BUCKTOWN – For Palestinian American musician, educator and producer Ronnie Malleythe oud is his passport.
The oud – a Middle Eastern stringed instrument and relative of the European lute – traveled with Malley from Chicago to Palestine, Vietnam, Bulgaria, France, India and more, as he played in marching bands , Middle Eastern classical ensembles, jazz groups and rock groups. .
The fretless, pear-shaped instrument also inspired Malley to write a piece called “Ziryab, the Songbird of Andalusia,” named after the medieval Islamic poet and musician who brought the oud to Spain from Baghdad. The 75-minute production interweaves this centuries-old tale with Malley’s own life growing up here in Chicago and his family’s life in Palestine.
In “Ziryab,” Ronnie illustrates how art, and particularly music, played a key role in understanding not only himself and his own culture, but also those around him.
“Ziryab” was first created in 2016 The rise of the Silk Road, but Malley put on a last-minute performance of the play Oct. 15 at The Red Room, 1711 N. Honore St., in Bucktown. The show was organized two days earlier to raise money for the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, an organization providing free medical care to the people of Gaza regardless of nationality or religion.
Malley also performed “Ziryab” in Seattle later in the week.
“It was a story that I thought was worth telling and needed at that time,” Malley said. “To try to humanize a people who are being dehumanized very quickly at the moment. »
Malley uses music to bridge his own American and Palestinian identities and also as a way to connect with others.
Born and raised on the southwest side of Chicago, the 45-year-old singer said he grew up surrounded by a mix of American and Middle Eastern culture. He learned Arabic music from his family.
“We had music around us all the time,” Malley said. “One of (my father’s) bands was a really wonderful mix of what you find in Chicago: the singer was Lebanese, the keyboard player was Assyrian, the drummer was Armenian-Iraqi, and my father was Palestinian. So it was really this very pan-Arab, pan-Middle Eastern group.
Malley and his brother often joined his father when he played gigs around town, often at a now-defunct North Side nightclub called Cleopatra. There, near Devon Avenue, Malley played some of his first sets, even learning some Middle Eastern cooking techniques from an Assyrian chef.
Malley said he uses his “little corner” in the arts to share his “very Palestinian” heritage. He was able to travel to Palestine for the first time – with his instruments – in 1993, before the Oslo Accords.
“I woke up and I was like, ‘I’m in my house in Palestine, what is this?’” Malley said. “I stand there and everything around me smells of za’atar. And then I came out and it was lemon and orange and I’ve never seen so many fruit trees in my life.
“It was a pivotal moment in my life. It solidified who I am, what I am.
He also has remember going has his first pro-Palestinian demonstration when President Reagan was in office.
“I remember what we chanted,” Malley said. “There weren’t many of us. I never thought in my life, in my wildest dreams, that I would hear even the word Palestine whispered in the media, on the news. We were invisible.
Malley said the arts can also be a form of protest – he is a “firm believer that existence is resistance” and that the pen is mightier than the sword.
In 2007, Malley co-launched a Bucktown-based music business, Intercultural music production, specializing in a variety of international music styles including the Middle East, North Africa, Andalusia, Greece, Turkey, South Asia and many more. This is where he currently works as a teacher, producer and performer. Malley also manages an artist residency program for the Arabic language program in Chicago Public Schools.
Through this residency program – and after lecturing on Egyptian music to a class at the University of Chicago – Malley had a “strange epiphany” that his knowledge and lifelong experience in music had the ability to inform people about this “invisible” part. of himself.
This became one of Malley’s main motivations for staying in music and ultimately guiding him in his calling, he said. Although Malley pursued other careers – such as business, banking and real estate – he said he always came back to music.
“I said okay, does anyone want to know more about Egyptian music outside of the community? Malley said. “I didn’t lose sight of the perspective people had of Arabs here in Chicago. …So I thought if this was a way for me to use music and use all the knowledge I was gaining along the way to help change these narratives, it seemed like a much more relevant cause .
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