‘Dreaming of a better world’: Ibrahim Maalouf’s vision of music as a unifying force

Trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf’s journey is one that has had a profound effect on his musical life. The musical influences of growing up in the Middle East are readily apparent in his playing and on his recordings. The imbalance of war on his life was considerable too, as you can imagine. Recently, we talked about life’s balance, along with his chances to make significant music with some of his heroes.

Listen, above.

Interview transcript:

Gary Walker: Regarding the message of your music, I look at your recording Capacity to Love, which starts out with Charlie Chaplin, of all people, speaking. He’s speaking about the turmoil in the world, the turmoil that right now we certainly see in the Middle East with Palestine and Israel. You grew up in the midst of that.

Ibrahim Maalouf: Absolutely, I did. I grew up in a world and in the middle of a culture where everything was telling me that this balance in which we are is very fragile and that at any time things could blow up. When we traveled to France and I started living in France with European people around me, they were always taking everything for granted. And I was the one always thinking, “Oh my God, they are lucky because they don’t have to worry about this.” Things unfortunately changed. The more things are changing, especially in Europe, but also in the Middle East, the more I feel that my education strengthened me. That’s what I’m trying to build in my music.

I understand that when you were in Beirut, you were there when the bombs dropped and that must’ve been just a frightening experience, but then a motivating experience, because I believe I read somewhere that after the destruction and all the turmoil and everything, you had a desire to be an architect.

When I was young, they used to ask me, “What do you want to do when you grew up?: I used to change the reality to make it sound hopeful. I used to show pictures of New York and say, “This is what Lebanon is going to be.” I used to show pictures of Lebanon and tell everyone, “This is going to be the new New York.” People were asking me, why do you say that this? I said, “Because this is how I’m going to rebuild it. It was something deep in me. Like I have to belong to a generation that builds things, not destroys things.

I think in a way, this is what I happen to do, through music. I sometimes say, unfortunately I didn’t become an architect as I wanted to. I didn’t contribute to building the environments in which we’ll live, but it feels to me that I’m contributing to the environments in which we live. When we close our eyes that where our souls live. So in a way, I believe I am an architect.

You know, when there’s a tension convention in anyone’s lives, many people turn toward music. And music was an inspiration for you at a very early age where you studied classical music and won numerous awards and accolades around the world for your musical contributions. But you didn’t really enjoy it.

No, I didn’t enjoy it, because it was more like a competition and it’s not about music. Competition is interesting for some time when you’re building your own culture, when you’re learning things But building your language around competition, it’s not interesting anymore. You have to bring something else. I think around the age of 21 or 22 when my future started, I thought: “Okay, what, what am I going to do after studies? What is going to be my job? What’s going to be my life? How am I going to make a living? What is the thing that makes me really passionate about? And how am I going to live into this crazy mad world?” Then, started to emerge the idea that maybe I can create some things.

You have indeed created those things. For you, early on, one of the things it created was a much closer relationship with your own father, who himself was a world class trumpeter and it was over music and in the midst of music that the two of you really connected. Talk about the quarter note trumpet.

Actually the quarter tone trumpet, my father built it at first for himself, because he needed to play his language in this instrument that helped him learn the Western classical music language. He wanted to merge his own culture into an instrument that couldn’t offer him to do it. So, building a trumpet with a quarter tone allowed enabled him to play what we call the maqams in the Arab culture. Once he could play the maqams, everything changed for him. He wasn’t only a classical musician. He wasn’t only playing Vivaldi or Purcell or Bach. He was also playing Umm Kulthum or Fairuz or all those amazing artists in what we call in our music Tarab, which is the very specific feeling that you get when you are playing or listening to a very emotional Arab music.

You were tied to this throughout your life. In fact, you referenced Umm Kulthum just a minute ago. You took her music and her suites and transposed them for an instrumental performance, which actually you did in New York at Dizzy’s Club. Talk about her and her influence on your musical life.

There are a lot of amazing Arab singers and artists, but Umm Kulthum has this very special thing, which is that everybody in the Arab world loves her. Everybody, all in all countries, Arab countries. It goes from Sudan to the Gulf. It’s from Jordan to Morocco or to Algeria. All the huge Arab world loves her. All the religions. you have Arab Jews, you have Arab Christians like me, you have Arab Muslims, you have all religions in the Arab world. Everybody loves her. She’s the only subject, the only person, the only artist, the only subject on which all Arabs agree. Anything else is a topic of problems, but not Umm Kulthum. It was very interesting for me, because when I started saying that I’m going to take Um Kulthum this suite that I really used to love, which is, “I’ll flail away Layla,” which means a thousand and one nights, everyone tells me, “Oh, Ibrahim don’t touch Umm Kulthum. It’s a sacred music. It’s a sacred person. Nobody should change it or touch it.” And I was like, “Why not? Come on. We have to mix the cultures in order to translate Umm Kulthum’s talent and wonderful art so that everybody can understand this. Let’s do it in jazz.” It was like doing a translation of a beautiful literature book, for example.

