Culture In Iraq

Culture in Iraq is openly expressed through music, sculpture, and, to a lesser degree, movies.

Saddam really held the movie industry back. Once he was captured, Iraqi movie makers got to work. Of course, their movie industry is nothing compared to the movies put out by Hollywood, but maybe with time....Their crown jewel showed up at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival with a movie called Kilometre Zero by Hiner Saleem.

This movie takes place during the war between Iraq and Iran. It is about an Arab and a Kurd who both take a dead soldier home to his parents.

Music plays a big part of the culture in Iraq. Music is played everywhere, in shops, open-air markets, taxis, the street, any type of party or gathering....Where there are Iraqi people, there is Iraqi music.

The biggest musical star in the Middle East is Kazem al-Sahir. The Iraqis especially enjoy modernized folk music. I wish I had a sound bite to play for you. I will look around on the internet and see if I can find a link so you can sample their brand of modernized folk music. One of the musical artists known for this type of music in Iraq is Ilham al-Madfai.

You may remember when the current war started in 2003, many looters broke into museums and stole and smashed a lot of ancient pieces in the form of pottery, sculptures, and other archaeological pieces. This was shown on the evening news in the United States for days and days. Apparently a great loss from the cradle of civilization was suffered. Many of the pieces destroyed were from the ancient civilizations of Babylon, Assyria, and Sumer.

The Iraqi Museum in Baghdad lost the greatest amount of pieces of art during this looting.

Another way that culture in Iraq is expressed is through the beautiful architecture of the mosques. Unfortunately, insurgents keep blowing them up. Not to mention that the Shiites destroy Sunni mosques and the Sunnis destroy Shiite mosques. Some of the mosques have/had domes and minarets that are coated with gold.

Other buildings such as palaces and libraries are also beautiful works of art.

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