A taqsim is an improvisational Middle Eastern medley in which the musician moves between formal musical structure and free-flowing improvisation. In Taqsim Zaid Shlah writes within the formal structure of the lyric, but incorporates an innovative lyricism that agitates between his Iraqi and Canadian a history of music, food, war and love in a space as wide as the mountains and prairies of his native Alberta to as far away as the land between the two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates.