Traditionally modern: Digitizing Gulf music

Music rang in his ears one day when he was 30 in his native German town.

Thus began a life in search of music. The search ended in the study of endangered music and now he is into digitizing traditional Arab music.

Based in London, he visits the Gulf countries as part of his job. Now Rolf Killius, 50, British Library Gulf History Project curator of Oral and Musical Cultures is in Kuwait with his ears wide open.

He is into diwaniyas, music shops, libraries and cultural institutions and meets people who can enhance his search for the oral history and music of the Arabian Peninsula. His records will add to the British Library’s huge shellac record collection from the 1920s.

“The sea music has been amazing,” said a happy Rolf who plans to go to another music diwaniya session this weekend in downtown Kuwait.

The British Library, he said, is working with the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development and the Qatar National Library to digitize half a million pages of archival and manuscript material relating to the Gulf. Rolf has melodious stories of musicians and musical traditions.

In one such HMV era story, Salim Rashid, an Omani Oudh player goes to Yemen, Bombay and visits Kuwait in the 1950s and establishes a musical company. He goes back to Oman and becomes a court musician. Rolf met his youngest son and has digitized one of his 1920 records.

“From outside, the Gulf looks like just black and white. But it’s the Gulf music that showed me the different colors,” said Rolf. “The pearl divers had their own songs just like the sailors. I’m sure life would have been difficult without the rhythm and regularity of music,” he said.

Rolf also met with Ali Hussain Al-Youha, the Secretary General at the National Council of Art and Letters and the director of Kuwait National Library, Dr Hussain Al-Ansari, and had positive discussions on preserving the private collections of traditional Kuwaiti music and archiving documents and manuscripts.

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Traditionally modern: Digitizing Gulf music