Paul MacAlindin's Blog, page 2

Doing business with us Scots: The VPO Effect

Don't get me wrong. I love face-to-face interaction, and prefer it above all other forms. But do we really need to create naff systems and procedures to coerce each other into real conversations?

As an intercultural trainer, I have been fascinated by my return to Scotland after years in Germany. As I quickly learnt, very little here works the way it's supposed to. I first came across this from the Department of Work and Pensions, who sent out two letters addressed to me on the same day, which directly contradicted each other.

Over the coming months, as I settled down, I began to formulate a model based on my observations of what was going on around me.

Scotland is a high context culture. This means that what is said and done has meaning imposed upon it by surrounding circumstances. In a low context culture, such as Germany, no means no and yes means yes. When the deal is done, it's done. When it's not delivered, you complain, vehemently. Germans do complaining very well.

Let me give you the example I've just experienced walking into my mobile phone provider shop in Glasgow.

I wanted to purchase a top-up voucher. They have an in-store machine for customers to do this effectively and efficiently, leaving staff to concentrate on customers with more complex needs.

So, I went up and inserted the required amount into the self-service machine, to get back a voucher to input into my phone. But the voucher didn't come out. It was stuck.

So, a member of staff came over, apologised that this often happens, and tried extracting the voucher from the slot with his pen. He quickly gave up, pulled the front of the machine open, which he pointed out should have been locked, and handed me the voucher.

So, let's look at this. A transaction that was designed for zero interaction with a sales person, fails, and I get:
my voucheran unnecessary (because the machine should have worked) friendly interaction with a sales personan insight into the poor quality of manufacture of his machine, and the shop's poor attitude towards the machine's security.So, I sat down with my voucher in the shop and activated the company's app on my smartphone for loading the voucher code. I clicked the tab for topping up, and it returned an error message saying my phone couldn't access the page, whilst I was sitting in the shop with full internet access. So, I switched to activating the code by telephone access. Picking up on my frustration, the  same member of staff came back over and I explained the issue with the app, which he tried with the same result. After apologising now for the app, he then completed the activation for me using his preferred method of the phone.
I get: my code activateda second unnecessary (because the app should have worked) friendly interaction with a sales personan insight into the poor quality of the app created by my provider, designed to take money from me, the customer.This is Scotland. Nothing really works the way it's supposed to. But why?
THE VPO EFFECT
My theory is that, on a deep unconscious level, we in Scotland just don't like doing things without a good blether. Our call centres, complaint centres, civil services, businesses, are rotating around the unconscious incompetence we build into our systems, to force subsequent face-to-face interactions.
The VPO effect stands for The Village Post Office. Imagine something you posted has gone missing. You go into your village post office to report this. You are rightfully angry because you have added to the mysterious tonnes of missing mail that evaporate from our three dimensional universe every day. Maybe what you sent was of sentimental, monetary or important business value. Can you be angry at the lady behind the post office counter? 
Of course not. She may be a fully paid representative of the Royal Mail, but its not her fault. It's "nobody's". It's "the system". 
So we both stay on a friendly level, she knowing that The Royal Mail can blissfully carry on being incompetent and that you won't get angry at her because of the great Scottish cry of defeat, "och, you mustn't feel like thaaat...." You know that being anything less than charming and circumspect could damage the longer term relationship you need in order for both of you to sustain the built-in incompetence of "the system", the challenging of which would be futile at best, and a one-way ticket to social ostracism at worst. Your patience is tested as she hands you a form to fill out. You know where this is leading. Resigned, you leave, waiting for the next system failure to bring you to the next charming interaction with a professional representative of the service you threw your money away on. You'll probably do what I've done, and subsequently purchase "track and sign" at vastly more expense, designed to bring more people into a process that should have worked just fine in the first place.
I can think of countless other examples in the past year where a simple transaction became a lengthy series of blethers ending in hopelessness, resignation and if I was lucky, gratitude for the outcome I should have got in the first place. 
Incompetence is profitable. It's culturally sanctioned self-sabotage. Bringing Scots face to face, or phone to phone with each other, keeps everyone emotionally in check, in touch with our collective small town culture, and reminds us all of the rules that keep our economy mediocre, propped up with defeatist humour and ticking along.

Gay Times interview with me on NYOI

Back in 2008, Scottish conductor Paul MacAlindin set out to become the maestro of Iraq’s first ever National Youth Orchestra.

