Social History

Morning classes at Baghdad's Instituteof Musical Studies and [INAUDIBLE] studentsare eager to learn.But these peoples of traditional Iraqi maqam are a dying breed.The music once symbolized newly born Iraqafter the fall of the Ottoman Empire.And its history even dates back to the Abbasid era of the 8th

to 13th centuries.But what once was a pillar of cultural lifehas now fallen victim to modernityand the violence of recent years,when many musicians fled the war-torn countryafter the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.The number of people playing al-maqam is about 25%

of what it was before the events of 2003.And this is only down to the Institute support,without which there'd be almost no one still playing it.In 2008, UNESCO placed maqam on its Intangible Cultural

Heritage of Humanity list in ...