Well, you know that reimagination is a constant in the world of jazz. For example, your own recording Diasporas where you took “A Night in Tunisia” and made it “Missing You.” There was also a reinvention there of sorts with your work with singers. I was a huge fan of Elton John. His early work was just spectacular and he made a record called Tumbleweed Connection. There was a tune on that recording called “Love Song” that you and Melody Gardot did together from her recording just a couple of years ago called Sunset in the Blue. You want to talk about reimagination. The synergy between Melody Gardot’s voice and your trumpet work is just magic.

Thank you, Gary. Melody’s voice is magic, so when you associate with magic, you give someone a chance to belong to it. I’m a big fan of Melody. Her voice is just out of this world.

And the wonderful recording that you and Angelique Kidjo made together, Queen of Sheba, talk about how the two of you came together and the making of that music, which you took on tour. And at one point, I don’t know if it was this particular tour, but there were 600 musicians on stage.

I think the reason why I do music is because it connects me potentially to everybody on this planet. And when you say that music is a universal language, it’s true, right? But not everybody uses it this way. Some people even use it the other way. They create music just to enjoy it all together, but nobody else. They narrow all the possibilities. In my opinion, the most interesting and beautiful aspect of music is that it can connect you literally with the world around you—anybody, everybody on this planet. I use it so much playing Indian music, playing jazz, playing blues, playing rock, playing salsa, playing all kinds of African music, playing all kinds of Arab music, all kinds of classical music, contemporary music, baroque music. Sharing with musicians, with sound engineers, with journalists, with audiences, in different spaces, different venues, outside, outdoors, indoors. Music is my religion. Is there anything else than our heartbeat and the rhythm of it and the frequencies that we live in? Is there anything else that we all share as much as music?

Your collaboration with a number of different people like De La Soul, Tank and the Bangas, D Smoke, Cimafunk, and especially Gregory Porter who is on the title track of your recording Capacity to Love. There’s a line in that song that says, “The sun is 100 times bigger than the earth, but still the capacity to love is bigger than that.” That’s the kind of thing you’re talking about as you express your music in all its forms—French, Lebanese, funk, hip hop, jazz, African, Middle Eastern. It all comes together. The way you do it, it’s so seamless.

Why do we have these walls up? Right now these walls get in the way of so much. Take those walls down, man. People mix sometimes pragmatism and cynicism. They think and they believe that the situations are bad and we should not be so idealistic and that there’s no other way than separating and building walls and blah, blah, blah.

But where I come from, we tried it and it led us to wars and it led us to death and chaos. People grew up knowing exactly what a wall can create between people. Look what’s happening now. People are surprised. I’m sad because I am not surprised. We’ve experienced this a lot in Lebanon. I am not surprised because building walls between people who are different is the best way to make them kill each other. At some point, there’s no other way than just putting all those things away and try to connect.

When Gregory Porter arrived to the studio, we were recording at Revival Studios in Los Angeles. I was working there with my musicians and I called Gregory two, three days before that day, and I asked him, “Could you drive to the studio and come by and we would like to try something with you?” He was like, “Yeah, but I’m like five hours away.” I was like, “Please Gregory, I’m not gonna come to Los Angeles so often. So it would be great if you can.” He said, “Okay, let’s go.” He took his car and drove like five or six hours to the studio.

When he came out of the car, right away because I knew we didn’t have so much time, I started explaining to him all the philosophy that is behind this album. I was telling him, I think we need to connect. We need to show people that all kinds of music can actually become one. That all kinds of people can creolize and become another culture. Another new one. And that’s okay. And people should not fear this thing.

They shouldn’t be scared by mixing their genetics and DNA and become something else. This is what the future is about. This is what music and art is all about. This is what philosophy and science is about. And I was telling him and I was talking and talking. You see how much I talk, right? I was talking and talking. After half an hour, he was looking at me very patiently and said, “Ibrahim, you’re just talking about our capacity to love.” I was stunned. I was like, “Oh my God, he just said in one phrase, what I’ve been trying to say for half an hour.” I asked him, “Oh, you know what? Actually, this is exactly the right words. Will you allow me to use it as the title of the album?” And he was like, “Yeah, sure.” This is how everything happened. I really believe that we need more connection.

After the introduction of the words of Charlie Chaplin that explain exactly why we need this connection, the very next track is called “Speechless” because the music brings it all together, doesn’t it? Charlie Chaplin said it so well with easy and simple words.

I can’t think of anybody else who said it as well as he did. I was very lucky to be able to talk to his grandson James and ask him if they would allow me to use it. And they said, “We need to listen to the music first.” I sent them the music of “Speechless” and James called me and he said, Ibrahim, that’s amazing. We can feel that in your music, you’re transmitting the exact same message.” I said, “Thank you, because that was exactly what I wanted you to feel.” It’s such a powerful message that is readily embraced by audiences all over the world, specifically by people all over the world.

One night in performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Ibrahim looked over and there was Quincy Jones ordering sushi, he was staying for the whole set. That would unfold a whole new relationship between yourself and Quincy Jones, right?