With the country attempting to heal wounds from seemingly never-ending conflicts, and with an outright rejection of music in any form, Paul also faced a personal obstacle of being gay in a world where being anything other than straight can lead to serious discrimination and abuse.Here, we talk to Paul about his new book, Upbeat, which tells the story of his journey, and find out what life is like for LGBT people living in Iraq…Was falling in love with music a gradual experience or was there a specific moment for you? I have in my head the precise moment when I, as a five-year-old, was being driven along the road by my dad in his car and we were listening to a piece of classical music on the radio and I said, ‘I want to do that’. After that, a piano was purchased, and music lessons were purchased, and that’s where it all began. At the age of seven, I said I wanted to do ballet and once again, ballet lessons were purchased, and I spent my whole childhood developing as an artist musically in terms of ballet and theatre.When did you first find out about the Iraq National Youth Orchestra? I was sitting in a pub in Edinburgh eating fish and chips and drinking a pint, flicking through a Glasgow Herald newspaper someone had left behind, and there was a headline reading ‘Iraqi Teen Seeks Maestro For Youth Orchestra’. There was this 17-year-old girl from Baghdad who wanted to set up a youth orchestra – baring in mind this was just as Iraq was beginning to try and come out of a war – and I instantly knew it was something I had to do.Were there any obstacles when setting up the orchestra? We were all working in a hugely unpredictable environment, an environment in Iraq where there was no infrastructure to help us do what we were trying to achieve, and there was no cultural context. This meant that every day was a day of unpredictability, of trying lots of things out to see what worked. A lot of what we tried failed completely, so we had a very strong need to make mistakes and learn from them. We are also talking about young people playing classical in a country that’s extremely hostile towards music – not just classical, but all music. The players knew their lives were at risk, so they had to carry instruments around in big plastic bags to hide them.How was it working with the group? Did things get easier as time went by? They were all absolutely wonderful, complete characters with very strong personalities. Very individual, very funny, very extroverted, very moody, very emotional – everything. They were on an uphill struggle, even though they were mainly coming from quite privileged, middle class backgrounds. You’ve got to remember these are people who had grown up as children during a war in a middle eastern country that had very little interest in what they were doing. They were teaching themselves, so they had a huge amount of determination to play classical music and a huge amount of resilience. They were learning through YouTube tutorials, and they were teaching each other, and they were working through trial and error.Were the orchestra aware of your sexuality? None of us were there to talk about being gay, none of us were there to talk about sectarian divide or the state of Iraq – we were there to create a bootcamp for classical music where we only focused on the music 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and produced a concert at the end with the limited resource of time we had. With the amount of work we had to achieve in such a short time, there was no room In our heads to do anything else.Having said that, as more and more friend requests came into my Facebook account, I decided I wouldn’t censor myself or hold back on my personal posts to do with civil rights and LGBT issues going on in the world, I just thought, ‘I’m going to carry on being myself and leading my life as I did before’. There was never really any dialogue about that, we were just there to make music.Did any of the members express negativity towards your sexuality? Towards the end of my time with the orchestra, they opened up and talked about their perspectives on homosexuality to me, which were very liberal in comparison to what I expected. And one of the reasons for that is that many of them came out as atheists, they had seen what religion had done to their country and they’d completely given up on it. We’re talking about a very intelligent group of people who had access to the internet, and who had access to all sorts of resources, particularly those who could speak English. They could access social media and YouTube, for example, which meant they could talk quiet fluently and openly about sexuality, and about gay friends that they had, and about the state of their society.What’s the climate like for gay or bisexual individuals in Iraq? Being gay in Iraq is 100% taboo. It’s certainly not the only taboo in that society, but it is a big one, because sexuality is very much controlled by the family in that society, and of course by religion, and religion has a very strong influence even amongst the more liberal parts of Iraq in terms of how your sexuality is manifested. Men and women are not allowed to touch each other before marriage, and so there’s a huge sexual tension. The players and translators have told me, ‘we have to get married, we have no other way of having sex’. Marriage is about procreating in a very, very conservative context. There’s no sexual liberation, really.Are there any communities or safe spaces for LGBT people to meet? Where I was, in Sulaymaniyah, which is one of the northern Kurdish towns of Iraq, there is no gay community – you just aren’t gay. And the whole business with men in Iraq is that, because there has never been a gay liberation movement in that country, men in particular are very physical with each other, they’re comfortable hugging, kissing and holding hands with each other. This doesn’t mean they’re gay, it just means that they have grown up in a heterosexual environment which allows them to be that physically close.Do you think there’s a misrepresentation of Iraqi culture in British media? Absolutely. Before I went to Iraq I, like everybody else in the UK, had been bombarded by reports of violence for years yet I still knew absolutely nothing about the people and culture of this over-reported country. Unfortunately, violence and bombing and political conflict, these sell news. The National Youth Orchestra eventually did sell news, but it was an uphill battle getting there. Through our first year we had a videographer with us who tried to get various outlets interested in our story, and he was told flat out by numerous major editors: ‘We’d love to do a story but it just won’t sell, it won’t fly because it’s not violent.’What inspired you to share the orchestra’s journey with a book? In 2014 we attempted to make it to America and we failed. And that was our sixth year, so we had five successful years, and in year six, for a whole pile of complicated reasons, the whole orchestra collapsed. One of the most obvious reasons for this being that ISIS invaded Iraq. That shut down our internal logistics and we couldn’t continue. This left me utterly devastated, and I spent most of 2015 pulling my life back together again. The book, for me, was an obvious step. I felt I had to write it because the orchestra was such a huge chunk of my life, it’s a very complex thing that I put myself through and I wanted to make sense of it all. I also wanted to write an honest and open account about my experience in Iraq and the people I met while working there. The book felt like the only way for me to bring closure to that part of my life.UPBEAT is avialable on amazon .comthe original article appears here: http://www.gaytimes.co.uk/life/52504/paul-macalindin-on-leading-iraqs-national-youth-orchestra-and-being-lgbt-in-the-middle-east/

