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Yousif El Moseley
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Booking Agency · Similar Music
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Born in 1953 in Khartoum, El Mosley spent much of his youth in the countryside, drawing inspiration from nature as he tended goats and lambs on the banks of the Nile. It was there he composed his first songs. El Mosley moved on to play percussion, then oud, then to sing. He studied a the Institute of Music and Drama from 1974-79, and showed such talent and promise that he immediately began teaching there upon graduation. One of his compositions won him a place at a major Arabic music festival in Tripoli, and his performance there further raised the profile of this young musician. He soon earned the stage name ?El Mosley,? a reference to legendary Arab musician of the Abasid Dynasty, and a powerful vote of confidence from his mentors and elders. El Mosley appreciated a broad variety of music, and immediately established himself as a progressive artist, leading a small orchestra whose instruments drew from Sudanese traditions, Arabic orchestral music, and international jazz and pop. He began setting the works of great poets to music, and became well known as a vocalist and ensemble leader. From 1983-89, he studied at the Cairo Conservatory and established a new base there, collaborating and producing major Sudanese artists, notably Abdel Karim El Kabli and the popular female vocal group Al Balabil. ?I was the only Sudanese singer who used to perform his program from a score, for the whole orchestra. Other singers used to just make the musicians memorize their music.? El Mosley returned to his post at the Institute of Music and Drama in Khartoum just in time for the 1989 military coup. Very quickly, the restrictions the new government brought on musicians?preventing them from recording, performing, and having their music broadcast on radio and television?became intolerable. ?I began to be brought to security,? El Mosley recalls, ?and because I was the head of the composition department, they asked that institution, the students, to participate in their celebrations. We refused that, and then they closed that institution for two and a half years. I am a singer and musician. I?m not against any political thoughts. I just have my own. I have to sing about love, about peace in Sudan, about freedom and democracy, things it is necessary for musicians to represent. I was not free as a musician. I had to move.? So began El Mosley?s long exile from his homeland. He spent the next seven years in Cairo, where he spearheaded a new music production business in Cairo, Hassad Productions. Free to pursue his progressive agenda, El Mosley encountered initial resistance from his peers. ?But after just one year,? he recalls, ?most of them came to me to Cairo to do the same thing.? Hassad became the biggest production house in the history of Sudanese music, creating 45 albums, over 400 songs, by 35 singers, including some of the greatest names in Sudanese music: Abdel Gadir Salim, Mohamed Wardi, Omer Ihsas, Mohamed Al Amin, Abu Araki al-Bakheit, and many others. In 1996, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak survived an assassination attempt, and there were allegations that Sudanese forces were implicated in the attack. When the Sudanese refugee community in Cairo came under pressure, El Mosley responded with a song, ?Salimta,? meaning ?Thank God you are okay.? The song helped cool the mood in Egypt, though it further angered the government in Sudan. Unable to return home, El Mosley moved to the United States that year, continuing his studies first in Iowa, and then in California, and launching a new phase in his career. From his current base in Monterrey, California, El Mosley has directed a number of landmark projects in Sudanese music, including an full-orchestra recording by Mohammed Wardi in 1998, and the extraordinarily ambitious 2007 Sudan Festival of Music and Dance in New York. |
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Dawn Elder Management |
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| Sudanese | |
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