Kuwait greatly supports music education. Despite the anti-music strict ideology that some have, there is a large appetite for learning music.    

When playing the piano, we use 12 keys. These are the main ones we use to move from one tone to another or half to half. As I said, in Arabic music, we have quarters of tones that come between the white and black keys. This is the difference. There are many Arab rhythms that can be played on the piano. For example, we have always listened to Fairouz’s music.

We try to save this beautiful treasure, this beautiful music which is considered as the cultural gate into our country. It is the beautiful language through which people of all races and colours across the world can communicate. It is a language that brings people together. I hope the music language would be taken seriously as an education subject because I believe it offers a solution for people’s conflicts.”