How British Musicians will be shafted by BREXIT

The fallout from the BREXIT referendum is, as yet, unclear. But what is clear is that the UK is fracturing, recession is likely and the EU sees BREXIT, quite rightly, as an act of political aggression.
Here are a few of my very simple predictions for British musicians with UK passports based on this.
MOBILITY: Freedom of movement and trade are two pillars of the EU. If the UK is punished  for leaving in this way, then these privileges are likely to be taken away from us in negotiations. Like Switzerland and Norway, the UK could pay a large fee, not dissimilar to what it already pays in membership, to get them back.  Young musicians in particular, coming out of college today, need as much freedom of movement and trade as possible in an already tightening sector.  This point will hit UK ensembles and orchestras, whose EU market is essential to their survival. Many full time musicians can no longer survive by staying in the UK alone. Mobility is key to all musicians making a living, and any reduction of it will have negative consequences.COMMUNICATION: Our terrible record of learning other peoples’ languages is an embarrassment. Ever since we joined, the EU has put up with British arrogance on this point, letting us talk only English because of its predominance in global politics and business. However, the underlying attitude we have is twofold, and must be surmounted by musicians wishing to be acceptable professionals abroad. a) It’s simply not true that the world speaks English, and even if our desk or session partner does, their English comes from different cultural associations and experiences from ours, a point that we often forget, assuming that speaking English means “thinking” English. Any barrier to how other cultures think and communicate is bad for musicians and business in general.  b) We Brits have an island mentality, something few of us ever become conscious of until we live and work abroad. This itself has two damaging effects. First, we believe we’re special – we’re not. Second, we believe that because we won two world wars, we don’t really need the EU in the way the losers do – we’re wrong. Globalisation isn’t going away, and the need to live, work and communicate abroad is already an essential business skill for many musicians who wish to survive the 21st century.COLLABORATION: Britain’s status is suddenly becoming less important. Already, EU funded transnational culture and research programmes are leaving Britain out of the mix for future funding, because we’re no longer likely to be eligible. International co-operation across all industries is crucial to effective competition, where the UK has benefitted greatly from participating in EU research, development and cross-cultural collaboration. How does this affect musicians? Britain was, up until now, the most sought after project partner for EU culture projects. It won’t be any more. Those Euros, contacts and learning outcomes will go elsewhere. It is true that many UK projects collaborate with countries outside the EU, but musicians are already at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to visa costs. If the EU implements a directive to create an online visa waiver system for third countries similar to the US, which is being discussed, then we'll have yet another barrier, and will still need to pay for a work permit to go to other countries like France, Germany, Sweden etc, who fund live music much more generously than the UK, and will collaborate more readily with more accessible partners.EDUCATION: living and working abroad, as fostered by the EU Erasmus programme for example, is a vital growth experience for music students in creating new cultural and technical learning, along with new contacts. Raising barriers and reducing communication between international students is the opposite of effective learning and career building. Add to that the fact that much college education in the EU is currently free for British students, compared to the cost in England and Wales.
Whatever its reasons, BREXIT massively signals a lack of trust in other European countries, and an attack on core values felt deeply by many other Europeans. In my opinion, it comes out of three  questions of cultural identity crisis: Who am I? Who am I not? Who am I compared to this other person? Whether discussing Polish and Romanian workers who UK employers prefer to our local workforce, because they’re better value for money, or non-UK citizens on trial for an orchestra job in Britain, the uncertainty bred by BREXIT will have lasting damage on British musicians, and the very culture that Brexiteers claim to be protecting.
Musicians are experts in culture, and if we're not, then we should become so fast, because there's a lot of healing, reconciliation and new cultural territory to create as the politics shift around us.
I would welcome any comments from supporters of BREXIT regarding how musicians in Britain will benefit. I'm all for journalistic balance.

Order UPBEAT: the Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, on Amazon

60 Seconds with Paul MacAlindin

Hampstead Arts Festival interviews me for the upcoming event: Culture in Conflict

Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in music?
I've always been a deeply intrinsically motivated musician, which protects me well against inevitable blocks from other conductors.
As a conductor, what are the most important skills that you use on a daily basis?
I think and feel with my body, so I move best through life that way too. I try to balance thought and motion.
How exactly do you see your role as a conductor?  Inspiring the players or singers? Conveying the vision of the composer?
My role is to get the absolute best from players: inspiring, serving, coaching but always with my own clear vision for the music.
What advice would you offer to young conductors and musicians about to embark on their professional careers?
As in all arts, if you want to be a conductor, do something else. But if you absolutely HAVE to conduct, then follow the calling & seek help.
In your experience, how important is music as a force for positive social change?
Brilliantly simple, music works on many levels, reaching into us powerfully, wordlessly for us to communicate, unite and share our humanity.
Can you tell us about any cultural differences you have observed between orchestras in the West compared to the Middle East?
The West has great instruments, teachers and pedagogy whilst Iraqi musicians battle extreme heat, sabotage, isolation and corruption.
What is the greatest challenge you have had to overcome in your life thus far?
Keeping going in the conducting biz is tough, because it's so mafia. You need prestige, privilege and powerful parents.
What made you decide to write a book about your experiences with the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq?  After all, writing is a very different skill set to conducting?
I wrote UPBEAT as a catharsis, to share what I'd learnt from Iraq. Writing was easy as Dad was a journalist. We have a way with words.
You're a Scottish man who has lived in Germany for many years.  What has been your view on 'Brexit' and the leadership 'musical chairs' of the political parties?
I've cultivated my European identity over the years, so I find Brexit painful. If our leaders couldn't handle that crisis, what can they do?
You've had an incredibly varied career to date.  Which actor would you like to play you in a story of your life?
I adore Jake Gyllenhaal! He does those hunted loners in bizarre situations, which is how I often saw myself with the Iraq project.
Lastly, what is the next chapter for you and the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq?
Iraq is a failed state and the orchestra is over. We can only learn from our time together and move on. I want to get conducting in the UK.
Click here for the original interview

