# Issa Boulos

Issa Boulos is a Palestinian-American oud player, composer, and music scholar.

## Biography

Boulos was born in Jerusalem in 1968. He grew up in a musical family in Ramallah and studied music as a child, including the oud at the Institute of Fine Arts. In his early career, he created over 200 compositions and directed several musical groups, including a dance troupe called Al-Funoun.
Boulos first travelled to the US in 1986. After several visits to Chicago, he moved there in the 1990s and studied music composition, first at Columbia College Chicago and later at Roosevelt University. His teachers at the latter included Robert Lombardo. In 1995, he became a US citizen. Beginning in 1998, he directed the Middle East Music Ensemble at University of Chicago, which performed classical Arabic music and featured instruments like ouds, baglamas, nays, qanuns, and darbukkahs. He also taught at the University and founded the Issa Boulos Quartet, which played Arabic jazz.
In September 2006, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra appeared at the World Music Festival for the first time where they and Boulos's Radio Maqam Ensemble performed some of Boulos's compositions. The orchestra also performed pieces by Tan Dun and Chen Yi. In an interview later that year with the Chicago Tribune, Boulos described maqam as "a bunch of melodies that are congenial to each other. Kind of like having a love affair between two people who are tied together and there are certain rules that determine the relationship and movement of the sounds."
Rif (Countryside) was released in 2007, featuring Nermin Kaygusuz playing Boulos's compositions for the kemence. The instrumental music was inspired by elements of the Mediterranean, including fig trees, soil, and dew. One track, "Raqsat al-Khityar", is about an elderly man dancing at a wedding after his wife's death.
The following year, Al-Hallaj was released, which Boulos had composed based on the work of the eponymous Sufi poet. The album was recorded in Ramallah with several musicians, including two of his former students. Boulos contributed oud and vocals. One reviewer called him "an Arab-American intellectual powerhouse whose work is highly significant in maintaining musical artistry little appreciated by Arab societies."
In the 2010s, Boulos headed the Arab Music Department at Qatar Music Academy. He later co-edited an anthology about the music and culture of the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula, entitled Music in Arabia: Perspectives on Heritage, Mobility, and Nation (2021).
Boulos has researched 20th century Palestinian music. He completed a PhD in ethnomusicology from Leiden University in 2020 with a dissertation entitled "The Palestinian music-making experience in the West Bank, 1920s to 1959: Nationalism, colonialism, and identity". In his 2013 article "Negotiating the Elements: Palestinian Freedom Songs from 1967 to 1987", Boulos writes about influential Palestinian musicians, including Mustafa al-Kurd and the group al-Baraem.
As of 2025, Boulos is the Community Music Center Coordinator at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois.

## Selected works
### Scholarship

Boulos, Issa. "Negotiating the Elements: Palestinian Freedom Songs from 1967 to 1987". Palestinian Music and Song: Expression and Resistance since 1900. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. pp. 53-68. ISBN 9780253011060.
Hassan, Scheherazade, et al. Music in Arabia : Perspectives on Heritage, Mobility, and Nation. Edited by Issa Boulos et al., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021. ISBN 9780253057525.
Boulos, Issa. "Musical Diplomacy in Mandate Palestine from 1936 to 1948". Music and Cultural Diplomacy in the Middle East. Edited by Maria M. Rijo Lopes da Cunha et al. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2024. pp. 179-218. ISBN 9783031362781.
McDonald, David A.; Boulos, Issa. "Palestinian Music". Routledge Handbook on Palestine. London: Routledge, 2024. ISBN 9781003031994.

### Music

* 2019: Bonfire, original instrumental and vocal works for chamber mixed orchestra, Chicago.
* 2011: Little Composers, arranged children songs. Nawa Records, Jerusalem.
* 2010: Sunny and Breezy, original instrumental works. Nawa Records, Jerusalem.
* 2009: Being Peace, original songs. Nawa Records, Chicago.
* 2008: Al-‘Hallaj, eight original songs for mixed Ensemble. Nawa Records, Chicago.
* 2007: Music for the documentary Nice Bombs
* 2007: Rif, original compositions for Turkish kemence. Nawa Records, Chicago.
* 2003: One World, One Language, original composition for Lingua Musica, Chicago.
* 1989: Side Street, original songs, Jerusalem.
* 1986: Al-‘Ashiq, Palestinian folk.