Maya Youssef Interview

Below is the transcript to my 2025 interview with Maya Youssef. The button link takes you to the podcast and video versions as well as the all-important show notes with links to Maya’s albums, teaching, concerts and other projects, linked episodes, and ways to support this series.

Maya Youssef:

(Music) Because it took guts to put it out there and trusted. And of course, when the results came in from my students and I started to see "Holy smokes, this works". Because, for instance, for understanding how to play taqsim, the alternative is really horrible. I have people who wasted 20 years, 30 years trying to crack how to create an authentic taqsim.

Leah Roseman:

Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman, and I'm delighted to welcome Maya Youssef, the world renowned qanun master and innovative British-Syrian educator. Maya shares with us how her frustrations with the traditional teaching of Arabic music led her to develop her unique system, for teaching musicians and dancers in a completely different way. She also shared her past personal crisis as a victim of domestic abuse and how she found the strength to get out of that danger, which is shockingly pervasive. In fact, she said that she chooses to be vulnerable in sharing this because we never know who was listening. You will be uplifted with clips from Maya's beautiful second album, Finding Home, which I encourage you to buy, and you'll find all Maya's projects linked in her website in the show notes of this podcast. She also talked to me about her exciting upcoming projects in 2026, including her book about learning and teaching Arabic music, her upcoming album and tours, and her wonderful collaborators. Maya spent the interview with her qanun, and you'll hear her demonstrate several times, including a beautiful improvisation on maqam Rast. Like all my episodes, you can either watch the video version on my YouTube or listen to the podcast on your preferred platform. The transcript is linked in the show notes along with several other episodes I think you'll love as well. Now, to Maya Youssef.

Hi Maya. Thanks so much for joining me here today.

Maya Youssef:

Thank you so much for having me there.

Leah Roseman:

I'm delighted to see that you're sitting at your kanun.

Maya Youssef:

Yes, of course. We are inseparable. I'll be incomplete without it.

Leah Roseman:

Well, there's a lot to talk about, but since you're sitting there, do you want to just tell us a little bit about the instrument? Because not everyone listening will be familiar with the kanun and those who love it will still want to.

Maya Youssef:

So the qanun is 78 stringed plucked zither that comes from the Arab world, although it does exist in Persia, in Persian music, in Turkish music. It is a Middle Eastern instrument, and the word qanun, of course we say qanun because you can't really pronounce the qof, but the word kanun means law, means principle. And it's sort of like the piano of the Arab world. And the way you play it is that you usually have these plectrums that you can see in my fingers if you're watching on social media or YouTube and you pluck with your index finger, but also you are really using your 10 fingers to arpeggiate (music) or strum (music). Yeah, it's creating different colors. So yeah, it's a beautiful, rich instrument that everybody should know about.

Leah Roseman:

And I understand the levers that control the microtones in the Turkish version of the qanun, there are more. Correct?

Maya Youssef:

That is correct. So on the side of the instrument, we have this metallic pieces and they control the tension of the string. So every time I pull the lever up, the pitch goes up, and every time it goes down, it goes down. So the Arabic qanun has usually four levers per note, which is the perfect translation of, so if we are thinking Al-Farabi, who's the most revered musicologist, theoretician in the history of Arabic music, he said the tone is four quarters. And in the Arabic kanun you have four levers to demonstrate that. So it's a perfect demonstration of that. For instance, that's an E, I'm going down, I'm pulling levers down. That's E how flat, which does not exist in Western music.(Music) E flat, quarter flat, flat. And they divide the tone into nine parts called komas, and therefore they have more levers. But in Arabic, you have four quarters, four slices of the cake if you wish.

Leah Roseman:

But do you also bend the notes without using the levers or always with them?

Maya Youssef:

Yeah, you totally bend so you can create vibrato. So basically by allowing the lever to flutter underneath the string without raising it all the way up, it's creating that butterfly. So yeah, the levers, the function of the lever. For me as a qanun player, for instance, I want to play something in maqam Nahawand. So I set the levers, and maqam means mode, by the way, or this modal system of Arabic music. And so I'll set the levers to be in that maqam. And then while I'm playing, the right hand is going to play the melody while the left hand is going to do these vibratos as well as switching levers up and down. And sometimes that happens pretty fast. For example (music), here is a vibrato,(Music) it just went left off.(Music) So you are constantly doing up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down and fluttering.

Leah Roseman:

Do you know Maya, in the history of the instrument, were there no levers when it was in a more primitive form?

Maya Youssef:

Exactly. So basically there were no levers. And I can't even imagine. It must have been a nightmare because they would have to know the song. So for instance, if I am playing a song, I need to know what are the switches, the modulations, because Arabic music is never static. And so I would tune one, say one octave on the original, maam, the higher octave on the other maqam, and then the lower octave on a different maqam. And also, of course, you would be able to control the tensions with the tip of your thumb. It's not the same as levers. The levers create as cleaner sound. So yeah, it was a nightmare. And then the Turks added the levers in early 20th century that basically made life so much easier, made it so it's very quick. It's just a flick of a second to switch.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah, I was thinking, I do try to feature instruments from different traditions on this series. So I've had the Koto, Ghuzang, hammered dulcimer, they're all related, correct?

