Naseer Shamma is an Iraqi oud player and composer, one of the famous in the new generation of oud virtuosos. Shama was born in 1963 in village near the Tigris River.
Naseer shama started his musical education at the age of 12 in Baghdad, Iraq and at the age of 22 he already was playing his compositions at a concert in front of many iraqi renowed musicians. He finished his formal studies at The Iraqi music academy of Baghdad in 1987, and started to work as an oud teacher 3 years later.
Shama worked as a teacher in the Tunisian Music institute and positioned later as the director of one of the most important Arabic music institutes: the Arab house of the oud in Cairo. Shama was working together with one of the biggest oud icons of Iraq, Munir bashir, and later started to focus at his own unique way and style. The young musician is trying to bring a new spirit for his music by mixing old and new, east and west in his compositions.
Inspired of one of the forefathers of the oud music in the 9th century El-Farabi, he created an oud of eight strings oud using ancient manuscript. This led him to develop a new style of oud playing and technique. Nasser shama is highly appreciated also due to his decisiveness at developing a method which allow disabled and war injured children or soldiers to play the oud with only one hand. This method was invent by salim abdulkarim and highly developed by shama.
