The Musical Journey of Baghdad-born Saadoun Al-Bayati
The Musical Journey of Baghdad-born Saadoun Al-Bayati
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| Young Saadoun Al-Bayati drumming in Chicago. c.1961. Courtesy of Barbara Al-Bayati. |
The majority of Arabic-speaking American musicians we’ve highlighted on Midwest Mahjar trace their ancestry to the former Ottoman-controlled Greater Syria. Today, Bilad el-Sham is known as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine/Israel. As we’ve discussed in previous blog posts, nearly all Arabic-speaking immigrants to the United States hailed from Greater Syria, some came from Egypt, and even fewer came from other parts of the Ottoman Empire. History in and of the United States focuses very little attention on immigrants from Ottoman-controlled or British-mandated Mesopotamia which by 1920, emerged from World War I as the State of Iraq, and then by 1932, became the Kingdom of Iraq. Those emigrating during this period identified as Jewish, Christians (Assyrian and Armenian), and some as Sunni Muslims. Significant immigration to the US from Iraq did not begin until after Iraq declared itself a republic in 1958.
Born in Baghdad, Iraq, on 1 January 1934, to a Sufi mother named Aisha Abd AlSittar and a multilingual (Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Turkman, and Kurdish) Sunni, but non-Sufi paralegal father named Ahmad Al-Bayati, Saadoun Al-Bayati seemed destined to career that encompassed Iraqi expressive culture. Al-Bayati credited his mother and maternal uncle, Shayk Jasim Abd al-Sittar, with his introduction to Na’imiyya Sufism and the practice of entering mediative states induced by Sama and Dhikr - prolonged listening, Koranic chanting, and percussive instrument playing to develop and reach spiritual oneness with God. As he reached early adolescences, in the mid-1940s, his exceptional ability to recite and annunciate Koranic verse encouraged his substitution for the muezzin during call to prayer at the local masjid in the al-Fadl area of Baghdad.
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| Saadoun Al-Bayatyi with Lillian Gish, A Passage to India. Chicago Tribune January 27, 1963. Courtesy of Newspapers.com |
Saadoun came to the United States in late 1956 on a student Visa to take English language classes with the intention of studying to be a refrigeration engineer. While performing at an Arab student party, the eminent Iraqi film director, Ibrahim Jalal, and stage director Bella Itkin, spotted Saadoun and encouraged him to alter his plans and enroll at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Goodman Theater. Jalal was working on a Master of Arts degree at the Goodman himself. The Kenneth Sawyer Goodman Theater operated as School of Drama for the Art Institute from 1925 to 1976 before becoming a part of DePaul University in 1977. John Reich supervised productions and served as artistic director at the Goodman since 1957 and continued the theater’s policy of “mounting its plays with at least one star, several other professionals and the most advanced students in the school.” It featured six plays per season or academic year and from the 1920s through the 1970s and functioned as Chicago’s leading theater. During the 1962-1963 season, Al-Bayati played the role of Dr. Aziz in Goodman’s production of the Santha Rama Rau play A Passage to India, based on the 1924 E.M. Forster novel. The Goodman’s production starred former silent film actor Lillian Gish, a favorite of D.W. Griffith and of Birth of a Nation fame). Later that season, Saadoun made his first television appearance on WTTW Channel 11’s Totem Club, an educational children’s program. The Totem Club aired the Goodman’s production of “Tobias and the Angels” with Saadoun in the role of the Patriarch. During the 1963-1964 season, he assumed the role of the younger son Schweizerkas, in 1964-1965, run of the anti-war play Mother Courage and Her Sons. Next, he appeared as the first murderer in Macbeth, which featured Goodman School of Drama alumnus and film and theater legend Sam Wanamaker. Al-Bayati closed out the 1964-1965 season in the role of Count Alex Vronsky in Anna Karenina.
