A once-hidden chapter of his family’s history fuels Ghazi Faisal Al-Mulaifi’s passion, work, and life. NYU Abu Dhabi’s Assistant Professor of Music is a Kuwaiti musician and scholar reviving his ancestors’ pearl-diving music traditions and introducing them to new global audiences.
“Pearl diving music is sacred labor music used when pearl divers — at least in my family in Kuwait — would go pearl diving for four months out of the year,” Al-Mulaifi said. “The music was very spiritual and devotional. Pearl diving was perilous. People got hurt. The sacred context of the music would be a way to pray to God for protection.”
Al-Mulaifi’s personal connection to this music began at age 13 when he saw his grandfather — whom he had always known as a businessman — wearing a sarong around the house. His dad explained that was what sailors used to wear, and his grandfather was once a shipmaster. Al-Mulaifi recalled being able to talk to his grandfather about almost anything. Still, when he asked him about his time as a shipmaster that day, his grandfather became too emotional to speak.
“He said, ‘all the men died at sea,’” Al-Mulaifi shared. “I could tell it was something he was both heartbroken and traumatized about and then I never asked him again. He never talked to me about it.”
But Al-Mulaifi couldn’t and didn’t want to leave it alone. He was curious. What was this family history that nobody talked about, and the man who could discuss anything could not speak of it? Already a musician at 13, Al-Mulaifi discovered that music played a central role in his ancestors’ lives, where pearl divers were considered working-class heroes risking their lives to provide for their families.
While a graduate student in New York, Al-Mulaifi had the opportunity to return to his homeland to join an annual pearl diving expedition and to experience this ancestral tradition for himself.
Eventually, his desire to study and preserve the music of Kuwait’s pearl divers brought him to NYUAD, where he is writing the first comprehensive history and guide to pearl-diving music — its poetry, melodies, and rituals.
“I'm working on the first-ever ethnographic book,” Al-Mulaifi said. “I'm talking with four families, the caretakers, and the inheritors of this music. The sequence of the chapters will be the sequence of the songs as they were played in pearl-diving life. I wanted the book to be, in one sense, a performance, where it happens in the sequence of preparing the ship, raising the sail, rowing the boat, dropping the anchor, raising the anchor, coming back home.”
"I can only write this because I'm part of a community that wants to share this music and these stories," Ghazi said. "When I release it, my name will be on it, along with those who have been key collaborators, because it’s ultimately a communal expression."
Al-Mulaifi's ensemble Boom.Diwan made history as the first musicians from Kuwait and the Arabian Gulf to be nominated for a Grammy in the Latin Jazz Album category. He credits the NYU Abu Dhabi Art Center's Executive Director Bill Bragin for enabling many of these opportunities through artist residencies and collaborations, emphasizing that the university's openness to creative risk-taking has been instrumental in allowing him to reinvent traditional art forms.
“I really feel there's nowhere else on this planet where I could have done the work that I'm doing right here; it's just not possible,” he said.