The Musical Journey of Baghdad-born Saadoun Al-Bayati
The Musical Journey of Baghdad-born Saadoun Al-Bayati 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 t...