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| Cast list from 1962-1963 from original Goodman Theater playbill, A Passage to India. |
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| Eugenie Leontovich, Dolores Sutton, and Saadoun Al-Bayati, May 9, 1965. Chicago Tribune. Courtesy of Newspapers.com |
Attending classes at the Art Institute, Saadoun met University of Michigan senior Barbara J. Kuhn, whom he wed 30 December 1960 in Waukegan, Illinois. Barbara would graduate from the University of Michigan with a degree in Near Eastern Studies the following spring and eventually earned a master degree in Islamic Studies from the University of Chicago. The young couple moved to Southern California to help Saadoun pursue a career on screen and stage and the two settled in Santa Monica. The television series Dundee and the Culhane aired between September 7 and December 13, 1967 on CBS. The western-legal drama attempted to merge two genres and starred John Mills, Dundee, and Sean Garrison, Culhane, as frontier lawyers who defend a plethora of guest clients. In the episode that Saadoun played Rafael, Dundee defended a client accused of killing his own son. Also on CBS, Saadoun had a bit role on the Jonathan Winters Show (1967-1969) where he appeared in a sketch routine as a Cuban cigar manufacturer stongly resembling Fidel Castro. On stage, at the Ahmanson Theater, Saadoun joined the cast of the Center Theater Group’s “Captain Brassbound’s Conversion” in 1968 as Osman.
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| Barbara J. Kuhn Al-Bayati & Saadoun A. Al-Bayati, c. 1965. Courtesy of Barbara Al-Bayati. |
Beyond acting Saadoun and Barbara had their first child, a daughter, Samar Al-Bayati in February 1969 and Saadoun launched his singing career in the early 1970s. Much of his repertoire consisted of Egyptian, Syrian, and Lebanese songs. The Laksmi, Too, The Sultan, and Lou Shelby’s Fez standout as the clubs and restaurants where Al-Bayati played in Anaheim and Los Angeles. In fact, legend has it that Saadoun was playing at The Fez the night Barbara went into labor and Lou Shelby went to the hospital until Saadoun's set was complete. Then in 1973, Saadoun released an eight song LP titled The Songs of Iraq on his own Samar Enterprises label. Barbara served as Executive Producer on the album and Saadoun supplied the vocals, oud and drum playing. Music represented a pivot but not a full shift in focus. Following the release of his album, Saadoun performed at the historic Hollywood Palladium on Sunset. Hossney El-Zaim began to accompany Saadoun on gigs at the Sultan as the Middle East night club scene extended into the 1970s and peaked in popularity. Other musician Saadoun played with included George Khayat, Maroun Saba, Adel Sirhan, Jim Knight, and Nasser Kaddo (brother of Odette Kaddo). Barbara and Saadoun had a second child, Nadim, in April 1977. Three months later, Saadoun became a naturalized citizen of the United States. All the while, Barbara tirelessly worked to earn a Master of Library Science and Master of Arts in Anthropology from UCLA, during which time she founded and directed a departmental library focused on American Indian Studies.
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| Saadoun Al-Bayati, "Gypsy I," https://youtu.be/Tjb5BAjDZIA |
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| US Naturalization card for Saadoun Ahmad Al-Bayati. Courtesy of Ancestry.com |
The Arab American music scene on the West Coast had almost a completely different set of star musicians than the East Coast or Midwest. Louis Shelby, Danny Thomas, Chick Kahla, Najeeb Khoury, Maroun Saba, Leo Saad, Elias Abourjaily, and Saadoun Al-Bayati emerged as the kings of the Pacific Coast. Communities here had their own hafla, maharajan, and recording circuit that rivaled the Atlantic Coast. To be sure, Mustafa D. Siam’s Arab Tunes was to the western United States, what Anthony M. Abraham’s Alkawakeb was to the eastern United States.
Nineteen-eighty signaled a period of rapid change for the Al-Bayati family as they moved some 400 miles away to Los Angeles County to Mariposa County, and then back to Orange County, California. According to an interview with Barbara and Saadoun, they moved their family to Merced, California in January 1980 because they “visited friends who lived here over the past five years, enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere, clear air, and thought it would be a good place to raise our children, to allow to grow up free from peer pressures to go astray with hard drugs and such.” Neighbors literally offered them a warm welcome when brought over firewood for the newly relocated family. Of course, some older residents expressed subtle forms of prejudice and resistance to the Al-Bayati’s presence, but by-in-large things went well. Nevertheless, despite such pleasantries, the Bayati’s moved back to Southern California within two years. The Al-Bayatis bought and opened Armen’s Restaurant, also known as Saadoun’s Restaurant at 2136 Placentia Avenue in Costa Mesa. The Arab American Association at the University of California Santa Barbara invited Al-Bayati and James Knight of the Aman Folk Ensemble during the campus Arab Culture Week in April 1984.