Iraq's national youth orchestra: an improbable story on a heroic scale

Philip Clark of the Spectator reviews UPBEAT
Now that even candidates for President of the United States can rise up from the undead dregs of reality television, it comes as no surprise to read that the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq owes its origins to a conclave of television execs. In 2008, Channel 4 and the independent production company Raw TV took upon themselves to campaign for a youth orchestra in Iraq, focusing their programme around the story of Zuhal Sultan, a 17-year-old Iraqi pianist. Later that same year, the Scottish conductor Paul MacAlindin was savouring a fish-and-chip supper in his favourite Edinburgh pub when his eye caught a headline in the Glasgow Herald about the same project — ‘Search for UK maestro to help create an orchestra in Iraq’ — and he thought: ‘I know how to do this.’What follows, roilling off the pages with the Noakesian enthusiasm of a Blue Peter presenter, is one of the most unlikely, and genuinely heroic, stories you’re ever likely to read, involving Haydn’s Symphony No. 99 and instruments that fail to stay in tune as temperatures push the mercury. Orchestras are loose coalitions of 100-odd people and are, by nature, prone to rancorous internal politicking. But add to the equation that Iraq had little existing classical music infrastructure, and that an Iraqi youth orchestra would necessarily need to draw on both the Arab and Kurdish population and, as MacAlindin explains, the whole scheme bordered on the implausible.Revealing intricacies of everyday detail that might make even Karl Ove Knausgaard blush, MacAlindin reproduces emails and verbatim conversations with a revolving cast of British and Iraqi officials from whom he needs guidance — and hard cash, lots of it. A gentle line in self-deprecating humour emerges as our resourceful maestro infiltrates various business delegations and conferences, cheerfully waving copies of his promotional DVD in the general direction of corporate suits. Lord Archer —looking ‘old and worn’ — puts in a cameo appearance at the annual dinner of the British Iraqi Friendship Society in Kensington; Nigel Lawson waddles by at an event in Westminster with ‘unconvincing waves of henna hair to grab a glass of wine’.But with the batons finally on the ground in Iraq, the comedy abruptly stops. MacAlindin must now face up to the alarming reality that those young Iraqi musicians who auditioned online by video bring problems that simply don’t apply in the West. Deficiencies in rudimentary musicianship — ungainly tuning, failing to count in time, a flabby sense of ensemble — can be fixed, albeit gradually, by MacAlindin and his crack team of instrumental tutors. But psychological scars caused by the Saddam regime and the grim reality of living through war and its chaotic aftermath need cotton-glove handling.At times the prose is overcooked. Talk of ‘rebuilding Iraq’s decimated culture one note at a time’ and ‘bringing the whole of Iraq together’ read like needless hyper-bole when such a rich story is already there for the telling. Tensions between Arab and Kurdish musicians inevitably bubble over. Thinking through the differences between the Arabic and Kurdish music he programmes alongside Beethoven, Haydn and Mendelssohn, a friend of MacAlindin’s speculates that while Kurds remain in mourning for the genocide of their people, Arabs are still in the midst of experiencing terrorism. Ranya, the orchestra’s Arab French-horn player, begins from a position of considering her Kurdish colleagues ‘plain stupid’. But by the end of the two-week course she has been completely won over. ‘The truth remained inescapable,’ MacAlindin concludes, ‘that without competent players from the whole of Iraq, this youth orchestra could not exist.’MacAlindin calls himself ‘Music Director of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq’ in the book but, googling his name, I notice he now refers to himself as its ‘former music director’. Following three summer courses in Iraq and visits to Germany and the UK, a keenly anticipated tour of the US floundered as Isil took hold of Iraq, making any practical arrangements impossible.The book ends with a justifiably proud account of the orchestra’s achievements, with merit badges all round to those alumni who now work as musicians outside Iraq — but also with a doleful lament for the perilous state of the country. The orchestra had taken over MacAlindin’s life, and in that sense he was happy to step aside. Will a reborn orchestra ever be achievable in the future? Possibly, although all concerned will need to remain ferociously upbeat.This article first appeared 18.8.2016http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/iraqs-national-youth-orchestra-an-improbable-story-on-a-heroic-scale/

Playing for Time - interview with Iraq Solidarity News

The following interview was conducted by Hussein Al-alak, editor of Iraq Solidarity News (Al-Thawra), with Paul MacAlindin, who is the author of the new book  Upbeat, the Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq . 





What is your name and can you please tell us about your book UPBEAT, the Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq? 
I’m Paul MacAlindin, and I was Musical Director of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq from 2008-14. UPBEAT: the Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, explains how young Iraqis from across the country came together every year to make music. We explain how our resilience, determination and joy defeated all the obstacles in our way to become the most successful cultural diplomat Iraq has ever seen. 
All to often, we hear about stories of war from inside of Iraq. How does your book stand out from others which have been written about Iraq? 

