Filling arenas in France and attracting sizeable audiences around the world, Ibrahim Maalouf doesn’t make music that sounds like a typical trumpeter.
His custom-made instrument has four valves instead of the traditional three, allowing him to play quarter tones (the notes between notes). Born in Lebanon and raised in France, Mahloof credits his father for inventing the microtonal trumpet.
why i wrote this
Grammy-nominated Ibrahim Maalouf sees music as a way to show people more alike than differences and celebrate those similarities.
“For me, quarter tones are in all music,” Mahloof said in an interview with Zoom. “The reason his father made this trumpet was to play Arabic quarter tones, Arabic scales. But a good musician can use it for all kinds of music.”
On February 5th, Mr. Mahloof will attend the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. He and Beninese-American songwriter Angélique Kidjo were nominated for Best Global Music his album for their collaboration “Queen of Sheba”. Maalouf says he is guided by music philosophy. If his work helps people look beyond music boxes, perhaps they will look beyond other divisive labels.
“If you can discover what’s behind the external aspects, it means you have a philosophical understanding of what this music is about,” he says. “It means we belong in the same world, and we can think of a better future together.”
It is almost unheard of for a modern trumpeter to break out of the niche world of jazz clubs. But Ibrahim Maalouf, who has filled arenas in France and attracted sizable audiences around the world, doesn’t make music that sounds like a typical trumpeter.
His custom-made instrument has four valves instead of the traditional three, allowing him to play quarter tones (the notes between notes). Born in Lebanon and raised in France, Mahloof credits his father for inventing the microtonal trumpet.
“For me, quartertones are in everything from blues to Negro spirituals to Indian music to gypsy folk music,” Mahaloof said in an interview with Zoom. “The reason his father made this trumpet was to play Arabic quarter tones, Arabic scales. But a good musician can use it for all kinds of music.”
why i wrote this
Grammy-nominated Ibrahim Maalouf sees music as a way to show people more alike than differences and celebrate those similarities.
On February 5th, Mr. Mahloof will attend the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. He and Beninese-American songwriter Angélique Kidjo were nominated for Best Global Music his album for their collaboration “Queen of Sheba”. Maalouf’s other 2022 release is the hip-hop-influenced “Capacity To Love,” featuring guests such as De La Soul and rapper D Smoke. Two albums show the breadth of his style. He is guided by music philosophy. If his work helps people see beyond music boxes, perhaps they will also see beyond other dividing labels.
“He’s really open-minded,” Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær, a pioneer in the fusion of jazz and electronic music, said in an interview with Zoom. “He doesn’t really care about genre.”
Maalouf grew up listening to Arabic and classical music on his father’s trumpet and mother’s piano. One day when he was a boy, his mother came home with a record of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” that had won a supermarket contest.
“I played it and all of a sudden my body started moving and I started dancing,” he says. “I’ve never heard anything like this before.”
Falling in love with pop music, he picked up a synthesizer and woke his mother at 3am to play it. However, his main focus was studying the trumpet. It was a way to bond with his strict father. Mr. Mahloof won a classical music competition and studied at the prestigious Paris Conservatoire. “This was all because my father wanted me to be the best trumpeter, not because I wanted to,” he says. “I said, ‘It’s over. I’m done with this. Goodbye. My trumpet is out of my life.’
He briefly got into the idea of becoming an architect. But with a burgeoning desire to compose film soundtracks, Maalouf unboxed an instrument. He was filled with a renewed appreciation that his parents had always encouraged him to compose music, and the musician this time tried to impress others with his virtuosity. I decided not to. Still, it took him years to develop a more soulful way of playing. On stage, his happy eyes shine as bright as a trumpet.
“His playing has a very dynamic movement, from very, very soft to very hardcore,” says Molvair, who has worked with Maaloof. “He has his own voice. You can say, ‘Oh, that’s Ibrahim.’ His trumpet can sound like another instrument, like a flute or something from the Middle East. ”
In 2015, Mr. Mahloof harnessed that ability on an album of songs by Oum Kalthoum, an iconic Egyptian singer of the early 20th century. When he played “Kalthoum” at his Lincoln Center in New York, he was ostensibly his concert jazz. However, after the Egyptians in the audience began singing in their native language, Maaroof explained to the attendees that what they were hearing was a traditional Arabic melody.
“There was a person [saying], “Wait, what?”, he recalls. “What I love is when you prove to everyone listening that in reality we all share the exact same melody. We just dress differently.” .”
Shortly thereafter, Maaloof collaborated with Kidjo on a conceptual suite about the encounter between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. It was hard to write verbal music in Yoruba. Once the trumpeter caught the rhythm of the singer’s phrasing, a portal between African and Middle Eastern modalities opened.
“It sounds like a real mix, not a superposition,” he says.
The artist’s fifteenth album, Capacity To Love, opens with Charlie Chaplin’s monologue from the movie The Great Dictator, which mocks Adolf Hitler. “When you see what’s happening all over Europe, the far right, the far right becoming more and more popular, I wonder if people are really learning from the mistakes of the past,” says Maalhof. “Suddenly, Charlie Chaplin’s speech popped into my head.”
Too often, people judge others by the color of their skin, the way they dress, or their religious beliefs, Maaloof said. But he believes there’s a lesson in how “Capacity To Love” finds common ground between hip-hop, New Orleans R&B, Romani music, and his fusion of 1970s jazz.
“If you can discover what’s behind the external aspects, it means you have a philosophical understanding of what this music is about,” he says. “It means we belong in the same world, and we can think of a better future together.”