BODUR is the artist reviving an ancient Arabic musical system

“What artist do you know that would dedicate her debut album to a centuries-old musical system, with not a mainstream track in sight?” director Furmaan Ahmed asked a full house at BODUR’s MAQAM album launch in Homerton last week, prompting a round of applause. It was one of many outbursts in what was, by all accounts, quite an emotional night. By the time that track eight, “THANK YOU, FOR MAKING ME EXHALE [BAYAT]”, arrived – a rally against the ongoing dehumanisation of Arab men packaged in a touching ode to her parents’ four-decades long relationship – there was not a dry eye in the house. BODUR’s choice was not only bold, it seemed, but one that had profound resonance.

The musical system in question is maqam, a traditional, Arabic alternative to Western music theory that breaks melodies down into 72 seven-note scales, each corresponding to a specific mood or narrative. “As someone who’s obsessed with songwriting and storytelling, it felt like I’d stumbled across gold,” 28-year old BODUR tells Dazed. “Maqam saba, for example, means longing for a place or a person you will never see again, so if you use those notes it evokes that feeling.”

“This is how neurotic I am,” BODUR continues, laughing. “I made a presentation on Canva and sent it to what I call my ‘Avengers’ – producers and musicians who I work closely with. The concept was to make an album where each song is in a different maqam, which then allowed us to explore it in jazz, pop, rock, electronic, and all these different club sounds.”

Having studied music for well over a decade, MAQAM arrives as the culmination of a lifelong journey of self-discovery for BODUR. “I didn’t know who I was at all growing up, I didn’t know anyone that really looked like me,” she explains. “It was only in lockdown, when I was forced to be away from the world, that I actually rediscovered myself, and that’s when BODUR really became a thing.” She soon started studying the oud, an Arabic fretless string instrument, at the British Arab Centre in London and, from there, the project began to fall into place.

These themes resonated with Furmaan Ahmed, a trans, Glasgow-born director of Pakistani heritage who has previously with the likes of SOPHIE, Julia Fox and Shygirl. Together, they created a series of visual companions to BODUR’S sonic soul searching on the project. Between lead single “UGLY [NAHAWAND]”’s interrogation of Western beauty standards in collaboration with pioneering Asian drag queen Bolly Illusion, to “MY BLOOD, IT’S IN THE SOIL [SABA]”’s visual representation of the historical erasures ongoing in Palestine, BODUR emerges as an alternative pop star, drawing on historical foundations long ostracised from mainstream music.

Returning to Ahmed’s question put to the crowd that night in Homerton, however, BODUR wouldn’t have it any other way. “Having a debut album coming out, I knew that I would have a platform to speak to publications and radio,” she tells Dazed. “I was like, I might as well talk about something useful.”

In this spirit, below, BODUR and Ahmed speak on the themes behind MAQAM, and the visuals they crafted alongside it.

How did you two meet?

BODUR: My label managers headhunted you, right? We were looking at a few directors, and I wasn’t really feeling any of them. Then your name got mentioned, and you followed me on Instagram that same day. I was like, ‘Surely not! Surely they’re not gonna work for me.’

Furmaan Ahmed: Well, on the other side, nobody ever asked me. Ben, the DOP on the project, just kept bringing you up to me, and then showed me the MAQAM concept and I was just like, ‘Must follow. Must know more.’ Having worked with so many musicians and different types of pop girlies, everyone has such a different approach. But, as a fellow historian, I’ve never met anybody who has created an album based off of a historical musical system.

Photography Solomon Pace-McCarrick

Looking at the way that Western music theory has been exported to the entire world, there must be quite a powerful feeling in reclaiming that, right?

BODUR: Yeah, reclaiming it and then testing it out in so many different ways. For example, I really like AutoTune, but I also felt how colonial it was that it tunes out the microtones [central to maqam]. I wanted to try and AutoTune my voice to those microtonal places, and, although I wasn’t able to execute in the way I wanted to on this project, I want to explore that more on future projects. I think both me and Furmaan have this idea that everything is political, because we’re not just trying to assimilate and not talk about anything. Even AutoTune can be political.

Furmaan Ahmed: Both of our work is so connected to identity. I think we both really have a yearning to understand ourselves, where we come from, and the history of that. I’ve been trying to figure that out my entire life. It’s like archeology, and that’s actually one of the works that we made [for the album] – a piece where we’re scratching away at the soil, revealing blood underneath the ground. It’s a song about Palestine and the suffering of people that have passed, the erasure of histories, the erasure of feminine ideals, and the patriarchy dominating our societies that existed after.