UPBEAT is a story of Iraqis working together successfully. We show what’s capable when given a chance to flourish in a safe, fair and properly supported environment, free of corruption. 
Through the orchestra, we ended years of isolation from good music teaching and the international music scene for young musicians. It’s also my personal story of how we shared the hope, commitment and mutual respect necessary to keep the orchestra alive. How did we put aside our differences and work hard together to show the world educated, talented and passionate Iraqis? 
In this very risky, complex project, did we also make many mistakes? Of course, we did, but we also learnt, adapted and moved on, showing ourselves to be the wonderful personalities we all were. 
As you’re writing is based on your experiences with Iraqi young people in the NYOI, do you see UPBEAT as a starting point, where the young people themselves could later continue telling the NYOI’s history? 
YES; UPBEAT is mostly written from my perspective, but there are as many great stories about the orchestra as there are players in it. There’s Waleed, our first flute, who founded the Baba Goorgoor Chamber Orchestra. 
There’s Tuq’a who plays cello in the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra and teaches music to IDPs in Baghdad. And there’s Hellgurd, our regional representative from Ranya, who is now studying childhood music education in Germany. 
Given the current catastrophe facing Iraq’s people, there needs to be a whole generation of positive, contemporary narrative to begin their healing. The orchestra provides some of that, not only from our past successes in Iraq and abroad, but also from the players’ deep understanding that anything is possible if you work hard enough, preparing together for the future. 
As the media has been saturated with a narrative about Iraq, where everyone has been defined by religion or ethnic sect, does Upbeat provide an alternative insight into the lives of young Iraqi’s, that is sometimes ignored? 
An alternative to what? There isn’t even a mainstream narrative about who Iraqis are. They’re simply ignored as shadows in their own story. It’s as if the media can’t face showing the real human pain of normal, decent people. Presenting news as a video game is easier for the West. In that sense, Iraqis are dehumanized. 
The players of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, particularly the ones in the book, present a highly articulate, insightful and clear-headed view of their country’s problems. They’re also the lucky ones coming from good families, who managed to do something with music. 
However, there are millions of young casualties of hope and human potential across Iraq, and the fault of this has to be laid at the door of Iraqi society, which crushes its own young and allows foreign influences to batter it by being selfish and small-minded. 
As the NYOI was forced to close due to the rise of ISIS, do you see the possibility of the orchestra being able to re-form in a post IS Iraq, to play a positive role in the reconstruction of Iraq and if it were to be possible, what would be needed for this to occur? 
For there to be a national youth orchestra again, Iraq must first decide what it is, and who it will include. We’re not even close to that point yet. However, we have the German Friends of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq and the orchestra’s own NGO in Baghdad. 
They must do the hundreds of hours of hard work, take the unreasonably high risks and solve the insurmountable problems to get the orchestra back on its feet again. On a broader level, there really isn’t any point in trying to create a national youth orchestra unless there’s a fair and pedagogically sound music education system in Iraq supporting it. 
Two or three weeks of good lessons a year doesn’t create anything like the support young musicians need to grow and flourish. This means that Iraqi musicians must get internationally recognized qualifications to play and teach music properly. It means that talent must be measured objectively, to allow the hard workers and the true talents to shine through. 
And it means that music, along with all the arts, needs to be supported in the home and throughout society as the long, slow reconstruction of Iraqi identity rebuilds itself. Show me someone who can tell me what it means to be an Iraqi. What are your values? What are you passionate about? Who are your heroes, role models? 
What are the positive sayings you build your culture upon? This is more than just a flag, maq’am and masgouf. Who is included in this definition, who is not, and why not? You cannot care about, or defend a country that has no common identity. This is what we tried to achieve in the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq. 
With so many young people in Iraq now facing both trauma and displacement due to violence, do you see Upbeat and the experiences of the NYOI, as having a role in supporting young people now and giving Iraq’s young people something to aspire to? 
When we were active, between 2009 and 2013, we built up the most successful YouTube and Facebook accounts of any youth orchestra in the world, largely due to Iraqis in Iraq who followed us as a positive symbol of hope and achievement in the name of Iraq. 
UPBEAT is an honest, warts-and-all account of how we worked together to build a better future for young musicians in Iraq. Many Iraqis reading the book will understand exactly what was going on, even if I don’t explain it directly. Readers in the West will be shocked at the reality of being an Iraqi musician between 2009 and 2014. 
If the orchestra gets back on its feet again, the book can act as a guide for what’s possible when you give talented young people the smallest chance to flourish, instead of just survive. The young players of the orchestra are the most resilient, loveable young musicians I have ever had the honour of working with. 
Time will tell how their knowledge from the project, and my story of their growth, will shape Iraq in future.
ORDER UPBEAT: the Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq

http://totallyhussein.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/Paul-Macalindin-Upbeat-Iraq.html

True Grit

UPBEAT amazon.com     UPBEAT amazon.co.uk

Sitting on a bed in an Iraqi hotel room in 2009, waiting for my first radio interview about the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, I picked up the phone to a BBC Radio Scotland reporter who informed me he’d barely woken up and was nursing his first cup of coffee.  Just to spite me for getting him into the studio so early, his opening salvo went:
“So, most people would think this is a pretty strange career move, wouldn’t they?” I burst out laughing and told him how honoured I was to initiate a brand new national youth orchestra in a climate of radical innovation, or something like that. Behind this, I was thinking; “Career? What career?”
Aged 40, having conducted everything with a pulse, the notion that a calculated career strategy had somehow landed me in Iraq seemed utterly absurd. The truth is, I’d seen an article in a paper calling for a conductor to start an Iraqi youth orchestra, and my gut said; “I know how to do this”. Straight off, I phoned the sagacious Paul Parkinson at British Council London, and the rest, as they say, is in my book UPBEAT: the Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, coming out 11thAugust, or next year in German, if you prefer.
What makes a conductor risk his life for a youth orchestra? What makes her get past the first 10-15 years without giving up? Environment and training definitely play some role, but what all of us in the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq had in abundance was grit. Grit, or resilience, has been hotly researched, from the Military to identify which cadets can see through their training, to Sistema programs such as Liverpool’s “In Harmony”, measuring for improved life skills. I would postulate that grit is the key not just to a conductor’s career, but also to a tumultuous and exciting new century of classical music. We’re crying out for tough, resourceful artistic leaders like the ones we might see coming out of Liverpool or Iraq. If it were ever enough to be well connected and educated, it certainly isn’t now.
It’s one thing for me to fly to Iraq, create a youth orchestra then fly back to Europe, but these young Iraqi musicians, mostly between 18 and 25, had learnt how to play Beethoven on a violin, clarinet or horn in a Middle Eastern war zone, alone at home without teachers, by mimicking YouTube or coaching each other. Terrorists, militia, invasion forces and even religion subjected their families to daily threat, and still do; not everyone survived.  Coming together for the first time each year, we couldn’t predict the acute problems we’d face, or which languages to use, Kurdish, Arabic or English, but still everyone had a choice; grind through the discipline of our orchestral boot camp till the concert, that one feeling of success they could win for themselves each year, or leave: hope versus hopelessness.
So what else did we expect from our gritty young musicians? They needed a deep hunger for music, whether western or from their own cultures, which would drive them to renew their interest and keep faith in themselves, regardless of the many setbacks. After years of learning alone, they also needed the humility to be open to face-to-face, corrective teaching and musicianship, which our young tutor team certainly provided in buckets. Some found our loving but firm feedback disorienting. How far could they change their years of autodidactic training in a couple of weeks? Could they offer constructive feedback to each other? Young conductors rarely get any feedback from older colleagues who either can’t or don’t want to support upcoming competition. This is one reason why so many of us forge a “career” out of thin air. And so, it was left to me to fashion the first conducting course for budding Iraqi maestri using sellotape, tennis balls and Beethoven Sonatas.
By sensing our larger purpose, we really leapt forward. Even when the going got extraordinarily tough, we all pulled together in our own ways to create the only good thing Iraq had ever produced in their young lives as they held onto their learning for themselves and their future generations. Of course, that applause at the end of the concert was also gold to the soul. Since great music has always been written with some kind of higher purpose, whether abstract, ethical or religious, are we conductors really qualified as humans to bring that meaning to audiences afresh, again and again? Or will Sistema inadvertently produce a generation of super-gritty, working class musical warriors pumped up with higher social purpose, forcing the rest of us to pay our mortgages some other way? One kid in Liverpool announced: “I am a leader and that means I take control and keep order. I like that. If someone doesn’t know what to do they look at the leaders and that makes me feel good – frightening sometimes though!” I don’t know who’s going to end up more frightened…
Finally, grit needs hope. For five years, the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq kept going on just that, and little else. The collapse of our 2014 visit to the USA, the year the so-called “Islamic State” invaded, brought our project to a most dreadful close. But today, our alumni still keep on playing locally, either in Baghdad or the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, forming their own ensembles, keeping other groups alive, reviving all we’d learnt together. They are the future leaders of whatever rises from the ashes of Iraq. For me, the loss of my orchestra, then both my parents and then my ex forced me out of “doing” and into “being”. On reflection, I knew the only path forward was to write the story out of my system, share what I’d learnt, accept a new, deeper sense of self, and move on.

