Issa Boulos

Issa Boulos (born 1968) is a Palestinian-American Oud player, composer, lyricist, researcher and educator.

Born in Jerusalem into a Christian family known for both music and literary traditions, his talent became evident at an early age, and was singing Arab classical maqam repertoire by age 7.

He enrolled in the Institute of Fine Arts in Ramallah at age 13 and studied Oud with Abu Raw`hi 'Ibaidu.

Ud player, composer, ethnomusicologist, and teacher Issa Boulos was born in Jerusalem, in 1968.

Issa Boulos comes from a family of both musical and literary traditions and began to study voice at the age of 7.

At that early age, Issa showed extraordinary talent in singing the Arab classical maqam repertoire.

At the age of 13, he entered the Institute of Fine Arts in Ramallah to study the ‘ud with Abd al-Hamid ‘Ibaidu.

His musical activities started during the mid-1980s through acting as an arranger and performer with local folk and contemporary groups.

In the 1980s and 1990s Boulos broadened his artistic perspectives by splitting his time between Ramallah and Chicago.

In 1986, he released Al-‘Ashiq with Sareyyet Ramallah Troupe for Music and Dance, followed by Rasif Al-Madinah in 1989 with composer/singer Jamil Al-Sayih.

By the early 1990s, Issa was exploring Western music's principles of composition and orchestration, of which he incorporated various aspects into his own music.

Those early years witnessed the composition of over 200 instrumental and vocal pieces and one large-scale extended work entitled Kawkab Akhar (Another Planet).

Subsequently, he was appointed director of Birzeit University's musical group Sanabil.

Eventually, he settled in Chicago in 1994 and enrolled in the music composition program at Columbia College Chicago where he studied music composition with Gustavo Leone and Athanasios Zervas and followed that up in the graduate program at Roosevelt University with Robert Lombardo and Ilya Levinson.

He founded the Issa Boulos Ensemble in 1998 while continuing to perform his original contemporary compositions that ranged from maqam compositions, chamber, orchestral, to jazz.

After completing his Master's degree in 2000, Boulos spent one year in his hometown, where he continued to be an active composer, educator, and 'udist.

During that year, he took on the position of instructor of Western music theory and history, 'ud, chorus, ensemble, and theory of Arab music at the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, Ramallah[8].

It was during this time that he established the Little Composer program, an educational program that is delivered through the medium of music.

It is based on contemporary approaches used to encourage children to work as a team and as part of a larger group and write their own lyrics and set them to music.

Boulos's portfolio includes traditional Arab compositions and arrangements, jazz, and film and theater scores, notably those for Lysistrata 2000, Catharsis and the PBS documentary film The New Americans[19], and Nice Bombs[20].

In most of his orchestral compositions, Boulos incorporates the melodic material of maqam and some of the instruments associated with it such as the ‘ud, buzuq, baglama, qanun, nay, Turkish clarinet, santoor, and traditional percussion instruments.

It was upon these achievements that he was commissioned to write original orchestral works for various renowned orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra[21].

He is a recipient of many awards and fellowships including the 2006 and 2003 Artist Fellowship Award by the Illinois Arts Council, and the Norwegian Fund Award in 2006, the Palestinian Cultural Fund Award in 2006, the Arab Cultural Fund Award in 2010, and the A. J. Racy Fellowship for Ethnomusicological Music Studies in 2013.

He obtained his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Leiden University in 2020.