“Don’t change the accents. It’s written that way for a reason,” says Elias Lamman. “You wouldn’t mess with the Mona Lisa, would you?”
The son of a Greek musician mother who loved Arabic music and an Egyptian movie-producer father, Lammam was born and raised to perform in Beirut. He began playing the piano and the qanun, a large, zither-like instrument with a thin trapezoidal sound board, at age 8.
Over the course of his storied career, he has performed with many of the top names in Arabic and Near Eastern music. Yet Lammam now calls Santa Cruz home. And this week, he is directing the third annual Arabic Music Week at the Desert Dream Dance Company studio.
The event is a series of workshops with Lammam’s students, who have traveled from all over the world to join him in the flesh after a year of lessons via Skype. They play the qanun, accordion, flute, guitar, the lute-like oud, bass, violin and a variety of percussion instruments. The rehearsals will culminate with a performance Saturday night at the Water Street studio, accompanied by belly dancing from the Desert Dream Dance Company.
“Learning to play is not just holding an instrument,” Lammam said. “It’s geography, math and science; it’s theory and improvisation — there are many similarities between Arabic music and jazz.”
Sarah Michael holds a master’s degree in composition from Mills College and has been studying the qanun under Lammam for 10 years. Her long apprenticeship shows in the flawless, exquisite performance of “Tamr Henna.”
“I chose the qanun because, unlike the accordion, I can see the mechanism of the instrument before me,” Michael said.
In contrast, she said, the accordion is something of a black box. When he is not teaching or performing, Lammam opens accordions and reconstructs them to play the microtonal scales used in Arabic and Near Eastern music.
“It is basically just retuning the instruments so they can play these notes that are not used in Western music,” he said.
Vicki Carter of Los Angeles has been practicing the accordion under Lammam for nearly four years.
“He is an amazing educator. His knowledge of Arabic music is second to none. He’s patient, but he also knows when to give you tough love,” Carter said.
In addition to teaching and his solo work, Lammam directs the Elias Lammam Trio, which includes his brother Antoine Lammam, a master percussionist, and Syrian violinist Fathi Aljarrah.
“Who can tell me what’s happening here?” Lammam asked his students Sunday. “He has not changed the scale, he has simply changed the influence of the beat. Now, let’s play.”
For more information about Arabic Music Week, visit desertdreamdance.com.