Biography Al Basim

Born in Baghdad, Basim created his first music group in 1970 at the Al Adhamiah Youth Centre. The passion for the guitar came to him on hearing a very famous Irakian guitarist Ilham al-Madfai, who was one of the musicians from Paul McCartney’s studio.

In 1978 he left for the USA where he produced his first LP, titled “Revival”, the following year, under the name of Al-Basim. This progressive rock disc has become extremely rare and is still praised by critics (“The Fact” magazine mentions the LP as being one of the Top 20 discs in the world for some progressive fans, and it has also been awarded four stars in Hans Pokora’s book “ 3001 Record Collector Dreams”!).

Back in France, in 1997 he got to know the Gypsy King family who in turn encouraged Basim to take up music again. He played alongside them for some time, whilst continuing to give his own private concerts, especially at “the Jam” in Montpellier.

In 2006, 27 years after his first opus “Revival”, he eventually decided to produce a new album adapting Middle Eastern poems and songs in which one can hear resonances inspired by Flamenco and echos from his first LP. Basim’s music is truly universal.

Controversy:

Revival was originally sold as being an item from Iran with some bad propagandistic sell-better story how Al Basim was sentenced to death after having recorded with Jews for this LP. The whole story seems to be fake, a terrible hoax. The item by the way is from Iraq, not from Iran.

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