Date: May 31st 2008

Driving down to the Mediterranean coast to Lattakia on the following day we were greeted by our friend Mohammad who is a generous young Sunni Muslim man living in the primarily Allawite part of Syria who takes pride in networking people and their projects in a global web of connections which serve the benefit of all. As is frequently the case in this culture, he has something positive to say about everyone and easily radiates enthusiastic good will. Thanks to him we met Fadhil, the new Iraqi director for our project in Syria to support Iraqi musical teachings. We met Arab music historian Ali Haddad and his son Abd al Wahab Haddad who generously offered to support our work in whatever ways possible. We met Anthony Ham who is researching and writing the Lonely Planet guidebook. He may do a feature about our work for the next edition of the Middle East book. And, again thanks to Mohammad's networking, we did a musical performance at the local Dhikrayat Restaurant in which we fea

tured songs from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.

Driving back up into the Northern highlands we arrived in Aleppo where we met with Ibrahim Sukar and discussed methods for providing traditional Arabic musical instruments to the Iraqi music students who become involved with our project. We met an oud player who sings both Syrian and Iraqi maqam music in a local restaurant and joined in the singing with him when our repertoires overlapped.

But it was back in Damascus, with Fadhil leading us that we were, as reported in our last email update, able to establish a framework for our program.

Visiting the parts of Damascus where most Iraqi refugees live, we walked down "Little Iraq Street", we ate Iraqi food and we visited the incredible Saida Zeinab Mosque. Saida Zeinab is a popular destination for people from all over the Islamic world. It is teeming with multi-ethnic populations and the evening ecstatic activities in the Mosque are unlike anything I have even imagined. A fervor of prayer and singing builds to uproarious devotional proportions. Kristina joined women and children on one side of the internal shrine who romped and prayed while Fadhil and I entered the men's side passing through groups of young men singing vocal chants while striking their bodies as if they themselves were the drums. Sparkling lights reflected in multicolored chandeliers of crystals underneath a golden dome illuminated everything with indescribable brilliance while the men moved and undulated in trance as they rubbed themselves against the shrine.

Out in the streets we are again surrounded by an Iraqi majority. Again and again we find that the these people know and adore singers like Nazem al Ghazali whose ecstatic performances of maqam music seventy years ago, at the dawn of the era of recorded music, helped perpetuate this part of the Iraqi soul. They are enchanted to hear that our Musical Mission of Peace aims to help support the teaching of these musical styles so that the younger generations can carry this legacy forward while simultaneously providing employment for these displaced Iraqis.

Please encourage your friends who may be interested to add their email addresses to our list at: http://www.musicalmissions.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi
Or have them just send us an email requesting to be added to the list!

Thanks and More Soon, Cameron
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