Decolonizing the Music Curriculum - Interview with Mohamad Hamami

Decolonization of the Music Curriculum
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Interview with Mohamad Hamami

Mohamed Hamami is a violinist, composer and conductor currently based in the United Arab Emirates. He studied at the University of Salford on the Doctor of Musical Arts programme, graduating in 2021.

He began studying western classical music at the Arabic Institute for Music in Aleppo in 1988, and graduated at the age of fourteen. He has broadened this experience, performing with musicians from many genres of music, from Irish folk music to Latin, American Jazz, and traditional Indian music. His experience as an international musician shaped his unique sound and philosophy as a musician. He have won international music awards and recorded two solo Albums.

During his career he has worked with the Aleppo Chamber Orchestra, the Dubai Chamber Orchestra, the Bahrain Chamber Orchestra, the Dubai Philharmonic Orchestra and Dubai International Orchestra, he has been a guest artist with the Virginia Symphonicity in the USA.

Amongst other prestigious venues he has performed at Dubai Opera, Qartaj Amphitheater Tunisia, the Opera House Egypt and in Damascus, at UNESCO in Lebanon, at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai, at Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi, at Virginia City Hall USA. He now works with his own ensemble of international artists that he has formed, and 80-piece orchestra named the SharQ orchestra.

Hamami believes passionately that western music notation belongs to everybody, in the same way that the Arabic number system (a system of similar antiquity), has become embedded across a broad range of cultures. He works to systematize Arabic forms, to provide access to a wider cross-cultural generation of players, composers and to promote Arabic music to wider audiences.