So that’s it, the four pillars of true grit: deep hunger, practice and feedback, sensing a larger purpose and finally the capacity for hope. Out of the cataclysm of Iraq, I may have lost my orchestra, but I discovered a wealth of knowledge, and I found my family.

This article first appeared in Classical Music Magazine, UK, August 2016

A Tale of Two Orchestras: Palestine & Iraq

Palestine Youth Orchestra
Between 2009 and 2014, I was the conductor and artistic director of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq. I first got involved when in 2008 I responded to a newspaper headline “Iraqi teen seeks maestro.” I was intrigued—but also very ignorant.Barely at peace, with no orchestral tradition that I knew of, what could there be to work with in Iraq? What instruments did they even have? How could it be that we in the west had heard so much about war and bloodshed in Iraq, but knew so little about who its people really were?The following year, after auditions via Skype, a promise of a bespoke piece from the late Peter Maxwell Davies, favours called in, massive logistical complexities and financial hiccups, we ran our first summer school. And so the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq was born. In a few short years this group of young musicians came through the most difficult and dangerous time to produce fine music, not only in Iraq but also Britain, Germany and France. Perhaps not surprisingly, one of their favourite composers was Beethoven—a composer who knew plenty about troubled times.The National Youth Orchestra of Iraq is no more, thanks to Islamic State, but I’ve told our story in my forthcoming book, UPBEAT: the Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq.In Glasgow in late July, I attended a concert by the Palestine Youth Orchestra, a striking example of ingenuity, passion and freedom of expression. Their performance struck a chord with me as I remembered my time as Musical Director of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq. I was struck by both the similarities and the contrasts. They are a perfect example of a properly supported and sustained conflict orchestra, bringing together Palestinians with their wider diaspora, as well as support musicians from Britain’s conservatoires. Side by side, they belong to the exclusive club of young people who know how intimate, exhilarating and good for bonding a youth orchestra is.When the orchestra first left the country for Beethovenfest, Bonn in 2011, its members had no idea that their fellow players from Germany were already of the highest order and discipline, embracing audiences round the world. They connected wonderfully with the difficult, foreign world around them. When I think of what war has done to my players, isolating them from international travel, skilled teachers and good instruments, I realise that they have been left to nourish their passion through YouTube.In those years we worked together, a cracked window of opportunity from 2009 to 2013, I watched these young people grow not only musically, but as humans opening up to the world. My players in Baghdad, suffering daily terrorist threats and scant public amenities, nevertheless still met monthly to play with the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra. Today, they play on, resilient, even after the worst bombing for years in the middle-class Karada district of Baghdad.The Palestine Youth Orchestra has built a large base of supporters, including that evening’s Maestra, Sian Edwards, who began with them 12 years ago. Her indomitable positivity has been a key building block in attracting strong support. I look back at the powerful supporters of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq: the British Council, Beethovenfest, Grand Theatre de Provence and the Scottish Government, to name a few. We put in hundreds of hours of unpaid work, and burnt through $1.4m (some of this money was supplied by foreign governments.) But we received very little from the Iraqi government. Despite the country having an annual income from oil that was as high as $100bn, they only spent $15,000 on us—they could have spent far more were it not for wealth disappearing because of corruption. In a sense, the government was being subsidised, as the orchestra functioned like the country’s greatest diplomat.At the Glasgow concert I sat next to Claire Docherty, violin tutor for the Palestine Youth Orchestra’s British tour as well as for the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq in 2012 and 2013. I joked she should get a “conflict-orchestra bonus.” Discussing the difference between Palestine and Iraq, we recalled my pointed rehearsal directions being translated into Sorani Kurdish and Iraqi Arabic through our interpreters, Saman and Shwan. One studying medicine, the other, air-conditioning, they stood on either side of me rattling off my musical instructions. I beseeched them to convey my passion—usually resulting in hilarity all-round. My dear friends, they became the best-educated lovers of classical music in Iraq.Neil Ertz, the luthier who took our violins and violas in for repair when we visited Edinburgh in 2012, mentioned their Heath-Robinson condition, the cracks in the wood and the word “KURDISTAN” painted onto the back of one of them. These were tangible metaphors for the fractures inside these sensitive young players. How could anyone be an artist in Iraq?  For me, travelling there to direct the courses meant: put your head-down, deliver the concert and go home. I wanted little to do with Iraqi culture, and even though everyone knew I was gay—there’s not much you can hide from an Iraqi—I still felt deeply vulnerable leading Iraq’s greatest cultural diplomats while my own people were being blackmailed, kidnapped and tortured to death. The players, however, gave me nothing but love, commitment and respect. The guys in the orchestra deeply embraced our bromance, and held me as one of their own.Finally, I met Sian Edwards backstage. As a fellow conflict-orchestra conductor, I mentioned how we have to radically rewire our body language to communicate with players with little experience of what a conductor offers them. She understood immediately. I remembered the hours of gruelling rehearsal in our summer courses, the joy of helping Iraqi players fuse into an orchestra by listening, co-ordinating and reconciling.I remember their love of music: they seemed more driven than any westerner. Music shields them from the madness of corruption, incompetence, terrorism and injustice. I have never felt more keenly the need for musical education. I will always feel the joy that Iraq brought into my life, how it confirmed my belief in humanity.Upbeat; The story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq by Paul MacAlindin is published by Sandstone Press, £19.99 hardbackThis article first appeared in Prospect Magazine August 2016

