A bombing in eleven strings
Oud master Naseer Shamma (نصير شمة) here plays part of his composition al’Amiriyah, which tells the story of the bombing of public shelter nr. 25 in the Amiriyah district of Baghdad in 1991. Hundreds of civilians were killed (in the range 200-300 according to Human Rights Watch).
In the beginning there is a melancholy quiet, but then the havoc starts, with audible sirens, falling bombs and chaos. All in eleven strings.
Oud is العود in Arabic (al-ʿūd, literally “the wood”), a word believed to come from Persian, rud. The same word probably found its way into European languages as the name of the lute, when pious Europeans had a certain errand to run in the Near East and encountered this fine instrument.