I created orchestra in warzone..Now I’m going to do it in Govan
AIMS TO REPLAY IRAQ SUCCESS IN GLASGOW
Sulaymaniyah, in the north-east near Iran. The new orchestra, half Kurd and half Arab, with seven women and 24 men, was something new. They played Beethoven, Haydn and Harry Lauder’s A Wee Deoch an Doris. He said: “There was a real sense we were doing something incredibly radical and adventurous and totally new to Iraq. For the kids, it revolutionised everything.” Which was great – and terrifying. The orchestra had no long-term funding. Paul was still living in Cologne, trying to pull it together and pay his rent at the same time. But bowing out was not an option. “Once we’d done the first one, I couldn’t stop,” he said.
Somehow, Paul kept the orchestra going until 2014, when ISIS took over Fallujah, Mosul and Tikrit and Iraq descended into civil war.
“It became impossible. The country was cut in half, Kurds and Arabs couldn’t physically meet each other. I was hawking the orchestra from country to country to try to keep it alive,” he said. Paul was trying to take the NYOI to the US and was trying to organise visas when it all came crashing down after Mosul fell. He said: “The US evacuated their embassy in Baghdad. That was that.”
Paul spent another year in Germany, writing a book about his experiences with the orchestra. Then he came back to Scotland and spent a year house-sitting in Invergordon, showing German tourists round Loch Lomond.
Now he’s made a new home in Govan and is keen to see what music can do there. The Malaysian government are impressed – giving him a prestigious award recently.
He said: “There has never been an orchestra founded for urban regeneration so we’re still in the dark. We’re experimenting. We have to learn what people want here.
“Everyone asks me the difference between Govan and Iraq? Everything’s different but the hopelessness. Through music, that’s what we can address.”