Maya Youssef:

Well, yes, I mean all instruments. They're related somehow. We don't know really, because the historical evidence is very slim. I tried to go down that rabbit hole and have find nothing concrete, really just hints here and there. But yeah, I'd like to think of all music as being connected.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah, I was wondering about the Silk Road and the connection between perhaps Asia and the Middle East, but you don't know about that?

Maya Youssef:

It's very likely, but again, I don't know how much concrete evidence there is.

Leah Roseman:

Okay. Well, can we talk about young Maya? I understand you had beautiful listening sessions with your family almost every night.

Maya Youssef:

Yes. Yeah, we had a beautiful ritual every day. So for context, my family were a family of writers and artists, and my dad had more of the eclectic taste. So we would listen to anything from Miles Davis to Tchaikovsky to African choirs, jamming with Johann Sebastian Bach to Jan Garbarek, ECM records, lots of ECM records. And then also we would listen to the classics of the Arab world, the Um Kulthum, Hamad. And so yeah, every night we'll listen to something different, and sometimes we just, me and my little brother would dance. Sometimes we'd just draw or we just imagine scenes happening because of the music, and it gave me such a rich musical background to grow from, really.

Leah Roseman:

It's a very unusual thing, certainly nowadays for people to just sit and listen, let's say to a whole album to together in silence.

Maya Youssef:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't remember us being silent. Sometimes we'd listen, sometimes we would talk, or sometimes my dad was like, listen to this bit and what can you see? So it wasn't like a silent, and anyway, anyway, if you have ever been to an Arabic concert, usually people are not sat in silence. It's more of a western thing. It's not like that Arab audiences are disrespectful to the performer, but there are different rules of engagement in which you're supposed to kind of tell the performer that you are enjoying what you're hearing by exclaiming Allah, which is the equivaluent of Ole, for instance. And we were little, so we were not supposed to sit down in a very rigid way and listen. But yeah, sometimes we'd listen to bits in silence. Sometimes we'd just talk over or we would, but we would just imagine things or draw or write. And yeah, it was one of the most precious gifts I think my parents have ever given me.

Leah Roseman:

Thanks for making that distinction. But I guess what I meant is it was purposeful listening. It wasn't like, oh, we're doing something else, therefore there's musical background.

Maya Youssef:

No, it was like, this is listening time. Yeah.

Leah Roseman:

So your dad has some Hassan M. Youssef, he's a writer and screenwriter as well.

Maya Youssef:

Yes, that's correct. Yeah.

Leah Roseman:

So I was curious if in your creative life, if you're interested in film or TV or writing for,

Maya Youssef:

That's so funny, you're asking this. Last week I was, over the course of this week, I was reminded that I would love to at some point write music for a film, for a feature film or an art film or any form of film, because with my last album, I started writing tracks that are inspired by works of art, contemporary art, and film is not going to be different from that. Of course, it's going to be different, but I feel that I have the material. And this week alone, I was asked by three different people about this very thing. So here you are echoing this again. So the answer is yes, but of course it has to be the right film. And yeah, it's something that will happen one day when how, I have no idea, it will reveal itself.

Leah Roseman:

This is a clip of Silver Lining. (Music) Wonderful. And your mother is a translator?

Maya Youssef:

Yes, that's correct. Yeah. She translates literature from French to Arabic.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah, I was wondering because when you went to university in Damascus, you also studied English literature as well as music.

Maya Youssef:

Yeah, that is true. Yeah, I've seen one of my friends, I mean, I really never wanted a career in English literature. I loved it. But when I was in the Little Peoples Institute, which was called, I saw that one of the performers who was an amazing cellist, she injured her hand, her fingers. She could no longer play the cello. So I told myself that I would never want this to happen to me, so I'm just going to study another thing other than music. And of course, I ended up doing nothing but music at the end of the day. But it was a beautiful thing to study anyway. Yeah.

Leah Roseman:

Well, you've told the story many times, but not all my listeners will have heard how you started to play the qanun, especially as a girl, how unusual that was. So if you could share that.

Maya Youssef:

Sure. Of course. This is the classic origin story, here it goes. So I started learning music at about the age of six because I was just tapping and singing all the time. So my parents were like, let her do something with it. And also my dad was tone deaf completely. He still is. He can't just ask him to sing anything, even though he listens to, he's an avid listener, he won't sing, be able to sing anything to save his life. So he had a kind of dream to be a musician. So he was like, okay, maybe she'll become a musician. And for two years you had to study very rigid, like solfeggio, how to translate rhythm into movements, harmony. We had basically Russian teachers who would ask me to memorize and exercise, write it down 50 times, and then sing it pitch perfect the next class, which would be in two days. So it was this kind of discipline, which was amazing to be honest with you. Looking back, some people might think of it this, but for me, this kind of discipline did wonders. Anyway, so for two years I did that, and then there came the moment when you're supposed to pick one instrument, and the taxi driver turned, we were heading to the music institute on a hot summer's day in Damascus, sat at the backseat of the taxi, and I think this tune played (Music).

