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Risking it all for a song
By Borzou Daragahi Times Staff Writer
8, 31, 05
In America and Europe, such televised talent shows offer small-time
entertainers and wannabes the chance to show off to a national
audience and maybe break into stardom with no greater danger
than becoming the butt of office jokes. In Iraq, a shot at the
big time means risking much more.
Some of the 500 aspiring talents competing for a trip to Beirut
and a record deal have been beaten, threatened and ostracized.
Although Iraqis gobble up tapes, CDs and videos of sexy Lebanese
and Egyptian entertainers, Islamic militants often group singers
and dancers with prostitutes.
Many artists and intellectuals have been killed in his native
Mosul, Younis said.
"I'm afraid," he said. "I fear for my life
wherever I go. But what can I do? This is my only shot. I've
made my decision. I'd rather just die and be dead than stay alive
and be dead."
Nada Samaraii, a 36-year-old flutist and music teacher who
was among a handful of women daring to compete in the contest,
said neighbors had trashed her apartment, hit her and threatened
to turn her out onto the street after her first appearance on
"Iraq Star." Her landlord jacked up her rent and cut
off electricity and water.
"They told me I'm not respecting Islam," she said
as she nervously awaited her turn to appear on the show, "that
I'm an infidel."
Still, she persists. She said Iraqis had been through so much
in these last few years that they were numb to the threat of
violence, and that her stage fright before appearing on "Iraq
Star" far surpassed her worries about bombs and kidnappings.
"I'm used to the other kinds of fears; I've internalized
them," said Samaraii, a soft-spoken woman with red-hennaed
hair and a warm smile. "But the fear of going onstage is
the biggest fear for me."
She writes her own sentimental love songs, rehearsing a cappella
versions nervously as she got ready to take the stage:
"Take away my suspicions and teardrops
I'm crying because I'm happy
I thought you had changed on me
And because I'm so suspicious, I haven't been happy
My heart needs you and your love
My moon, you light my life."
"Iraq Star" contestants come from all over the country
and sing in all Iraq's languages: Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmen and
Assyrian. About 125 candidates have made it past a three-judge
panel, consisting of a singer, a composer and a musicologist,
to the third round, which is being taped this week.
The Lebanese-financed Al Sumeria satellite television channel
produces the hourlong show, which from anecdotal accounts appears
to be wildly popular in Iraq.
The 12 contestants who make it to the seventh and final round
get an all-expenses-paid trip to the Lebanese capital around
Christmas. Arabic-language satellite television watchers from
all over the world will be able to call in and vote for their
favorite singer. The top two or three candidates will get record
contracts. The rest will be organized into an Iraqi band that
might tour the Arab world, contest organizers say.
But although they may one day become stars, for now the contestants
often face scorn. After 22-year-old Baghdad music student Qaith
Sabah sang in the first round, his conservative Shiite parents
scolded him.
"What?" he said his mother asked him sarcastically.
"Are you a Gypsy now?"
His father didn't even raise his voice, which only made the
humiliation all the worse, Sabah said.
"It's sad to see you in such circumstances," Sabah
recalled his father, a hardworking engineer, telling him. "You
have brought shame upon your family."
But Sabah's siblings quietly rallied to his support, he said.
Laith, his beloved 13-year-old brother, even helped him pick
out songs for the second round. "They energized me so much,"
he said. "I could see the smiles on their faces."
To them, he was already a star.
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