MARCH 2012

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the wedding singers
Music men hit the right notes
By Weam Namou
It’s your wedding day and the banquet
hall is beautifully decorated
with flowers, the cake has turned
out just as you imagined, and the
food, from past experience, is expected
to be delicious. The guests are surprisingly
on time. There are no signs
of family quarrels and everyone is
ready to let loose and have fun. Now,
how are you going to ensure that you
and your guests will have a fun-filled
reception on the dance floor?
“It’s all about the bride and groom
and their bridal party,” says Munther
Fahmi, the lead singer of Summer
Band. “If they are dancing and having
fun, everyone would have fun,
and the band becomes in a good
mood. If they’re laid back and just
talking to their friends, then that
slows the party down.”
Majid Kakka, however, believes
that every detail of the wedding helps
make it a fun experience. While he
said most people come into a wedding
happy and ready to enjoy themselves,
in rare occasions a dispute or
recent death may put a damper on
things. Sometimes it’s smaller matters
— a bad menu, the dinner being
served very late, the flowers dying as
a result of severely cold weather.
Whatever the circumstances,
Kakka, who has been singing at weddings
for more than 30 years, said the
most important factor for a singer
is to understand and remember the
main idea of a wedding.
“Two people are getting married,”
he said. “There’s nothing sad or difficult
about that. It’s all about fun and
happiness.”
At every wedding in which he
performs, Kakka considers it his
brother’s wedding and himself as the
best man.
“This is how I give it my all,”
he said, adding that it helps him
reach out to the wedding party’s
family members, like the mother or
the grandmother who might be in a
wheelchair.
Basma Goro booked Kakka for
her June 7 wedding because she
heard that having his band present
Majid Kakka leads the popular Bells Band.
photo by IVAN GEORGE/FUTUREWAVE IMAGES
The Summer Band’s Munther Fahmi.
translated to guests that “this is a
fancy wedding.”
“He sings a mixture of Arabic and
Chaldean and makes the reception
so lively that people don’t stop dancing,”
said Goro. “And having the
large band that he does, the music is
of higher quality. So that when you
play your wedding video, the sound is
as loud and clear as when it was live.”
Wisam Namou, whose wedding
was on November 18, 2010, feels it is
the wedding band’s responsibility to
“rock the party.”
“If the band messes up a lot, then
they break the guests’ mood for dancing,”
he said.
While he liked the performance
of the band at his wedding, having
chosen them because they sang a lot
of Chaldean songs and because he’d
seen them perform at other parties,
he felt they could have done a bit
better.
“My wife and I had sat with the
band prior to the wedding and told
them the songs we wanted them to
sing,” said Namou, “but for some reason,
they only performed 70 percent
of what we requested.”
Kakka and Fahmi sing a combination
of Arabic and Chaldean songs,
and their DJs play American songs.
But over the years, Fahmi has observed
that people want more American
songs.
“Whether people want mostly
Arabic or mostly American, we still
add Chaldean in every party – no
matter what,” he said. “It’s our language
and we want to keep it alive,
even if people don’t request it.”
Summer Yatooma’s wedding is
March 25. He booked Fahmi because
of his popularity, his “hot” performances
at other weddings, and his
Ashley Maza
and Christopher
Hindo dance
up at storm at
Shenandoah
on August 13,
2010.
strong Iraqi dialect.
“I want to have a lot of modern,
but native-Iraqi, songs at my wedding”
said Yatooma.
Kakka said he hasn’t really noticed
a big change in music preferences
over the years, and that people
go for whatever is newly released and
popular.
“Arabic songs are becoming more
international,” he said. “Whether it’s
the newcomers or those who have
been here 50 years, when a good song
comes out, they want it.”
Kakka began his career singing at
parties in Baghdad, where ironically,
only 20 percent of the music was
Iraqi or Arabic and 80 percent was
Western.
“Here in the United States, it’s
the opposite,” he said. “It’s 80 percent
Arabic and Chaldean and 20
percent – the DJ part – American.”
The singers have enjoyed giving
performances at weddings, some nationwide,
others abroad, but Fahmi —
who this spring is opening a school
for Chaldean kids to learn about
Chaldean and Arabic music — said,
“There’s nothing like Detroit! Here,
we’re many different villages gathered
together.”
Sometimes a musician’s duties go
beyond a simple performance. Fahmi
said he’ll never forget performing at
a wedding at Shenandoah when at
the end of the night, the bride and
groom were left all alone with no cars
or guests in sight.
“The groom asked if I lived in the
area and I said yes. He said, ‘I don’t
know what happened. Everyone is
gone. Can you take me home?’”
MARCH 2012 CHALDEAN NEWS 29