And I was like, this is the instrument that I want to play. And this was 8-year-old Maya, and he was like," oh, this is the qanun. You are a girl. This instrument is for men. Forget about it. "And he cracked a big belly laugh, which I still remember until today. I was so angry with him. I was like, I'll play it, you'll see. And then that night I walked into the music classroom while my mom was reading her book in the corridor. And then that very night they had the institute to walks in to announce the opening of a qanun class. And so I ran, signed up to astonishment of my mother, and because in the beginning we picked a violin, which I started with, and I was really not keen on violin. I know you're a violinist, so I love violin, but it wasn't for me. So we returned that violin. My parents returned that violin, and then we had a qanun that was five times my size on the kitchen table. I couldn't even reach the higher octaves. We needed multiple pillows. Yeah, this is how it started. It has been my friend ever since

Leah Roseman:

Your first qanun teacher was open to the fact that there was a girl in the class.

Maya Youssef:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there was no problem with that as long as the family supports you, particularly because Syria is a patriarchal society. If the father man of the house supports you, no problem. And I had amazing support from both my parents. So without that, I will never be, I get anywhere really.

Leah Roseman:

I'm curious about the rigor of this kind of conservatory style training. I'm curious about a couple of things. You mentioned studying harmony, but was it Western harmony? Because Arabic music isn't harmonically based.

Maya Youssef:

Yeah, it was all Western. And even though we were in Syria, Damascus, we were not taught Arabic music in the Kids Institute, for instance, even though I'm playing a classical Arabic instrument, not in the high conservatory of music in Damascus, it started, but it was very minimal, and I received my education from outside kind of personal efforts. So yeah, it's interesting that that was the case.

Leah Roseman:

I've spoken with several French musicians who grew up with this strict Conservatoire system saying that they felt like it could really hamper children's interest in music because there was this, you weren't able to play an instrument until you'd done all this solfège. I mean, it worked for you, but did you see classmates that maybe it was too much of a struggle?

Maya Youssef:

Oh yes, absolutely. Yeah. It was hardcore looking back. Yeah, it was. But I am a person who loves to be challenged. And look, it's not that it was always easy for me. I struggled. I had a lot of moments where, ah, this is too much too hard. I can't do it. I just want to give up. Particularly in the moment when I figured out that I can't improvise, for instance, which is in Arabic music, it was called taqsim, and it's considered to be the pinnacle of Arabic music. And so when I figured out I can't do it, and when I was told like, Hey, you're not a musician on this, if you can improvise, I was like, maybe I'm not cut out for this. And then of course later I discovered that the problem is not in me. So yeah, it wasn't all roses. But yeah, I'm grateful to all of it really.

Leah Roseman:

I want to dig into, I know the way you teach is different than the way you were taught, but how old were you when you were having a struggle where you felt like you couldn't improvise?

Maya Youssef:

Well, particularly when I entered the conservatory, the High Institute of Music and Dramatic Arts. And to be honest with you, I had been performing professionally immediately, basically just like I started doing concerts almost immediately. But things started to get serious the minute I entered the Conservatoire, because at the time, I was one of the founding members of an all woman band playing just traditional Arabic repertoire. And we became a hit before we even performed. Our first gig was on the in Amsterdam Concertgebouw. And so I was like, okay, you need to figure this out. And I was like the youngest. So I was acutely aware that, oh my gosh, I need to prove that I can do this. So yeah, this is when it got started. And yeah, it was a couple of years before I figured out what to do.

Leah Roseman:

Okay. So before we get into that, this sounds like there's a story here. How did you guys get this gig at the Concertgebouw before you'd even played a concert?

Maya Youssef:

It was interesting. So we were the brainchild of the head of the Conservatoire. His name was Nabil El Lau at the time, . And yeah, so he basically started talking about us and we just had basically a whole tour lined up, including we were going to different cities in Italy, in China, Greece, we did a lot of touring before. And all of that was booked up before we even performed our first gig. So yeah, it's not usually the case, is it. But yeah, I suppose people love the idea of, and all women, I suppose it plays into this orientalist fantasy of all women playing this exotic kind of music. I don't know what made it a hit I just don't know. But we were a hit before we even hit the stage.

Leah Roseman:

And the members of that band have other members immigrated or

Maya Youssef:

No, we were all native Syrians.

Leah Roseman:

I mean, since that time,

Maya Youssef:

Yeah, we are many of us scattered all over. Many of my friends, vast majority of my friends, they're all over the globe.

Leah Roseman:

Well, let's talk about how you have this wonderful system of teaching. I've got hints of it through some of your videos, and if you want to share how this came about maybe and your Lego.

Maya Youssef:

My Lego, yeah, sure. So it all started with my hunger to know how on earth to improvise. And because listen, I was already in the Kids Institute for seven years and then I've done two years of the music. So I already invested nine years of my life into this thing. So I was like, I better know what it is and how to do it. So I just did what people told me to do. Read books, of course, first of all, to be able to improvise, you need to understand maqam, which is the modal system of the Arab world.

I read the books, I didn't get answers. I actually created a little booklet and named the maqamat at the top. And then I got my dad to take me to every single big musician in Damascus. And I was like, teach me maqam. And I just got two, three words scribbled in each page, lots of empty space. Basically people told me to copy the taqsim, the improvisation, and just listen. Some people told me, just work on your technique, it will work. None of it worked. So because there is a huge amount of shame attached to not being able to, or do you even say the words, I have no clue how to play a taqsim. Nobody says it. So everybody pretends to be able to like, okay, yeah, okay, right. So I'm going to pretend that I do it. I can do it, which I did. But really inside I have no idea.