We talked and we decided to work together. I was amazed by the fact that he was 83, I think, or something like that, and still so curious about what a French Lebanese trumpeter playing a weird instrument could offer, musically speaking, and he was very curious about it. Once he listened to my concert in Montreux, he said amazing things to me, and he was so encouraging.

He’s a fellow trumpeter. That encouragement certainly happened to him when he was a very young man, I think 13 or 14 years old, living out in the Northwest.

He is very generous and is an amazing human being. Extremely humble compared to his enormous life. It’s rare to meet people like this, who are this humble and so generous. Who really are willing to help and who are not expecting anything else than you being an artist and making a living from your work and being happy with music. He just doesn’t expect anything back.

When the documentary on Clark’s life came out, Keep On, Keepin’ On, Quincy was the impetus behind that.  I had the opportunity to chat with Quincy for almost two hours one day about his relationship with Clark Terry and how the two of them came up together. Not only a musical friendship, but a really deep personal friendship. And that comes out of these kinds of musical encounters as well, does it not?

I think it does. I even really believe that, I’m not saying other artists don’t, when we really love other trumpeters, we feel them because when you blow in the instrument, there is something that links you directly to your heart. It’s almost impossible to play trumpet and try to be intellectual in the same time. There is something physical in the trumpet playing, the way you blow in the trumpet, the way you have to focus on the lips and the pressure and that makes it only about your heart expressing itself.

So this part of our job as trumpet players brings us to a specific way to see things and music that leads us more into emotions and listening to our hearts and linking each other through our hearts, not through the intellectual thing.

I think so and maybe that’s why your recording is called Capacity to Love.

I really believe that my connection to music is my heart. My connection to other people is always my heart. That helps me in life.

Where are you living now?

Maybe you are actually hearing my children because they are shouting all around. We will live between Paris, France, and Lebanon. With the tension that is happening in Lebanon, we are staying a little bit more in France now.

That deepened a relationship between you and your father, because your father as a father was, I don’t want to say standoffish, but it was a rather formal relationship initially.

My father had a very complicated and difficult life. He wanted us to be tough, so he raised us in a quite strict education. Also maybe the situation in Lebanon, the war and all this definitely affected him so much that he was so worried that there was no place for fun. When you are every day hoping that at the end of the day, you wouldn’t receive a call from Lebanon telling you that your brother died or something, you cannot live fully happy. There’s always something that is telling you that you don’t have the right to be happy because you have all your family there.

So he was very tough with us. He was very strict. He wanted us to be strong. It’s only when we started playing music together that his heart started to melt a little bit to get a little bit more tender, less stiff. We started this musical connection together. This loving connection at that specific moment. That definitely changed my point of view about him, but also how I see music. It changed everything in my life.

It just shows you how powerful music is. We talked about Quincy a minute ago. Your friendship with him continues recently. You were part of his 90th birthday celebration out in Los Angeles, alongside people like Stevie Wonder and others, right?

That’s crazy when I see the little Lebanese boy that I was, listening to all kinds of records and looking at the back reading, “Produced by Quincy Jones.” I was like, “Who is this guy who works with Ray Charles, with Count Basie, with all the people I love? That was crazy for me. When I see this little boy, not even dreaming, I wouldn’t even dare dream about meeting Quincy or playing with him. It was just something so far from the life I was living. I really think that’s why music became my religion because it made me allow myself to dream of a better world.

When can we look forward to Ibrahim Maalouf coming to America again.

We actually are going to tour with a very new project, and it’s going to happen between the 20th of April and the 5th of May. And we’ll have approximately a dozen concerts between the United States and Canada.

Musically, what are you working on now?

For that tour, for example. I’m actually working on many different projects. I have a few movie soundtracks I’m working on. Among which is the 51st movie of Claude Lelouch, who’s an Oscar winner and a huge French cinema director. I’m working on four different albums. I don’t know which one is going to be released first, but I’m recording with the Symphony Orchestra of Nice. I’m going to record a symphony that I composed when I was 18 years old and that has never been played.

I have a jazz album with the same musicians that I recorded my album Wind with, and another album for the Kaltothe suite we were talking about. We are going to record an album in May, in Los Angeles, and there are two other projects I’m working on. One, a very big project called “The Trumpets of Michelangelo.” It’s a life project for me, teaching all trumpet players how to play the quarter tone trumpets and making it universal for everybody to play it.

I think Don Ellis also did quarter tone music from his travels through the Middle East where he was inspired as well.

Mostly from India. He was passionate about all the Indian music. There is a crazy story because Don Ellis and my father happened to have exactly the same ideas and the same idea in the same years. And that’s absolutely crazy because my father didn’t know anything about Don Ellis or about jazz. My father wasn’t at all interested in jazz. He was really into classical music and Baroque music and Arab music. He wanted the trumpet to play his quarter tones. And the same time, the same years, Don Ellis was traveling in India and he brought with him this little Indian trumpets and he wanted to copy this. So he did the quarter tone trumpets too. A few years ago, they asked me to compose a whole program for the Marciac Jazz Festival and to play with Wynton Marsalis. And I wrote four long pieces of music, all based on quarter tones. It was a tribute to Don Ellis. So we did this together.