Life in Music
Artist and composer Ameen Mokdad MA ’26 was 10 years old the first time he saw a violin. It would be 10 more years before he would finally touch one. Living in Iraq after the Gulf War and in Mosul during the ISIS occupation made his passion for music a literal life-and-death situation. But Mokdad refused to give up on his art, recording an album (The Curve) during the occupation, and eventually taking his music on tour in the United States. In January 2025, Mokdad sat down with friend and fellow Iraqi Ahmed Badr ’20, assistant professor of the practice in public policy and director of the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship, for a conversation about art in times of conflict, music as a form of resistance, and stepping into the power of our own stories.
Ahmed Badr: Ameen, you and I met just about a year and a half ago here at Wesleyan when you were doing a concert. And even before then and up until this moment, you’re always doing such extraordinary work. You are a friend, brother, violinist, artist, composer—so many incredible titles. I want to start the conversation around your relationship to the word artist and the identity of the artist. At what point did you start to claim that title?
Ameen Mokdad: My story started when I wanted to finish the last opus [of Beethoven’s] Tenth Symphony. I didn’t want to be Beethoven, but I wanted to finish his work.
AB: How old were you at this time?
AM: Ten.... My dad, he’s a visual artist as well. And he was trying to make a painting about the composer [Beethoven] who died before he finished his last composition. The painting is hands trying to reach a violin and a sheet of music—it can’t reach. He was trying to take a photo to make a sketch and I volunteered to be the hand actor, the hand model. And then I said, When I grow up, I will finish Beethoven’s final symphony!
My dad was like, Of course, you will, like, very sarcastic. He never believed that I would become a musician.
AB: So what happened between the time that you said that out loud and the time that you started making music for yourself, whether it was violin or something else?
AM: I was dreaming about it. This was impossible in that time as an Iraqi kid under all the bans on Iraq after the Gulf War, the sanctions. It was impossible to get an instrument or to see an instrument in the shop. Who would think about that? It was very rare to happen.
And I remember all my notebooks in school, in the back of the paper I always draw the musical key, the G clef, and tried to draw some notes. I never knew, what is that? I felt this is the way to learn it, but I never really had any input or a chance to know, until I became 20, when I first time in my life touched the violin.
AB: You didn’t even touch it when it was there with your dad and the painting?
AM: He had me hold this case with the violin, but he never let me touch the wood. I grew up for 10 years with this thirst—just like, Why didn’t you let me touch it?
I remember the first thing I did when I touched the violin, I sniffed it—23 September 2009. I sniffed the wood. (Every time I want to trigger this memory, I just sniff the instrument.)
I started taking the violin to the university to play to my peers. At that time I was doing agricultural engineering. Beginning 2011, I said OK, I’m going to go to the second step, which is being part of a musical competition at the university. I won! I won the second prize. Then I knew—not because of the prize, but because of how the jury reacted—that I was doing something huge. But I wasn’t even aware of it. I was just doing it.
I’m having my best time ever playing the whole composition on one string, because I never knew that you should move on other strings.
AB: You didn’t have any teacher.
AM: No, I didn’t even know what is tuning!
AB: I imagine when you get that kind of external validation, you're like, Oh, this is actually something that I could do. How did you develop that skill when you didn't necessarily have the support structure around you? You didn't just drop out and become a full-time musician. You still had a job, you still had a career, you still had to finish school first.
AM: I finished school and I had a really good job like two weeks after graduation, which is a very rare thing. I was a supervisor in the biggest agriculture company in Iraq and Kurdistan and had a really good salary. And I just looked at myself and was like, Is that what I really want to do for the rest of my life? I think about music every single second while doing my work. I cannot stop thinking about it and I’m happy every time I think about it.
I feel like I got better ... my mental health, my everything. I started being more connected to life. Then, I quit [my job].
Under ISIS
AB: As Iraqis, there are the challenges that we personally face just trying to do our jobs. And then there are the politics and the things that are happening to the country that then you are surviving on multiple fronts. How did you navigate both surviving the lack of support for artists and the lack of stability?
AM: Well, I wish we could call it lack of support at that point, especially in Mosul between 2014 to 2017, because it wasn’t a lack of support; actually everybody want[ed] to kill artists. Art was banned because Mosul was occupied by ISIS.
I quit my job, that means financial destruction. Now I’m living in a city where I cannot make money out of art—I would die if I did art. Then me choosing to stay on this path with all the danger and craziness made me realize and reflect on myself: Why am I doing this? What is music for me? What is art?
For me it was a belief. It’s literally something dangerous and sensitive and lethal at the same time. If I feel that someone is treating music less than my expectations or my beliefs, I feel irritated. For me, music is like breathing.
AB: Existential.
AM: I don’t know if I would choose it, like choose to reach this point, but it just happened to me. Being followed by ISIS members, losing all my instruments to ISIS members, and being this figure who tried to challenge them or challenge these extreme ideologies....
Walking in the streets and being famous was something bad. Because I’m known for my resistance to what I believe is 100% oppression and stupidity. Any community without art is a sick community. Any community that doesn’t support art is definitely a violent, sick community. We need art as much as we need medicine.