And later on now as a mentor, the world leading maqam and taqsim mentor, I talk to people every day who tell me the same thing. By the way, I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm doing it. But anyway, so there was a moment, a key moment in which I finally discovered that there's something fundamentally wrong with the way how I was approaching the whole thing. So I headed to a concert in Aleppo with an ensemble from the Conservatoire. And Aleppo, for context, it is a center of Arabic music. It's central to Arabic music. It has a group of people called Samia, which translates as those who listen. And those people are kind of very important, guardian of the tradition, gatekeepers of the tradition. Every single star of the golden age of Arabic music had to go through the right post passage of performing in front of them before they just become big stars.

And it, it's not isolated cases here that every single one of them. And there's so much literature and proof about it. And so I knew about the Samia and I was freaking out because I was supposed to play a taqsim in maqam Rast, which it's a very, is a very tarab conducive maqam. Tarab means you are in that heightened state of pleasure emotion, and it's kind of like the ultimate aim of Arabic music altogether. And so it's a very tarab conducive maqam. And if you do it right, then you create tarab, and if you do it wrong, then you're going to get a boohoo. And so I played the taqsim last and I got an applause and Allah, which is the ultimate season of approval. And then somebody comes to me after the concert, I was shaking, I was so scared, I was like, I don't know, I was still very, very young.

And he started to talk to me and he named every single maqam switch that I've done, and I assumed he was a conservatoire educated musician. I come to know that he is an illiterate gardener, and I was stupefied, but then I brushed it as an accident. I was like, nah, this doesn't mean anything. So I go outside with my friends to have a meal after the concert in a cafe, and in the radio there was Umm Kulthum playing and there was a guy sweeping the streets outside and he was singing with Umm Kulthum, pitch perfect while he was also naming every single maqam switch, which she was doing. (Arabic) which means that what a beautiful shift to this maqam, a beautiful shift to that maqam. And then I was like, okay, there's something I need to learn from, humble myself. Forget books, forget everything, unlearn I learn and just listen to how they're doing it.

So they're doing it the organic way. And then that was the opener to creating my methodology to teach maqam with a visual way with Lego, because I like to play, I like to see things visually, and I have a nerdy brain that really likes to figure out how things work. And so I've taken the organic method of this for me as the basis of my methodology and developed it even further to become the only complete system of the planet to teach Arabic music, from maqam all the way to taqsim. So yeah, it has been quite a journey, lots of blood and tears to get here, but now it helps hundreds people from all over the world without even needing to know how to read music or to know anything about music theory.

Leah Roseman:

So people buy your system and then there's modules they have access to.

Maya Youssef:

Yes, exactly. So there are different ways. There are home study courses, and there is a whole Academy for maqam and taqsim, in which I have musicians who play all sorts of instruments, singers, all the way from singer songwriter to composers to DJs, to kanun players. And we really go deep into this. But yeah, there are all kind of levels of access. And it's all there on my website.

Leah Roseman:

If you could, of course, your website will be linked and all that. If you could play a taqsim with maqam Rast, you just mentioned that this might be beautiful to hear.

Maya Youssef:

Sure. Just play you a little something (Music)

Leah Roseman:

Beautiful. Thanks so much. So I'm curious, Maya, obviously you've arrived at this mastery and this flow, this creative flow, but when you were kind of making it work, but you didn't feel like you could do it, were you imitating?

Maya Youssef:

Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. This is what they tell you to do, memorize, but just memorizing a whole thing, it's kind of like memorizing a mathematical formula without understanding it. It just won't work. And so in this methodology, there are things like, for instance, in this methodology, I say that each Macan is like a person. They have a specific language that they speak, and this language is basically, it is a little collection of something I called idiomatic phrases, short tic phrases that tells you that you're speaking the language of the, so those things have been used since we dunno how long everybody uses them, and I've just used a bunch of them, by the way. So these elements you just have to know by heart and then add your own twist to them. But the rest is all subject to your own creativity to how you would articulate. I would never ask anybody to be a copy of me because that would be boring. Who would want a copy of anyone? I would want everybody to be a unique expression of themselves. So yeah, we just break down what to look for, so the things that are fixed and the things that you can be creative so you can get to a place where you can just go, okay, I'm just going to flow with it. But yeah, it is a process to get out.

Leah Roseman:

Now you had learned to improvise, but you weren't really composing until you first created your first album. Syrian Dreams.

Maya Youssef:

Yes.

Leah Roseman:

And for people that haven't heard your albums yet, they should realize it's not traditional Arabic music.

Maya Youssef:

No, no. It's not traditional Arabic music.

Leah Roseman:

Hi, just a quick break from the episode. I’ve linked several episodes I’m sure you’ll love in the show notes for you, with Ali Omar El-Farouk, Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto, Kelly Thoma, Mohamed Assani and Olcay Bayir.You’ll also find the link to sign up for my newsletter, and the main reason for you to do so, aside from each weekly episode, is that you’ll get exclusive information about upcoming guests. Finally, please support this independent project, for which I do all the many jobs and which costs me quite a bit of money personally: you can share this episode with a friend, write a review, buy some podcast merch, or buy me a coffee on my Ko-fi page, either once or every month. All these links are in the show notes. Thanks! Now back to Maya Youssef.

