Kadim Al Sahir at Ehdeniyat Festival 2014

Kadim Al Sahir is an Iraqi singer, composer, and poet who has established himself as one of the most successful singers in the history of the Arab World, since the start of his career. Ranging from big romantic ballads to more political work, from pop to Arab classical music.

Born in 1957, to a simple family, Kadim grew up fueled by passion for creativity. After exploring various forms of art including sculpting, painting, drawing, fashion, poetry, and others, he decided to specialize in music. Soon after he became a multi- instrumentalist, started composing his own music, and sometimes even writing and arranging them.

Kadim then after went on to re-define Arabic music with his genius compositions of Arabic poetry, especially that of legendary Syrian romantic poet Nizar Qabbani who hailed Kadim as “The Caesar of Arabic music”, and went on to build a groundbreaking, substantial and enormously popular body of work with huge hits including “Zidini ishqan”, “Quolee ahibuka”, & “Ahibini”.

Kadim pioneered Arabic-International collaborations with various artists including Sarah Brightman on “The war is over”, Lenny Kravitz on “We want peace”, Paula Cole, One Giant Leap, TGU, & Quincy Jones & REDone on “Tomorrow”. Along with Italian Andrea Bocelli, and Spanish Julio Iglesias, Arabian Kadim Al Sahir is a “romantic world music legend”.