I'm the vocalist for the group Debu, play the oud, saz/baglama and violin mainly, though try to play others, basically I look at all instruments as one and then try my best, it usually works, especially in the studio when i don't always have time to call one of the other musicians in to record. After I get the poetry from my father, Shaykh Fattaah, I usually compose the tune on the oud mostly but sometimes on the saz, then work from there on the arrangement and record as I work out the parts for the rest of the fifteen member group, it probably would be a lot easier if I played the keyboard but I don't. For the first two albums I had no training nor guidance technically, it still amazes me that the albums actually turned out, thank Allah. By the time I was half way through the third album I met my first oud teacher in Malaysia, actually I met him there and didn't know he played the oud, he was selling oud supplies, then I met him again online at mikeouds.com to my surprise not only did he play but he taught the oud at the music academy in Malaysia. I then started to learn from him online, and was able to visit him once since then in Malaysia. Just recently, I was contacted by an oud maestro of eighty years, he saw how i wasn't afraid to have the oud as one of the main instruments of the group, especially because nowadays most young people are not interested in traditional instruments, so he offered to teach me, as it turns out he didn't want out accept any money for the class that I can Have any day of the week which I usually have early in the morning after prayer everyday. And, he lives around ten minutes from my house, in Jakarta here, oud players are rare so you can imagine my delight.
As I mentioned earlier we have released three albums here in Indonesia, each album reaching the top ten when it was released, and sales reaching to over two hundred thousand copies, not to mention the fact that in Indonesia the pirated copies amount to 80 percent of the album sales, but are not counted by the industry. Then about 8 months ago we were contacted by a record label in turkey to release an album there, they were expecting to release the same version of Indonesian songs in turkey, and they were blown away when they brought us to Turkey and we had a lot of the songs already translated and recorded in Turkish, keeping in contact with then has been the most difficult, as the internet is not always reliable here.
So now I've been working on a few more albums, first in Arabic, and then another Album in Indonesia. and that where I'm at now. As soon as I have something finished enough I'll post it.
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