Maya Youssef:

When I started writing, it's very interesting, if you remember from the beginning, all of these influences that I had as a child, they all came out surprise, surprise. And I always liked very unusual things. I was not your usual Syrian girl by any stretch of the imagination. Even in my behavior, I was a bit of a geek and a bit of a loner when I was little, a bit in my own world and bubble. And that definitely showed up when I started writing. And then when I started writing, everybody was like, oh, we hear echoes of jazz and Flamenco and Philip Glass. And I'm like, really? But then upon reflection, I was like, yeah, it makes sense. So yeah, it's not traditional at all. Look, if you are a Picasso, you would learn the classics before you can break the mold. So without that grounding in the classics of Arabic music, you can never get to a place where your contemporary stuff will make sense. It will sound kind of empty. Unrooted lacks depth basically. So in every tradition we say know the rules so you can break the rules, which is it's true to any form of art. And so from that rooted space, having been a native to Syria, having heard the music, having practiced the classics for years and years and years and probably past lifetimes, if you believe in that, then I am in a place where I can express my unique nerdy self. It's kind of like you're a tree. These are your roots that are ground you, but then with your branches you can go whatever and have fun.

Leah Roseman:

This is a clip of An Invitation to Daydream.(Music)

I was just thinking, we talked a little bit earlier how you knew a cellist who had an injury and you were thinking you needed a backup plan when you were a young university student.

Maya Youssef:

Yeah

Leah Roseman:

But I was wondering, I mean, I know at times you've practiced many, many hours a day and you're also mentoring other musicians. I guess with any instrument we can have injuries. Is it something you've had to struggle with at times or is it always feel good?

Maya Youssef:

No, I was lucky I never had an injury. Yeah, I'm blessed for that. So touch wood.

Leah Roseman:

And are you finding other kanun players run into trouble with their hands or arms sometimes?

Maya Youssef:

No, not really. I just mainly tell them to, you know kanun players, it's just to have the right posture because I see a lot of the wrong posture and mainly to relax. This is the most repeated advice. I was just teaching my Kanun Mastery before I came here, Academy, and I'm like, this is the most repeated advice. Relax, every time you go, you're not going to have a, because for instance, some of my students struggle with the specific technique, for instance, tremolo.(Music) And you just need to be in an utter state of relaxation, kind of like your hands are a bit like jelly to be able to make it so feathery, otherwise you're just going to strain and it's going to sound harsh. And so yeah, these two things, these are the most repeated pieces of advice that I keep on saying to my students.

Leah Roseman:

You mentioned posture. Do you mean people hunch over the kanun?

Maya Youssef:

Yeah, mainly with, this is more of a technical thing, it's just how you are. So how are your default position in which you plucking? I see - And yes, also this plays into posture as in, but it's mainly how you are laying your fingers on the kanun because you really need to think of it. I think of the kanun as an ice rink, and you need to be able to flow on it versus going like this, which is not very efficient. So for later when you want to play something fast. Yeah.

Leah Roseman:

Okay. Well, on your second album, Finding Home, which is so beautiful, I've listened to it so much, you do feature a wonderful Syrian British vocalist, Hamsa Mounif in one song In My Mother's Sweet Embrace. So is that a traditional song or is that yours?

Maya Youssef:

No, it's not a traditional song. It's mine, and my homeland and the Arab countries are going through so much. And at the time, I think, I don't remember what triggered it, but I was feeling this huge wave of sadness and nostalgia, and it was just craving basically motherly love. And when I was writing the album, I was in a state of intense prayer. This is how I write music. I just have been praying intensely to the mother of the universe, the creator, whatever you want to God, whatever you want to call it. So we experienced the love of the Divine Mother in the form of the earthly mother sometimes or through any other person or through being in nature. I was just in that state of longing for that. And so I sat on the kanun and I had a whisper in my ear that you will always be in my embrace. And then I was like, so I wrote the skeleton and I just felt that I just needed a woman's voice in that. And I wrote it for kanun string quartet and voice, and the voice is just saying (Arabic) which means, "oh mother", that's it.

So it is just a call to that mother to hold us in her sweet embrace. (Music)

Leah Roseman:

So I did want to to you about some of your wonderful collaborators. So you have Al MacSween on piano.

Maya Youssef:

Yes.

Leah Roseman:

So he has a jazz background.

Maya Youssef:

Oh, he's a chameleon. I don't think there's a music tradition out there that he didn't do. He's crazy, versatile person and musician, anything from jazz to experimental, to onic, to Indian classical, to flamenco, to God knows what. And every time I see him, I say, okay, well have you been playing? And he would go like, I've been playing with kora. The next day he's playing with a Chinese orchestra. Yeah. So he's just extremely versatile and amazing musician and amazing person.

Leah Roseman:

I mean, London is such a central city for music worldwide. Yeah,

Maya Youssef:

Absolutely.

Leah Roseman:

And you place Elizabeth Nott on percussion?