And I didn’t regret, even the moment when they came in and interrogated me and I was like, Just leave my home, take my instruments. It’s fine. (I mean, that’s my inner dialogue.) But I will destroy every single thing you do with music. I will keep pissing you off.
Defined by Resistance
AB: You’re known for many different things, but one thing that kind of repeats in articles is this tagline of this musician that composed an entire album under ISIS occupation. How do you feel about being defined by being against something, rather than defined on your own as an artist who is making music?
AM: I think sometimes it’s silly, because I think every single human who has a conscience and belief should be a resistance to oppression. So I’m not doing something odd for humanity. I’m just being a normal human. Seeing something wrong and saying, This is wrong.
AB: You’re not waking up and saying, Today I resist!
AM: Exactly! People are dying. Our people are being oppressed. Their dreams are crushed. I think every single human should be ready to say a word when something wrong happens. Otherwise it’s just numbing. I don’t feel I’m unique. I’m normal. I’m not doing something new. I’m doing something every single human should do.
The War Inside
AB: Since then, you've come a long way. It’s been many years now, but leaving Iraq, you went to Turkey and now you're in the U.S. How has your relationship to the idea of resistance and art and identity evolved as you've been in different places physically?
AM: I would say another form of resistance is when you resist your own depression or lack of friendship or family. When I went to Turkey, I just followed the music and that means I'm far from the family that I was already far from when I was in Mosul during ISIS times.
And that comes with a big cost because having roots or seeds you care for is always difficult, because you cannot just take everything and hold it with you. And one of the crucial things that happened was when I lost my dad and I couldn't go there.
There was a snowstorm and everything was crazy. I went the second day of his death and I couldn't say goodbye.
And you could ask for the apology, but it’s someone you will never see again. It's very, very difficult and tough. And I know, it’s the cost of my dreams. So I have to resist that. I try to heal that because sometimes there's no war around you, but there's a war inside you.
The Curve was a resistance to the outside problem.
AB: This is The Curve, the album that you composed under ISIS occupation.
AM: Yes, the main thing was protesting against this. So the music was more like dark or high rhythms, fast, repetitive, sharp. And there is strength in it. Like you barely see some softness in some of the songs, but you always see this ongoing journey. Someone is fighting. There's lots of energy. Later on, there's more relaxed, different topics because it has different ideas. Like the composition I did about my father, which is Bayboon, which is a very, there's a … there's a very romantic feeling in it …
AB: Nostalgic.
AM: … nostalgic exactly. And yeah. So things changed. Like, you know, when I came today, the first thing I [played] is a composition called Train. I was thinking about myself as someone on a train and I could stop in stations and take people with me. I could stop there or go farther. But I cannot go back, which is a great feeling and a crucial feeling because I don't see the way back. I cannot go back. The track doesn't allow me.
And that's sad because, it doesn't give me the freedom to go back to my roots. It’s reflective to my own life.
AB: It's interesting, this idea of stations but only moving forward and this idea of pause and bringing people and helping them off. The Curve is how you came to the U.S. initially. You came to tour The Curve, the album that you recorded with Kevin Bishop at Cuatro Puntos based in Hartford, and Elisa Schroth here in Middletown. What was it like to see your work come to life? And for you to be able to witness it and travel with it.
AM: It was very meaningful and made me believe more of when you have this small idea about this small dream, and there's so many odds against you ... just keep holding it.
Like really keep holding it. I'm not saying it's easy, but it will save you.
This is what I will say: Always going toward my self-respect, not letting go my dreams or the music or the art, always saved me and always made me go to the next chapter ... like Wesleyan!
THE NEXT CHAPTER
AB: What has it been like to be back in an academic setting doing music? [As] you spend more and more time doing concerts and other things, you’re being asked to tell your story in different ways, too. How do you decide when to tell your story and when not to tell your story?
AM: I doubted many, many days if I really want to keep doing this or not—not because I don’t like being in school at all; I really love being a student again. But it’s a very sensitive matter to me. It’s music. And again, I had an extreme life with it. I had literally a machine gun on my head for music by three people. So that made me feel like always I have to protect it.
I feel obligated to tell the story as a human who lived this experience and got these fruits out of it, but I feel obligated also to myself and my self-respect to choose the people I’m telling the story to. So hopefully someone out of the readers or the audience will get some inspiration out of that. And that would make me very happy [and] give a value to the pain I had to be under—me and so many hundreds and thousands of people who lived the same experience.
AB: Of course. One thing that I admire so much about you and your work is just the generosity of spirit that you always lead with. We got to work together with the Narratio Fellows—Refugee Youth Storytellers—and you worked with them and performed at the Metropolitan Museum this past summer. And it was so incredible to see how you worked with each one of them, one of whom was a Wesleyan student, Alaa Laila ’27. And to see not just you stepping into the power of your own story, but using that to help other people step into the power of their story and emphasizing that they have the right ultimately to share that story on their own terms. And that’s not a luxury; it’s a given. It’s something you hold the power to.
Thank you so much for being here and being part of the Wesleyan community. I think we’re very, very lucky to have you here. We have so much to learn from each other and so much to grow together from. I’m really excited to see where you go from here.
Mokdad’s latest album, Bicycle Baghdad, is available via Soundcloud, Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, and other streaming services.