A Tale of Two Orchestras: Iraq & Palestine

Between 2009 and 2014, I was the conductor and artistic director of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq. I first got involved when in 2008 I responded to a newspaper headline “Iraqi teen seeks maestro.” I was intrigued—but also very ignorant.Barely at peace, with no orchestral tradition that I knew of, what could there be to work with in Iraq? What instruments did they even have? How could it be that we in the west had heard so much about war and bloodshed in Iraq, but knew so little about who its people really were?The following year, after auditions via Skype, a promise of a bespoke piece from the late Peter Maxwell Davies, favours called in, massive logistical complexities and financial hiccups, we ran our first summer school. And so the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq was born. In a few short years this group of young musicians came through the most difficult and dangerous time to produce fine music, not only in Iraq but also Britain, Germany and France. Perhaps not surprisingly, one of their favourite composers was Beethoven—a composer who knew plenty about troubled times.The National Youth Orchestra of Iraq is no more, thanks to Islamic State, but I’ve told our story in my forthcoming book, UPBEAT: the Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq.In Glasgow in late July, I attended a concert by the Palestine Youth Orchestra, a striking example of ingenuity, passion and freedom of expression. Their performance struck a chord with me as I remembered my time as Musical Director of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq. I was struck by both the similarities and the contrasts. They are a perfect example of a properly supported and sustained conflict orchestra, bringing together Palestinians with their wider diaspora, as well as support musicians from Britain’s conservatoires. Side by side, they belong to the exclusive club of young people who know how intimate, exhilarating and good for bonding a youth orchestra is.When the orchestra first left the country for Beethovenfest, Bonn in 2011, its members had no idea that their fellow players from Germany were already of the highest order and discipline, embracing audiences round the world. They connected wonderfully with the difficult, foreign world around them. When I think of what war has done to my players, isolating them from international travel, skilled teachers and good instruments, I realise that they have been left to nourish their passion through YouTube.In those years we worked together, a cracked window of opportunity from 2009 to 2013, I watched these young people grow not only musically, but as humans opening up to the world. My players in Baghdad, suffering daily terrorist threats and scant public amenities, nevertheless still met monthly to play with the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra. Today, they play on, resilient, even after the worst bombing for years in the middle-class Karada district of Baghdad.The Palestine Youth Orchestra has built a large base of supporters, including that evening’s Maestra, Sian Edwards, who began with them 12 years ago. Her indomitable positivity has been a key building block in attracting strong support. I look back at the powerful supporters of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq: the British Council, Beethovenfest, Grand Theatre de Provence and the Scottish Government, to name a few. We put in hundreds of hours of unpaid work, and burnt through $1.4m (some of this money was supplied by foreign governments.) But we received very little from the Iraqi government. Despite the country having an annual income from oil that was as high as $100bn, they only spent $15,000 on us—they could have spent far more were it not for wealth disappearing because of corruption. In a sense, the government was being subsidised, as the orchestra functioned like the country’s greatest diplomat.At the Glasgow concert I sat next to Claire Docherty, violin tutor for the Palestine Youth Orchestra’s British tour as well as for the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq in 2012 and 2013. I joked she should get a “conflict-orchestra bonus.” Discussing the difference between Palestine and Iraq, we recalled my pointed rehearsal directions being translated into Sorani Kurdish and Iraqi Arabic through our interpreters, Saman and Shwan. One studying medicine, the other, air-conditioning, they stood on either side of me rattling off my musical instructions. I beseeched them to convey my passion—usually resulting in hilarity all-round. My dear friends, they became the best-educated lovers of classical music in Iraq.Neil Ertz, the luthier who took our violins and violas in for repair when we visited Edinburgh in 2012, mentioned their Heath-Robinson condition, the cracks in the wood and the word “KURDISTAN” painted onto the back of one of them. These were tangible metaphors for the fractures inside these sensitive young players. How could anyone be an artist in Iraq?  For me, travelling there to direct the courses meant: put your head-down, deliver the concert and go home. I wanted little to do with Iraqi culture, and even though everyone knew I was gay—there’s not much you can hide from an Iraqi—I still felt deeply vulnerable leading Iraq’s greatest cultural diplomats while my own people were being blackmailed, kidnapped and tortured to death. The players, however, gave me nothing but love, commitment and respect. The guys in the orchestra deeply embraced our bromance, and held me as one of their own.Finally, I met Sian Edwards backstage. As a fellow conflict-orchestra conductor, I mentioned how we have to radically rewire our body language to communicate with players with little experience of what a conductor offers them. She understood immediately. I remembered the hours of gruelling rehearsal in our summer courses, the joy of helping Iraqi players fuse into an orchestra by listening, co-ordinating and reconciling.I remember their love of music: they seemed more driven than any westerner. Music shields them from the madness of corruption, incompetence, terrorism and injustice. I have never felt more keenly the need for musical education. I will always feel the joy that Iraq brought into my life, how it confirmed my belief in humanity.Upbeat; The story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq by Paul MacAlindin is published by Sandstone Press, £19.99 hardbackThis article first appeared in Prospect Magazine August 2016

