hurayya Ensemble is comprised of Marwan Kamel and Abdessamade Mason Zantow.
https://www.instagram.com/thurayya_ensemble
https://www.youtube.com/@ThurayyaEnsemble
Marwan Kamel, based in Chicago and Tunis, is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who plays and performs on oud, nay, buzuq, guitar, violin, and hand-percussion, as well as others. His vision explores the colloquial textures of Western punk, hip-hop, electronic, and experimental musics and their boundaries and interaction with melodically-complex maqam modalities. He has composed original music for some small-scale films and has performed internationally with various projects at festivals such as Richard Thompson's Meltdown Festival in London, South by Southwest, Berlin Social Muscle Club, and Sundance Film Festival. Additionally, from 2020-2023, he hosted a weekly live looping show on Istanbul-based Root Radio. Recently, he completed a conservatory program at the Rachidia in Tunis and has taught regularly online and in Chicago for the past 10 years--establishing a successful music education program for refugees kids. In addition, he is researching rare classical maqam music and experimenting with new forms to create instrumental melodies and musical works at the nexus of past and future. His project Daily Maqam embodies all of these elements in hypnotic, modernistic, long-format improvisations building ethereal worlds that are born and die in the same moment.
Abdessamade Mason Zantow is a multi-instrumentalist and singer, student of the Arabo-Andalusian Muwashshah tradition under Ustadh Khaled Al-Hafez from Aleppo (Syria) and maqam (modal) music under Eric Ederer of the University of Southern California Santa Barbara Middle Eastern Music Ensemble. He has studied Hindustani classical music in Benares, India and conducted fieldwork research on the Qawwali Sufi music genre. He has been a founding member of several music projects spanning from shoegazer, ambient and the Avant Garde to blues and other genres. A guitar player since age 15, he currently focuses on the oud, buzuq, yaylı tanbur, cümbüş and lâvta, and lives in rural South Central Wisconsin with his family.