All these things that have happened throughout history have deeply affected the way I live my life now, as a trans person, as a person of colour, as a second generation immigrant Pakistani family. That’s something I find so prevalent in [BODUR’s] work too.

The song ‘UGLY [NAHAWAND]’ really manifests these themes, too. Growing up in the UK in the 2000s was a tough time to be someone of Islamic or Arab heritage, right?

Furmaan Ahmed: Oh, God yeah. A scary time, I’m actually still traumatised from it all. ‘UGLY’ is almost like a protest piece. It felt very natural that we should bring in Bolly Illusion, who’s an Asian drag queen from east London. She’s a pioneer, she’s been doing it for decades now. Being trans and looking at how the world engages people like me, it’s colonialism, it’s racism and gender violence as well. [In the video] we removed BODUR’s brown skin, painted her skin white and put her in camp clown make-up. It was a mockery of the system. BODUR and Bolly were both crying for different reasons, it was really intense.

BODUR: My body was shaking during that performance, and I saw Bolly was having the same reaction. This song’s been so therapeutic for me because it was born out of the worst parts of myself. The first lyric is, ‘If I was brave enough to end it all years ago…’ It’s talking about suicidal ideation, which unfortunately is a constant theme in my life. I’ve been deeply affected by seeing everything that’s happening in Palestine and the amount of dehumanisation in the [reporting]. I’ve always said that this album is a desperate cry for humanisation. That’s how I boil it down.

Do you think recent events have prompted you both to tell your stories more authentically then?

BODUR: Yeah, I had the concept for MAQAM before it all really, really kicked off again, so it was very strange to already be making a project kind of rooted in Islamic culture, and then for Islamophobia to just completely spike again. It felt more important than ever to celebrate our culture. That’s also why I made the conscious decision to call the project MAQAM, and to have the maqam titles in brackets next to the song titles because, even just algorithmically, it tricks people into consuming more media from the Islamic world. You know, if they’re watching my song that has ‘Hijaz’ [a maqam associated with beauty and emotional depth] in the title on YouTube the next video that follows might be someone performing a hijaz, too.

The internet’s so split between languages. Those little things to try and tie the world together. Hopefully you can see more Arab men playing music, see loads of Arab women playing the drums in groups with the men. There’s so many negative stereotypes, I’ve spent my whole life trying to undo them.

This album is a desperate cry for humanisation.

– BODUR

I’m also fascinated by ‘THANK YOU, FOR MAKING ME EXHALE [BAYAT]’.

BODUR: That was the last song that I made for the album. Being a working-class artist, with the pipeline of a one album record deal, I was like, ‘Oh, this might be my only time ever that I get some budget to make an album.’ I wanted my parents to be a part of that experience that as well.

That song came about by me asking them to go into two separate rooms and record themselves on voice memos talking about how they feel and what the last thing they want the other one to hear before they pass away. I then typed up everything they said, and noticed that there were similarities in what they were saying. I recorded the vocals in my own voice and then trained an AI model to learn both of my parents’ voices so that you could hear it in their voices. I think it’s the first time anyone’s ever mixed maqam with AI, which is really exciting.

You mentioned that the track speaks to the ongoing dehumanisation of Arab men, too.

BODUR: I almost called that song ‘Women and Children’, because of the ways men were being killed [in Palestine] and completely disregarded in the reporting on it. The dehumanisation of men and boys from the region in particular is really disgusting. I wanted my dad to be represented as the beautiful, kind, loving man that he is, like so many Middle Eastern and Muslim men I know. That song arrives before ‘MY BLOOD, IT’S IN THE SOIL [SABA]’, so you have this really big, epic love story, and then you’re reminded that so many of them are being ended every day.

How do you think the project will live on in the future?

BODUR: I have a lyric on ‘UGLY’ that says, ‘My stock’s gone up now but it’s bound to drop, and when it does, I’m sure that word will brand my skin again… ugly.’ I feel like that lyric sums up how this project will be received and how it will live in the future. It just depends on how the pendulum will swing and how people like us are seen in the world. There was a time recently where it felt like people would really help with representation and receive it well, now it feels like there’s a lot more resistance.

Furmaan Ahmed: It does feel like things are getting a lot worse, and that’s why it’s so important for this work to exist. It feels like we’re adding to something quite collective. Looking at my queer ancestors, or counter-culture movements throughout history, art always exists on the peripheries for a reason. That’s where the work is safest. It’s like gold for people like us to find and access. It’s that archeological dig that we’re continuously trying to do. I think this work really cements itself in that world, and it sits there comfortably. For future generations, it will be amazing for them to see a South Asian drag queen, to see BODUR and I creating that work together and making a place to do that.

MAQAM is out now.