Discord and harmony: how a youth orchestra flourished in Iraq against all the odds

A wonderful review of UPBEAT: the Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq 
The National, UAE, by James NcNair.
Original article released 28.7.16 

Like many great stories, Paul MacAlindin’s account of how he came to assemble and conduct the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq (NYOI) begins in the most quotidian of settings. It was in October 2008, while eating fish and chips in an Edinburgh pub, that the author spied a Glasgow Herald article that would transform his life and that of countless others. The piece concerned Zuhal Sultan, a go-getting 17-year-old pianist in Baghdad who sought what the Herald called a "UK Maestro" to help her found a national youth orchestra in war-torn Iraq. 
"Thank goodness for ‘Maestro’!" jokes MacAlindin in Upbeat: The Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq. "Had it just said ‘conductor’ I’d probably have turned the page." Listen: Crossroads podcast: An Iraqi classical soundtrack- Ep 14MacAlindin, an Aberdeen-born Scot who was previously a conductor/guest conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic among others, recounts how he knew instinctively that he was the man for the job. But he was also acutely aware of the magnitude and sensitivity of the task in hand.
After the UK’s 2003 invasion of Iraq as part of a United States-led coalition, how might his involvement in such a project be perceived at home and abroad? How could Sultan’s somewhat quixotic-looking vision be realised? How could it be funded? How could they find the young Kurd, Sunni and Shia musicians needed to give such an orchestra the vital, multi-ethnic fabric that would make it a non-partisan representation of Iraq?
Even more daunting, once organised, was the prospect of day-to-day life for MacAlindin and his stalwart team while teaching the inaugural National Youth Orchestra Of Iraq in Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan, in August 2009 (the players, all aged between 14 and 29 and sourced from all over Iraq, had been auditioned and chosen via Skype and video-uploads to YouTube).The author describes touching-down in the Iraqi Kurdistan capital, Erbil, and encountering the hot, desert wind. MacAlindin knows there will be culture shock and security issues to contend with – but what of entering into a delicate pact of trust with musicians whose childhoods have been stolen from them?
For the players of the NYOI, the author explains, music serves as a "forcefield against reality"; a treasured escape from the horrors of gas attacks, invasion, tribal tensions and all-out war. But there is much work to be done if MacAlindin and his fellow tutors are to make a proper youth orchestra of these youngsters, and they must tread carefully, lest they tread on their students’ dreams.Upbeat is an eloquently-written, moving and sometimes funny book. Its title, taken from the gesture that conductors make to indicate the beat that leads into a new bar of music, is symbolic of change and progress. It also describes the mindset that was often required of MacAlindin and his team in testing circumstances. 
It’s in Iraq, of course, that the author begins to process the many and varied challenges his young musicians face. In a country overrun with cheap Chinese instruments baking in a dry, corrosive heat, the sorry state of 21-year-old Murad’s bassoon – "it sounded like an elephant in pain" – proves fairly typical. More testing, though, MacAlindin learns, is the kind of religious and/or political conservatism which, in some communities, outlaws playing an instrument at all. Horn player Ali, who is used to practising under a towel to deaden the sound, is one of many in the orchestra who have learned to play music covertly and quietly. Transportation of instruments in plastic carrier bags – not conspicuous instrument cases – is also the norm due to a fear of attack or condemnation.Working with translators, the author and his team manage to hothouse the talents of the NYOI. Their reward is a grateful and warm-hearted student cohort that thinks nothing of practising Beethoven into the small hours. Used to playing in isolation, however, many of the orchestra’s members have learned their existing classical music skills from YouTube, where teaching quality is erratic. Thus, some of them have acquired a poor and ingrained technique that proves difficult to unlearn.
Further in, when the fight to secure visas and funding for the NYOI’s overseas performances begins, Upbeat really takes off. Only by taking the NYOI out of Iraq; only by exposing them to infinitely more privileged youth orchestras in Scotland and Germany, MacAlindin feels, can he show them what they lack, and what, truthfully, they may never be able to attain. It’s a tough kind of love and a vital route towards growth. 
Upbeat covers a lot of ground. A potted history of Iraqi politics. The moving backstory which explains MacAlindin’s capacity for empathy. Bonding over halal haggis. Labyrinthine bureaucracy. The folks who promised much but brought little, and the snobs: "Sorry, at present we do not fund cross-ethnic quasi-classical music as there is so much to do in the purely classical field", runs one particularly loathsome knock-back.
It’s the indomitable spirit of many of the orchestra’s players, though, which stays with you. Players such as Waleed Ahmed Assi, the JS Bach-loving flautist who, in 2010, joined the NYOI two weeks after his best friend was killed by a car bomb in Kirkuk. Or Aya Isham, the Baghdad-born violinist who, prior to the NYOI’s emotional 2011 performance in Bonn, at Germany’s Beethovenfest, told Deutsche Welle of seeing corpses on her route to school as a child. 
Elsewhere, MacAlindin relates that his students’ understandably black sense of humour was sometimes priceless. Asked what Blood Dance, a piece specially written for the NYOI and oud player Khyam Allami is about, its composer Gordon McPherson responds: "The pain and suffering that Iraq has gone through." "Then why are you doing it to us again?" pipes up a wag in the woodwind section. The orchestra also played gigs in Erbil in 2010 and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2012. However, because of the rise of ISIL, the orchestra was disbanded in 2014. Given the Chilcot Report’s recent condemnation of former UK prime minister Tony Blair’s actions prior to the co-invasion of Iraq, and given the country’s ongoing suffering through civil war and sectarian violence, Upbeat’s publication seems especially timely and moving. 
Ultimately, it’s the tale of one man’s crazed, ever-vulnerable route towards a heartfelt act of reparation and a hugely enjoyable testament to the healing power of music. James McNair writes for Mojo magazine and The Independent.