Avraham Da‘ud was a Qanun player. While in Iraq, Avraham Da‘ud performed with numerous Lebanese and Egyptian players such as Muhammad Salman, ‘Abd al-Mutallib, with the latter for over two years.
An excerpt from the interview, below, appears in the Warkov dissertation:
“I've played the qanun since the age of seven; my father was also a qanun player and I loved the instrument as a child. One of my brothers played the violin, the other played ‘ud. At the beginning, I started with the ‘ud, but after noticing my father playing the qanun, I used to wait until he went to work or to the coffee house and I would take the instrument and practice on it a lot. My brother was a composer for a man who would come regularly with his poems to the house. This man also had an ensemble and noticed that I played qanun; he liked it very much and encouraged me to play. At that time, I was eleven years old. In the area, there was a new group and they needed a qanun player. I don't know how, but I found myself with them.”
See: Jewish Professional Musicians in Iraq and Israel, Revisited by Esther Warkov.
Short taqsim by Avraham Da‘ud.
Written and sources by Esther Warkov.