Maya Youssef:

Yes. Elizabeth is amazing. She's Venezuelan-British, so sometimes you just hear echoes of her Venezuelan influences, but she plays, she actually grew up in listening to, she was Her family, were one of the followers of Gurdijeff. As you know, Gurdijeff's music is very much influenced from Arabic music, so there are lots of Arabic instrumentation or they use, so she grew up listening to that. And her dad was a percussionist. In fact, we played her dad's hundred year old drum, which came from Syria in the album. But yeah, she plays an area of percussive instruments all the way from the small tambourello all the way to the mighty daf with these jingles that are intense like in Soul Fever. So yeah, she's incredible. And she's my oldest collaborator, really.

Leah Roseman:

So you mentioned Soul Fever, that's the one that, it was the British Museum, it was inspired from -

Maya Youssef:

Yeah, that's true.

Leah Roseman:

Do you want to speak to that project?

Maya Youssef:

Sure. So when I was writing Finding Home, I just had a feeling that I needed to make it a very collaborative project. So I just knocked doors on the doors of different organizations and I thought, Hey, do you want to collaborate? And one of them was the British Museum, and they happened to have that incredible exhibition called Reflections that had works of art from the Middle East. And they said, okay, it still hasn't opened up since lockdown. So I just go to a very empty British museum, and I have a private tour in that exhibition space to see if there's anything close to me. And the minute you walk in, there is this amazing figure who is in an intense state, and she's in black and white. And on her bust, there are names of very famous songs by the diva of Arabic music, Umm Kulthum, as well as names of composers that wrote songs to her, like Ahmad Rhami, Qasabji.

And I knew that I was drawn to her. So I got the curator to give me a PDF, and I printed it and I just hang it. And I was like, okay, lady, let's get going. So I tried to actually first use the melodies of the songs that are on her bust as an entry point to get into the composition, but I failed to ably do that. And then I was like, okay, I surrender, so I'm just going to let go of my conceptions. And I did a little prayer and I said, okay, I'm listening. Tell me whatever you want to tell me. And I went into meditation and within three minutes I heard word soul fever. And then I sat on the panel and within three hours the main thing came together. And of course then there is the process of arranging it. But it was very cool because we were recorded it in a late night in the museum, in the same exhibition space, and then we shared it with the artist in an online event with the actual artists who created that work of art. And what was amazing is that she shared that because there was not any lining notes or anything that gave me a bit of any context of what she has been going through or what we was thinking when she created this. But what was amazing is that she said that she was going through basically internal turmoil, trouble, dark night of the soul, so to speak.

And it was amazing that I heard what she was trying to tell me through her work of art. And so, yeah, it was a beautiful moment of synchronicity when the work of art and the music came together being in alignment with each other.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah, there's a form of writing. It's often poetry called Ekphrastic where people are inspired by visual art. I've read some of that, and it's very interesting when it's a direct kind of inspiration.

Maya Youssef:

Yeah, I need to check that out. Ekphrastic

Leah Roseman:

Ekphrastic, yes.

Maya Youssef:

Okay, I'll check out.

Leah Roseman:

This excerpt is from Soul Fever.(Music)

We had talked about some of your collaborators, Leo Abrahams' guitar and producer on your

Maya Youssef:

Yes, yes. He was my co-producer for really, really - Leo is amazing. Leo is amazing, amazing, amazing. He's amazing at listening. And he's another musical chameleon he played, of course, he worked with his mentor, he's Brian Eno and who's a very important music figure in the UK and internationally. But he recorded anything for guitar, for Adele to people from ECM. He just works with a vast array of musicians and artists. He's amazing at listening to what the artist wants to do and supports the artist in crystallizing that artistic vision. So true, true privilege to work with Leo. We became really good friends, and I'm very grateful to have worked with him. It's very important for me also to work with people who are lovely people. I can't work with people who are not nice. Music is a reflection of your inner state. And so yeah, all the team are amazing as people and as collaborators. So that's very, very important to me. But for this album, I actually called myself the producer, which I didn't have the guts to do for the first album really, for even Syrian Dreams. I should have been named as a producer because I've done 99% of the work. But then for the Finding Home I called myself, and I called Leo, my co-producer and bet there are thousands of women out there who do everything and they don't just give credit to themselves. So yeah, he was my co-producer and he was a joy to work with.

Leah Roseman:

Actually. I'm curious, in terms of the business side marketing your course, did you get specific advice or did you model it on other similar platforms?

Maya Youssef:

Yeah, I'm a student through and through. When I want to figure something out, I don't see any points in wasting years figuring it out. So I go and learn from people who did it. So I learn from mentors to help me with my business or my spirituality or, so yeah, I'm a true believer in investing in yourself to, because it's a wild journey, really. It's nuts, particularly when you're working for yourself and you spend a lot of time alone and you do a lot of your own decisions, and sometimes you just need that other person to go am insane, or is this the right thing to do? Or just to send board ideas. Yeah, absolutely.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah, it's wonderful that you've created basically what we call passive income because you put the time and energy into this wonderful kind of unique product that people can then access, but then the work is done for most of it, right?

