Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Akram Abdel Fattah, a violinist, composes music that can be best described as storytelling: taking listeners on a journey filled with various beautiful moments from start to finish. Surrounded by a family who loves music, he started to learn rhythms at age seven. Soon after, he started to learn how to play the oud and the violin. He says he inherited the ability to play the oud from his father and uncles who love the instrument. “The oud is as popular as coffee in our family,” he says.
Though he once wanted to become a doctor, he says now that the violin is his true passion. He has mastered both Eastern and Western tunes and describes the violin as an “international, versatile, and very expressive instrument.”
Currently studying music at the Jerusalem Academy of Music, Akram is always busy preparing and taking part in shows. He is most proud of his work in a quartet called Awan, whose eight-song CD is due to come out early in 2013. Akram himself composed five of the songs.
Achievements and Awards
Akram composed his first piece at age 15. Musical sentences just seem to come to him while at home or driving, and he records them on his phone. “My phone is full of voice recordings,” he chuckles.
But a difficult road lies ahead.
Living in Lower Galilee, Akram has extreme difficulties in connecting with other musicians in the Arab world, and even those in Jerusalem and the West Bank. And there are limited places and possibilities for performance in such a small country with a complicated political reality. He believes that contact and sharing of music and ideas are essential for the development and growth of any musician or group.
Akram laments the fact that there is also a lot of suffering inherent in choosing music as a profession. “It’s a big sacrifice, socially, with lots of pressure - people just don’t understand you,” he says.
But despite the difficulties, which he fully recognises and is willing to confront, Akram cannot imagine doing anything else in life. In the future, he would like to study music, probably abroad. He believes his long-term mission is to develop the Palestinian people’s sense of music since it is a fundamental aspect of culture.
“Music is divine,” notes Akram, “and its unique effect on the spirit will always remain a mystery.”
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