Tareq Abboushi on Buzuq

Tareq, a longtime musical friend of mine, plays buzuq (a long-necked, fretted lute he refers to as "the banjo of the middle east"), and talks about his musical interests, from classical (he started playing piano at around age 5; his mother is a piano teacher at the Edward Said national music conservatory in Ramallah, Palestine) to jazz (he attended William Patterson University in New Jersey, getting a degree in Jazz Piano) to Arabic, to his own project, "Shusmo"--meaning "What's it's name?" in Arabic.  He plays one of the tunes from Shusmo's first album, as well as one of the tunes he's currently working on.  We finish with a duet improvisation in Maqam Hijaz.

To find out more about Tareq, and to listen to and purchase Shusmo's first CD (appropriately titled "One"), please visit www.shusmo.com and
myspace.com/shusmo1

I will add, by way of recommendation, that this CD is my favorite so-called "fusion" Album out there--actually one of the only ones I can stand!