Maya Youssef:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It has been quite a journey even because when it comes to Maqam, 99 point, 99% of the guidance out there is a combination of being incorrect, a combination of being too surface level, too cliche, and also on top of that, all the creators of that world are men. So I was like, okay. There was a low voice in my head saying, okay, no old me is going to come with this revolutionary method that is going to change the world. And just you needed, of course, with support from my family because it took guts to put it out there and trusted. And of course, when the results came in from my students, I started to see, holy smokes, this works. Because for instance, for understanding how to play taqsim, the alternative is really horrible. I have people who wasted 20 years, 30 years trying to crack how to create an authentic taqsim, and they still haven't. And no amount of additional amount of time will give them the ability to be able to do it. So it's not about your technique, it's not about how hard you try, it's not about how many decades you are trying to put in. Without the method, you're just going to continue scrambling in the dark. And so when I started seeing the results from my students achieving what would be called impossible and literally months, that gave me a lot of motivation to go, okay, you need to put it out there because people need it, really. And I love this tradition. I'm a carrier of this tradition. It's my responsibility to make it accessible.

Leah Roseman:

This clip is From My Homeland.(Music)

So you've had some really difficult times in your life. Of course, you had to escape the war in Syria, and you have shared publicly that you're also a survivor of domestic abuse. Would you feel comfortable speaking to that a little bit?

Maya Youssef:

Yeah, sure. But for clarity, I really didn't go out Syria because of the war. I just went out of Syria because my ex at the time had a job in Dubai, so I followed him. So I graduated and I followed him, and I left in 2007. So I left Syria long before the war started, and then when I came to the UK, I came, I had honor to receive an award called An Exceptional Talent, which had an endorsement from Arts Council England. So it was incredible, this incredible thing that they just, okay, you come to the UK, you are an exceptional talent. But at the time, they gave me no guidance whatsoever. And because at the same time I was getting through abuse, it was kind of a wild journey to figure out the game of being a musician in a new country while dealing with the war in Syria, while dealing with violence, while being a mom to a young child.

It just felt like the whole world was kind of toppled upside down. And the only two things that made sense were my son and my music, but I don't mind talking about it because I believe I am happily married. I'm in a place of grace. And it is very important that people talk about it because there's very big amount of unnecessary shame. For instance, I see refugees as heroes. I see survivors of domestic violence as heroes or heroes. These are people who survived the hardest of the heart, and then they emerge on the other side. So they need to share their stories and be proud versus like, oh, I experienced domestic abuse. No, they need to proudly share that I've been through this and look at me now because you don't know who's listening. For me, I'll tell you one thing, when I shared, two years later when I shared I have been public about the experience of domestic abuse, and many years later I receive a message from a dear musician friend, incredible musician, who said, look, I'm going through the same thing that you have been going through, and I'm scared to death to talk to you about it, but here I am, you inspired me to do it.

And now she is on the other side of the story, and she's sharing her vulnerability and her newfound strength and beautiful blossoming of her and stepping into her feminine power because of that. So you never know who's listening. So yeah, I feel perfectly okay talking about it because I don't know who's listening. And so whoever's listening talk about it, it's insane. The amount of people that experienced domestic abuse, it's insane, blows my mind. And the more we normalize it, the more we empower people to say, no, this is not okay. And to step into safety and to empower themselves to go towards the better future that they deserve.

Leah Roseman:

Thank you so much for that. To get out of it, were you inspired by someone you knew who had been through that?

Maya Youssef:

No, I just had no choice. I had a child, I had no choice. And I felt like because the abuse happened at the same time when the Syrian war was going on. So that thing tips you off your center anyway, but coupled, I felt like there was a war back home and a war at home. And that's why it just felt like complete pressure cooker situation. Yeah. So there was a voice that rang in my head. They told me that you either do something or you're going to perish. And let me tell you, it was easier to perish. If I'm honest, it is very easy to give up. But looking at the face of my son, I can't. So he inspired me to fight, and somehow he knew. Crazily children - now, when I was trying to practice, trying to pick to have some focus to practice, because I had some concerts at the time, he was tiny. I don't know three, 4-year-old. And after every piece I would practice, he'd bow at me and he would say, thank you, mommy. Tiny, tiny person. I would look at him like, okay, I better keep continue after consistently after every single piece. Thank you, mommy. Deep bowing. I'm like, okay. He knows, somebody speaking to him to tell me this. I don't know. I'm just going to continue even though I have no idea how the next five minutes isn't going to unfold.

But yeah, there is always grace. There's always grace. And I have been surrounded by so much grace, and still I am.

Leah Roseman:

And you did do graduate school in England when you immigrated in musicology?

Maya Youssef:

Yes. I got a scholarship to study ethno-musicology at SOAS, which was incredible. SOAS is quite a phenomenal, it's quite a bubble of the world in which it's like a bubble of people who want to change the world. And there is this, I don't know, when you step into the campus, there is this sense there are all sorts of people studying these amazing, crazy weird things. And the music was so amazing and there was a very, very strong community there. They even supported me even through the abuse situation. But from the perspective of learning, it was a very, very enriching experience, kind of opening up to a new way of exploring music and sound.

Leah Roseman:

Do you have a story from that time of something that really stayed with you? A learning experience or collaboration?

Maya Youssef:

I mean, yeah. So for instance, my first composition, I've done a piece for kanun and gamelan, and I actually played the gamelan, the thing, and we had this amazing Gamelan at SOAS. I don't know if any SOASians, listening, you'll know what I'm talking about. And kanun and gamelan, go figure. It was a very weird piece. I have no idea where it is. I wish I could find it, but yeah, it's allowed this kind of fantastically weird me to come out of the closet.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah. One of your influences that came up was Aziza Mustafa Zadeh.