On occasion, Saadoun's restaurant hosted special fundraiser dinners as they did for Afghani Refugees fleeing Soviet invasion in 1986. Most importantly, the return to Southern California meant opportunities to collaborate with friends like UCLA ethnomusicology professor Ali Jihad Racy. Sometimes Samar and Nadim worked in the families business.
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| Advertisement for Armen's recently purchased by Saadoun. August 20, 1982. Los Angeles Times. Courtesy of Newspapers.com |
By the time the Al-Bayatis opened their restaurant, Samar Al-Bayati turned twelve and she began to accompany her father on stage drumming a derbecke, durbukau, or a kassura. Nadim, too, took up drumming and appeared alongside Saadoun and Samar over the years. Sadly, Samar remembered in one interview that their family restaurant faced repeated bomb threats any time people in the United States were mad at the Middle East. Another time bikers tried to terrorize her mother with threats to tear up the place. From the stage, Samar and Saadoun immediately stopped and with a show of solidarity from regular customers and allies drove the bikers out and away without further incident. Meanwhile, back in the country of Saadoun’s birth, Iraq and Iran (both armed by the United States) fought from 1980 to 1988, Iraq continued to not acknowledge Kuwait’s independence, and the United States declared war on Iraq when Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait. In the end, the United States-led coalition of 35 countries prevented the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait. Samar attended and graduated Estancia High School in Costa Mesa in the late 1980s and Nadim opted to ditch high school for college courses in the 1990s.
The contested election of George H.W. Bush, the 9-11 attacks, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq under the false pretense that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction ushered in the 2000s. None of the nineteen 9-11 hijackers came from Iraq although this was offered by the Bush administration as a secondary reason for the U.S. invasion. A less-known facet of the Second Gulf War or War on Iraq included the privatization of government and military support and infrastructure rebuilding outsourced to private U.S. military contracts to companies like Kellog-Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, Consolidated Analysis Corporation Inc., and Blackwater. Directors and producers of the 2006 film Iraq for Sale: The Profiteers of War, used two songs, "Gypsy II" and "Brown Skinned Girl", from Saadoun’s 1973 LP as part of the soundtrack for their documentary. Over thirty-years after its release, Saadoun’s Songs of Iraq remained one of the most noted recordings of traditional Iraqi music available in the United States.
Life in his 70s did not slow Saadoun down an iota. When the newly formed Salaam Ensemble performed in March 2007 in Ojai, Saadoun joined them as their special musical guest. On 29 March 2008, Al-Bayati played at the Levantine Cultural Center’s al Mutanabbi Street Memorial ceremony in Newport Beach. Summer Al-Bayati, Nadim Al-Bayati, and Jim Knight accompanied him. Saadoun headlined at the Arab Cultural Festival in Golden Gate Park on 11 October 2009. He returned two years later when The Arab Cultural Center of San Francisco hosted its Yerba Buena Gardens Festival on 3 September 2011 with special guests Saadoun, Samar, and Nadim Al-Bayati. The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s “Iraq Beyond Conflict Workshop” featured performances by Saadoun and Nadim Al-Bayati along with Vince Delgado on November 12, 2011. April 2012, the Saadoun Al-Bayati Trio, including Samar Al-Bayayti, Vince Delgado, and Yassinr Krikeche Tetouani, backed legendary folk singer Joan Baez at the Citizens Reach Out charity event at Freight & Salvage music venue in Berkeley, California. Berkley, too, was now the home of Egyptian Nubian composer and our player Hamza El-Din ,with whom Saadoun had played and collaborated in the early 1970s.
Saadoun Al-Bayati died 25 July 2013 in Costa Mesa, California. He was 79. Surviving him were his wife, Barbara, their children Samar and Nadim Al-Bayati, and a host of other relatives and friends. Today, Samar is a Unitarian Universalist minister. Nadim is a family patriarch. Barbara worked and retired from a Student Affairs position at University of California Irvine.
Special thanks to Barbara Al-Bayati.
Richard M. Breaux
© Midwest Mahjar
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