Saves Lives and Tunes: Dr Kamari and Salim Al Nur

Dr. Yehuda Kamari doesn't only engage in medicine; he also rescues ancient musical compositions from the pit of forgetfulness.

While working at the Sheba Medical Center, Kamari has dedicated all his spare time over the past few years to a personal project. Together with a group of musicians, he is recording the undocumented works of Salim Al Nur, an Iraqi composer who immigrated to Israel in 1950 and was forgotten. "There are many parallels between music and medicine", he explains.

During the day he saves the lives of atherosclerotic patients in the hospital, and in the evenings he rushes to the recording studio to save the creations of one of the greatest Jewish Iraqi composers of the 1940s - Salim Al Nur.

For the last three years, quietly, beyond the media spotlight, Dr. Yehuda Kamari has been occupied with perpetuating the forgotten music of Al Nur, now named Shlomo Ziv-li (88), a retired engineer who lives in an apartment on Chen Blvd. in Tel Aviv.

Kamari (42), the youngest of seven children of an immigrant family from Iran, was brought up from childhood to love music. "I learned to play the guitar. With friends I played mainly Western music, like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, but I was careful to keep the Persian melodies within the home".

He was first exposed to Arabic music at the age of 26 at a family gathering. "They played Arabic pieces on classical instruments like the oud and the qanoon" recalls Kamari. "When I got home I tried to play the tunes on my guitar but failed because of the quarter tones that are unique to this music. This aroused my curiosity and my desire to get to know this music. A few months later, a friend of mine bought me a disc of Rabia Abu-Khalil, a famous Lebanese oud player. While listening to it I understood that this was the instrument for me. I went to the village of Rami, near Karmiel, and there I bought my first oud".

Alongside his medical studies, Kamari started taking oud lessons at the Jewish-Arab Community Center in Jaffa, studying with artists like Yair Dallal, Mikhael Maroun and Yosef Shem-Tov. When he wanted to go further in his studies, Al Nur was warmly recommended. That is how the two first met. "Salim has 1,200 tapes of classical Arabic music" he says. "Every evening we would sit and listen to music. Over the years he taught me the secrets of the genre".

Al Nur also mentions the long hours they sat together, adding "I taught him to pay attention to the small details in every song, because that is where the uniqueness of the composer is to be found".

Thanks to these guided music sessions Kamari discovered Al Nur's compositions. They are of a genre called Sama'i, pieces composed of five verses of ten beats each. "He is simply a genius", Kamari waxes lyrical. "He even invented some of the scales himself. His compositions are amazingly beautiful, sophisticated and innovative".

Apart from Al Nur's recorded works, Kamari discovered eight more compositions that had never been recorded. Three years ago he decided that he simply had to preserve Al Nur's heritage before it was too late. "I realized that this was world-class music that would be lost if I didn't take it upon myself to record the music. For me, it was like finding pieces by Beethoven that no one had ever heard".

More and more difficulties

After his day's work at the Sheba Medical Center, where he serves as doctor and researcher of atherosclerosis and high blood pressure, Kamari would spend the evening playing with seven Jewish and Arab musicians. "Both music and medicine demand thorough theoretical and practical knowledge together with emotional intelligence and sensitivity", he explains the connection between the two spheres. "There is a parallel between the desire to study the internal content that generates a feeling of emotional elevation in music and the aspiration to understand biological and medical processes and raise this knowledge to the level of art".

Kamari also involved Al Nur's daughter, the pianist Liora Ziv-Li, in this project. "We're talking about five instrumental pieces of classical Arabic music and another three Iraqi songs", says Ziv-Li. "Musical notation of these compositions is difficult because this music is orally transmitted, and therefore fluid. On the one hand it is important to be precise, but on the other hand it is important to leave room for the musicians to improvise".

Since all the participants worked on the disc in their spare time, the process of writing the notes took a year and a half. On finishing the notation, they recorded a demo disc for each of the musicians, including the qanun player Abraham Salman, violinist Elias Zabeda and vocalist Elias Shasha, so that they could all rehearse.

"It was difficult to arrange rehearsals when all the players could attend, because each one had other business to attend to", explains Kamari. "For months we would meet at my place and practice the pieces. We would move everything in the living room to make space. My family would sit and watch us play till the small hours".

Even when they did manage to arrange a meeting with all the members of the band, they ran into other kinds of difficulties. "Some of the musicians found it hard to cope with the complexity of the piece", admits Kamari, "some found it technically difficult, despite years of experience".

Al Nur's presence at all the rehearsals did not make it any easier for the group. "I knew exactly what I wanted, and intervened in every little detail", says Al Nur, "but in the end I really loved the result. The walls of my house are permeated with my tunes. If Yehuda hadn't brought them out onto the street, would anyone even know what I have created?"

The dream: To perform in Egypt

Kamari and his team of musicians are winding up the work on the disc, the cost of which is estimated at approximately 80 thousand shekels. The money invested came out of Kamari's own pocket and also from contributions received with the help of the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda.

"Salim Al Nur is considered one of the greatest Iraqi Jewish artists" says the Heritage Center chairman, Ygal Loshi, adding "Kamari conducted serious research on the subject, the kind even we at the Heritage Center couldn't have managed. Very few people could have succeeded in doing it."

Kamari intends to circulate the discs for sale on internet sites and to publish a book of sheet-music incorporating all of Al Nur's compositions. He isn't especially concerned about profit. "My job was to document the music, and that is my achievement", he says. "For me this is a life project whose importance can be measured only in twenty years time, when all of Salim's contemporaries will have passed away. Anything extra will be a bonus. Now I have one more dream to realize - to play Salim's works at the Opera House in Egypt".