Maya Youssef:

Oh, yes. I love her. I love her. I love her. Yeah. Yeah. She changed my life.

Leah Roseman:

So have you met with her? Have you worked with her or just listening?

Maya Youssef:

No, no, just listening. I have been, there was a period of time in which I was obsessed. I don't listen to her as much, but she was in my ear all day every day. And I believe it was a combination of how free and expressive and flowy. She's a pianist composer and crazy amazing vocalist. She's Azeri, and how she was fusing all these worlds between the classical music, the jazz, the Azeri tradition in such originality, in such freedom, in such virtuosity. She's impossibly virtuosic that I just, yeah, she is the diva to me.

Leah Roseman:

Well, of course, I went and listened to her. When I read it, it was the name I didn't know. You should reach out to her. You should collaborate. That would be so much fun.

Maya Youssef:

Yeah. Maybe I should,

Leah Roseman:

There's several tracks on Finding Home inspired by nature. I was wondering, Walk with Me. You have two versions, one with strings.

Maya Youssef:

Yes.

Leah Roseman:

Do you want to speak to any of that?

Maya Youssef:

Yeah, sure. I mean, Walk With Me. First of all, I wrote it during lockdown. It was a commission by BBC Radio 3. And it was funny, they literally asked me two days before it was supposed to be broadcasted. And I wrote it within I think like an hour. And everybody was bewildered that I shared something that I've written one hour one day ago. But again, it's a track that was written before. I write, I pray and meditate. I ask whatever wants to come through to come through for the healing, the upliftment of whoever's listening. And I do that, by the way, before I teach or before I speak, before I do anything. It's the same thing to me. It's all the continuum of the same thing. So I did my ritual, and then in meditation, I just saw lockdown was a bit of a time of dread a bit. But I was comforted by this beautiful image of all humanity walking together towards a better, more compassionate future to everyone on the earth. And so there's this very strong sense of hope and optimism. And so yeah, I did two versions of it, the String Quartet, because I wanted kind of a collective experience of walking together. And I've done a version of it with Leo, actually, who has done some amazing ambient guitar on it that feels a bit more spacious. So yeah,

Leah Roseman:

This excerpt is from Walk With Me featuring Leo. Abrahams (Music) Yeah, it's really beautiful. And I love when artists include different versions of something on an album. It's very, very beautiful thing. So do you have an upcoming book, Maya?

Maya Youssef:

Yes. It's a book about maqam, because it has to be written and it has to be written by me. So yeah, because everybody who comes to me, I talk to people from all over the world every day, who wants to learn, maqam. And the immediate question is, what book do you recommend? And my answer is, none. None. Because as a person who's read every single maqam book on the planet, again, it's either the misleading information or you get two, three sentences about the maqam and goodbye. You're supposed to figure it out on your own or scales, those little something on a scale, and that's it.

But there's so much richness to maqam, you can write a book about each of the nine main maqamat that are used in Arabic music today. And so yeah, because I've created this methodology, because the material is essentially done, I'm going to release a chapter this October, and then I'm going to do a Kickstarter to launch it in February, 2026. And it will be released Autumn next year. So yeah, I committed to it. God help me. It'll be fun. But yeah, it has to be done, and I'm excited to serve whoever's interested in Arabic music with this project.

Leah Roseman:

Wonderful. And do you have an upcoming album or new compositions in the works?

Maya Youssef:

Yes. Yes. So I actually wrote two half albums, so now I just need to decide which one I should move forward with. But I'm going to go back to writing as a person who has many strands of work I chose this year. Okay. This is the year in which I'm going to focus on my teaching strand. And then in October I'm going to go into the writing incubator, which I'm looking forward to. And yeah, same thing. It'll be released 2026. So whether you're interested in the music or the teaching strand, there is a lot coming up and it's all exciting.

Leah Roseman:

Yeah, it's interesting. I often ask people how they balance their creative life. So it sounds like you're very well, you're organized about it.

Maya Youssef:

Yes. It's not always the case. I became like this before. It was a bit of the more you grow up, the more you understand what it takes to build a certain thing. And it's impossible for everybody to do everything at the same time. There are seasons for things like, for instance, when I released the album, it's going to be my touring season. It's going to be my PR season, it's going to be my season to show up and interviews and shows and stages to talk about it. It's not going to be my teaching season. And I love the multiplicity of the world. And I just love the fact that I teach, for instance, three different kinds of students. I teach kanun players, everything that comes with kanun. I teach Arabic music lovers who play all sorts of instruments, how to learn of taqsim. And recently I started working with dancers, belly dancers and artists to understand Arabic music so they can more authentically interpret the music that they dance to. And I just love, I find that very exciting. To some people. This might sound exhausting, but to me, this sounds really fun because I can just do all of these things. But yeah, to me at least, it has to be cyclical so I can do a good job at doing whatever I'm doing.

Leah Roseman:

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Really appreciate it.

Maya Youssef:

So much fun to talk to you Leah. Thank you so much for having me.

Leah Roseman:

I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at LeahRoseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. All the links are in the show notes. The podcast theme music was written by Nick Kold. Have a wonderful week.