Paul macalindin on leading iraq's national youth orchestra and being lgbt in the middle east by National Youth Orchestra of Iraq PRESS

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Paul MacAlindin on leading Iraq’s National Youth Orchestra and being LGBT in the Middle East 15:00 4th November 2016 by Daniel Megarry Comments LIFE > REAL STORIES Paul MacAlindin / Alan Kamil leading the orchestra in Aix-en-Provence, France

Back in 2008, Scottish conductor Paul MacAlindin set out to become the maestro of Iraq’s first ever National Youth Orchestra. With the country attempting to heal wounds from seemingly never-ending conflicts, and with an outright rejection of music in any form, Paul also faced a personal obstacle of being gay in a world where being anything other than straight can lead to serious discrimination and abuse. Here, we talk to Paul about his new book, Upbeat, which tells the story of his journey, and find out what life is like for LGBT people living in Iraq… Was falling in love with music a gradual experience or was there a specific moment for you? I have in my head the precise moment when I, as a five-year-old, was being driven along the road by my dad in his car and we were listening to a piece of classical music on the radio and I said, ‘I want to do that’. After that, a piano was purchased, and music lessons were purchased, and that’s where it all began. At the age of seven, I said I wanted to do ballet and once again, ballet lessons were purchased, and I spent my whole childhood developing as an artist musically in terms of ballet and theatre. When did you first find out about the Iraq National Youth Orchestra? I was sitting in a pub in Edinburgh eating fish and chips and drinking a pint, flicking through a Glasgow Herald newspaper someone had left behind, and there was a headline reading ‘Iraqi Teen Seeks Maestro For Youth Orchestra’. There was this 17-year-old girl from Baghdad who wanted to set up a youth orchestra – baring in mind this was just as Iraq was beginning to try and come out of a war – and I instantly knew it was something I had to do.

Aya in a violin lesson, Beethovenfest, Bonn

Were there any obstacles when setting up the orchestra? We were all working in a hugely unpredictable environment, an environment in Iraq where there was no infrastructure to help us do what we were trying to achieve, and there was no cultural context. This meant that every day was a day of unpredictability, of trying lots of things out to see what worked. A lot of what we tried failed completely, so we had a very strong need to make mistakes and learn from them. We are also talking about young people playing classical in a country that’s extremely hostile towards music – not just classical, but all music. The players knew their lives were at risk, so they had to carry instruments around in big plastic bags to hide them. How was it working with the group? Did things get easier as time went by? They were all absolutely wonderful, complete characters with very strong personalities. Very individual, very funny, very extroverted, very moody, very emotional – everything. They were on an uphill struggle, even though they were mainly coming from quite privileged, middle class backgrounds. You’ve got to remember these are people who had grown up as children during a war in a middle eastern country that had very little interest in what they were doing. They were teaching themselves, so they had a huge amount of determination to play classical music and a huge amount of resilience. They were learning through YouTube tutorials, and they were teaching each other, and they were working through trial and error. Were the orchestra aware of your sexuality? None of us were there to talk about being gay, none of us were there to talk about sectarian divide or the state of Iraq – we were there to create a bootcamp for classical music where we only focused on the music 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and produced a concert at the end with the limited resource of time we had. With the amount of work we had to achieve in such a short time, there was no room In our heads to do anything else. Having said that, as more and more friend requests came into my Facebook account, I decided I wouldn’t censor myself or hold back on my personal posts to do with civil rights and LGBT issues going on in the world, I just thought, ‘I’m going to carry on being myself and leading my life as I did before’. There was never really any dialogue about that, we were just there to make music.

Chia, Daroon, Hersh and Hellgurd backstage in Erbil

Did any of the members express negativity towards your sexuality? Towards the end of my time with the orchestra, they opened up and talked about their perspectives on homosexuality to me, which were very liberal in comparison to what I expected. And one of the reasons for that is that many of them came out as atheists, they had seen what religion had done to their country and they’d completely given up on it. We’re talking about a very intelligent group of people who had access to the internet, and who had access to all sorts of resources, particularly those who could speak English. They could access social media and YouTube, for example, which meant they could talk quiet fluently and openly about sexuality, and about gay friends that they had, and about the state of their society. What’s the climate like for gay or bisexual individuals in Iraq? Being gay in Iraq is 100% taboo. It’s certainly not the only taboo in that society, but it is a big one, because sexuality is very much controlled by the family in that society, and of course by religion, and religion has a very strong influence even amongst the more liberal

parts of Iraq in terms of how your sexuality is manifested. Men and women are not allowed to touch each other before marriage, and so there’s a huge sexual tension. The players and translators have told me, ‘we have to get married, we have no other way of having sex’. Marriage is about procreating in a very, very conservative context. There’s no sexual liberation, really. Are there any communities or safe spaces for LGBT people to meet? Where I was, in Sulaymaniyah, which is one of the northern Kurdish towns of Iraq, there is no gay community – you just aren’t gay. And the whole business with men in Iraq is that, because there has never been a gay liberation movement in that country, men in particular are very physical with each other, they’re comfortable hugging, kissing and holding hands with each other. This doesn’t mean they’re gay, it just means that they have grown up in a heterosexual environment which allows them to be that physically close.

Du’aa, the orchestra’s principal oboe, side by side in a German school orchestra

Do you think there’s a misrepresentation of Iraqi culture in British media? Absolutely. Before I went to Iraq I, like everybody else in the UK, had been bombarded by reports of violence for years yet I still knew absolutely nothing about the people and culture of this over-reported country. Unfortunately, violence and bombing and political conflict, these sell news. The National Youth Orchestra eventually did sell news, but it was an uphill battle getting there. Through our first year we had a videographer with us who tried to get various outlets interested in our story, and he was told flat out by numerous major editors: ‘We’d love to do a story but it just won’t sell, it won’t fly because it’s not violent.’ What inspired you to share the orchestra’s journey with a book? In 2014 we attempted to make it to America and we failed. And that was our sixth year, so we had five successful years, and in year six, for a whole pile of complicated reasons, the whole orchestra collapsed. One of the most obvious reasons for this being that ISIS invaded Iraq. That shut down our internal logistics and we couldn’t continue. This left me utterly devastated, and I spent most of 2015 pulling my life back together again. The book, for me, was an obvious step. I felt I had to write it because the orchestra was such a huge chunk of my life, it’s a very complex thing that I put myself through and I wanted to make sense of it all. I also wanted to write an honest and open account about my experience in Iraq and the people I met while working there. The book felt like the only way for me to bring closure to that part of my life.

Upbeat: The Story Of The National Youth Orchestra Of Iraq is available to purchase on amazon.co.uk For more on LGBT life in the Middle East check out our feature in the latest issue of GT at gaytimesmagazine.com

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