Louis Kawam: Jamming with Arab American Musicians Old & Young
Louis Kawam: Jamming with Arab American Musicians Old & Young Some of the best musicians ever, never front their own band. They are not among the orchestra or ensemble leaders, and if we’re fortunate enough, they have left behind a piece of their creative genius in a credited or uncredited recording. Perhaps their names escaped mention in the liner notes, or their surname shows up on a label suggesting they composed, wrote, or performed a piece, if for nothing else than pure posterity. Most of this is true for oudist Louis Kawam. Born 20 July 1913 in New York City, Elias Bashir Kawam entered the world one of three, and the only male child of his parents Bashir Abdallah Kawam and Assna Kawam. Immigrants from Aleppo and Damascus, Greater Syria in 1905, the couple crossed the ocean departing from Marseilles on board a shipped named the Roma and settled on the main west-east corridor of New York’s Little Syria two – Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. There at 178 Atlantic Avenue , in the