RIYADH: The Music Commission hosted an open meeting on the Saudi Music Memory initiative, engaging with music enthusiasts and industry professionals, the Saudi Press Agency reported on Tuesday.
The goal was to involve them in preserving the Kingdom’s musical heritage, as part of a series of open meetings designed to keep the musical community informed and encourage their participation in documenting and preserving Saudi music.
The virtual meeting outlined the initiative’s focus on documenting music and lyrics composed by Saudi artists through the mid-1980s, aiming to preserve and archive these works and the evolution of the Saudi music scene.
The meeting highlighted the achievements of the Saudi Music Memory initiative, which secured rights for over 5,000 works, documented 305 musical notations, and produced two musical notation books. The first book, titled “From the Memory of National Songs,” was released to coincide with this year’s Founding Day. The second book, “From the Memory of Ramadan Songs,” is completed and set to be published before Ramadan 2025.
The meeting featured interviews with renowned artists who experienced the early days of Saudi music, like Mohammed Abdu, Abadi Al-Johar, and Jamil Mahmoud, who shared stories about the origins of Saudi music and the role of its pioneers.
The meeting outlined the stages of the initiative, beginning with securing the rights to use classical musical and lyrical works, which has been completed. The second stage, transcribing musical works, is underway. Next, the commission plans to create documentary content and reproduce and distribute significant musical works, expected to be completed in the upcoming year. Once these stages are finished, the final step will be building an integrated platform.
The commission adhered to a scientific methodology, ensuring honesty and neutrality in all outputs of the initiative. It eliminated community and private artistic biases, aligned with the Saudi Cultural Memory Center, followed the guidelines in the documentation and digital archiving manual issued by the Ministry of Culture, and conducted a comprehensive inventory of all relevant materials and information.
The commission launched the Saudi Music Memory initiative to document the history of Saudi art, aiming to create a reliable reference, highlight its regional influence, offer academically documented research for musicians, researchers, and interested parties, and showcase high-value musical works that have not received due media attention, the SPA reported.
