Sometimes a project comes along that compels you to drop everything. When British composer Bushra El-Turk received a flurry of calls from Dutch National Opera’s director Sophie de Lint and stage director Kenza Koutchoukali in October 2023 she wondered what the emergency was. Looking for ways to make a bridge to new audiences, Dutch National Opera had been in talks with Meervaart Theatre and Amsterdam’s Andalusian Orchestra about a possible collaboration.

Meanwhile, following the success of her 2021 show based on the Ghanaian myth of Anansi, Amsterdam-based Koutchoukali was wanting to make a piece that connected with her own roots in Algeria. The common meeting point for everyone was the music of Middle East megastar Oum Kalthoum. ‘But I didn’t want to do a regular biography,’ explains Kenza Koutchakali over Zoom from Amsterdam. ‘I thought it should be about what she represents and more importantly what she represents here and now and to do that I wanted to work with a composer who understands the importance of that culture, of being able to make a culture your own and understanding what it means for so many people but not feeling obliged to just copy and paste but being able to integrate it into your own life.’ 

‘Every fibre in my being said yes,’ says El-Turk, winner of this year’s Ivor Novello Award for Best Stage Work Composition for her opera Woman at Point Zero. Thanks to El-Turk’s Lebanese heritage – and her late father’s record collection – Oum Kalthoum is in her musical DNA. ‘So I had to do a bit of juggling and set aside some other projects. This one was a very strong calling.’  

Director Kenza Koutchoukali (left); composer Bushra El Turk

Oum Kalthoum’s funeral in 1975 gathered mourners in their millions, and she remains at the heart of Arabic classical music and in the hearts of the Middle Eastern and North African diaspora. Oum Kalthoum is ubiquitous, if you know where to listen. Koutchoukali explains: ‘She is behind every door, but you often don’t know when you look at someone, and there’s something magical about that, but also something very relevant.’ Oum Kalthoum’s music is the music her parents listened to, and the biggest influence on a great deal of the music that you will hear in Amsterdam today. Walk into any Moroccan supermarket or halal butcher’s and you will hear Kalthoum’s music, or music inspired by her. The new piece is all about finding a way for that music – and that audience – to cross the threshold of the European cultural establishment and into the repertoire.  

While Oum – A Son’s Quest for His Mother takes its musical inspiration from Oum Kalthoum’s song ‘Al Atlal/The Ruins’, librettist Wout van Tongeren looked to the play A Bomb in the Heart by Lebanese-Canadian Wajdi Mouawad which the playwright adapted from his own 2002 novel, Visage retrouvé. On his 14th birthday, Wahab, the novel’s protagonist, goes into the kitchen and sees a woman he doesn’t recognise. The woman is his mother, with whom he has lived all his life. This strange encounter sets in motion a journey to the cause of his psychological dislocation. ‘It’s a story that’s going forwards and backwards at the same time,’ says Koutchoukali. ‘As the protagonist tries to forge ahead to discover what’s happened between him and his mother he must travel back in time to come to terms with the trauma brought about by civil war.’ The climax of the piece comes as Wahab remembers witnessing the horrific event that meant his family had to flee their country.   

As Wahab travels back to find his mother, so the music finds its way back to the sound of Oum Kalthoum. El-Turk explains: ‘What I’m doing is that you’ve got the material of origin and then it’s taken into abstraction and that could be in so many different ways; it could be in the contours of the melodic lines that I distort and elongate and augment or diminish or it could be a sense of reharmonisation. It’s also about giving voice to the people on stage, to the musicians on stage, giving them a voice through improvisation. I’m working with creative musicians, so they bring themselves into the work. What’s interesting is what happens between the notes, rather than the notes themselves.’ 

Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum 

Working on this project with the Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra, El-Turk is looking – as always – for ways to avoid cultural silos, particularly the idea that music can be divided geographically. The piece will be scored for bowed and plucked strings, wind and percussion of various traditions. ’We have to remember,’ she explains. ‘The history of migration and influence that ended up with what we know now as the violin. Some of our musicians play the violin upside down and that’s called a rebab. The oud became what is now known as the lute and then the guitar, or some would argue that came from China, and we have the whole story of the Silk Road and that journey too.’  

The contemporary resonance of the story is obvious. The day El-Turk sat down to start writing was the day Israel fired rockets into Lebanon. Meanwhile, Amsterdam has recently seen a test of the new Dutch anti-immigration coalition and civic authorities in the eruption of violence around the Maccabi Tel Aviv vs Ajax football match, the media coverage of which did little to dispel the stereotype of angry young Arab men.  

‘I thought about the stereotypical representation in the media,’ says Koutchoukali, explaining the choice of casting for Oum – A Son’s Quest for his Mother. ’But then the next step was to think let’s go with the human being that’s suitable for the role.’ Wahab will be played by an actress, and three female singers – the three women in Wahab’s life – will represent a ‘guardian force’, or the presence of a universal mother, like Oum Kalthoum, a presence of warmth, strength and beauty. 

‘Because,’ says Koutchoukali. ‘The main character is yearning for beauty and that is an essential thing because he’s not just angry at the world, he’s yearning for the world.’ 

Oum – A Son’s Quest for His Mother by Kenza Koutchoukali and Bushra El-Turk is running at the Dutch National Opera & Ballet from 20-23 March. operaballet.nl