The giant shadow of Umm Kulthoum is inevitably cast over anyone who performs her songs. This time the singer will cast her shadow over "Queen of the Nile," a concert scheduled Nov. 4 as part of the International Oud Festival at the Confederation House in Jerusalem. Sami Khsheibun, who created the show and accompanied it on the violin with the orchestra he established, is not afraid of Umm Kulthoum’s shadow, but of other shadows: commercial ones, that are damaging the music of the Arab world and the world at large.
Khsheibun was born in 1970 in Kfar Kana. When he was a boy he would visit the Catholic Church in the village to hear the Italian nuns who played the electric organ. At the Orthodox church where his father was a "muratel" (a cantor), he heard Byzantine music and later became a member of the choir.