Early Years
Issa Boulos was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, in 1968, the youngest of six. His family is known for its musical and literary inclinations. His father, Ibrāhīm, was a renowned singer specializing in the repertoire of ʿĀṣr al-Nahḍa, especially the songs of Egyptian singer/songwriter Muḥammah ʿAbd al-Wahāb. His uncle Iskandar was a sought-after violin,ʿūd player, poet, and calligrapher. All of Issa’s uncles and aunts passed away before he was born, leaving his father, Ibrāhīm, saddened and seldom singing throughout Issa’s childhood. But this didn’t stop the family from engaging in music, for it was present not only through old records but also musical instruments. At the age of 7, Issa showed extraordinary talent in singing and memorizing the Arab classical maqām repertoire. When I was about ten years old, one of my sisters started taking keyboard lessons with Jack Laḥḥām at the Fine Arts Institute in Ramallah. We purchased a keyboard and previously had a guitar, melodica, and air keyboard. I was fiddling with all of them and already playing songs.

Middle School
During his middle school years, at age 13, Issa co-founded the group al-Fajr al-Mushriq (Sparkling Sunrise) with four of his school friends; he played the keyboard. He was already playing ʿūd and figuring out his way around the instrument. He took a number of keyboard lessons with an instructor at the Fine Arts Institute (M. K.) but didn’t benefit much. The teacher used only one hand to play, and his left hand was either playing the same as the right or playing an occasional bass line, which didn’t make much sense to Boulos, who was already utilizing both his hands and figuring out harmonies and chord progressions on his own. Boulos recalls that he benefited a great deal from Maher Turjman, the brother of Nabil Turjman, the guitarist in the group. Maher was a multi-instrumentalist who helped the band in rehearsals and gave them tips on how to practice and get better. A year after taking lessons at the Fine Arts Institute, he switched to taking ʿūd lessons with ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ʿIbaidū (Abū Rawḥī). He studied with him for a year.

High School
The high school years were active and intense. Boulos continued playing with al-Fajr al-Mushriq but started to think differently about the repertoire that he wanted to perform, which was, at that point, only pop. During high school, he became active as an ʿūd player, performing protest songs political and patriotic repertoire, including some that he learned from his family. He was politically active and started to write his own lyrics and songs.

1986 – 1994
Immediately after graduating from high school in 1985, he worked with various pop bands as a keyboard player, including popular ones such as al-Kawakib and al-Fursan. He also accompanied renowned singers on ʿūḍ, such as Zahi Ghrayyib. During the same period, he engaged in the music scene in Ramallah as an arranger and performer of both folksongs and contemporary works and a musician in the Ensemble of Sariyyat Ramallah Troup for Music, where he released al-ʿĀshiq album in 1986. He established his group Rājʿīn (We Shall Return), which eventually merged with the Raḥḥāla (Travelers) group with composer Jamīl al-Sāyiḥ. During the academic year of 1988-1989, Boulos spent a year in Chicago studying music. Upon his return to Palestine, the group Raḥḥāla recorded and released the album Raṣīf al-Madīna in the fall of 1989. As he attempted to return to Chicago to resume his studies in early 1990, Boulos was arrested and detained for his activism during the Intifada and was sentenced to one year in Israeli prisons, which he spent in various sites: Ramallah Prison, Bethlehem Prison, al- Dhahiriya Prison, where the interrogation took place, Ofer Prison, also called Beitunia Prison (awaiting sentencing), and finally Ketziot Prison or what Palestinian call Anṣār III. After his early release in late 1990, he was not allowed to leave the country, which prevented him from going back to the United States to finish his degree.

Nonetheless, during this period, he collaborated with numerous bands and musicians, and between 1991 and 1993, he composed over 200 instrumental and vocal pieces and one large-scale extended work entitled Kawkab Akhar (Another Planet). This large-scale work captured his early stylistic development composed during the Palestinian Intifada. This era was the most experimental, challenging, and prolific. He was appointed director of Birzeit University’s musical group Sanābil in addition to training al-Funoun Popular Dance Troupe and Sariyyat Ramallah Troupe for Music and Dance. His fascination with music towards higher levels of expression and engagement led him to explore other aspects of music-making and broaden his artistic perspective.  

Chicago
After over eight years of living in both Ramallah and Chicago, in 1994, Boulos settled permanently in Chicago and went back to college and enrolled in the music composition program at Columbia College Chicago and studied music composition with Gustavo Leone, William Russo, and Athanasios Zervas. During his undergraduate years, he composed dozens of instrumental pieces in various formations and genres. He also wrote and composed the musical ‘Arus al-Tira (The Bride of al-Ṭīra) in 1994. He later attended Roosevelt University and obtained a Masters degree, studying with Robert Lombardo and Ilya Levinson.

In most of his compositions, he maintained various aspects of the maqam traditions. In 1998, he founded the Issa Boulos Quartet and continued to perform his original contemporary compositions, which at that time ranged from maqām compositions to jazz (See Bonfire [Samar; c.1998] 2019). With this Ensemble, Boulos’s notoriety went well beyond Palestine, and he continued his lifelong, far-reaching musical journey by performing his original music.

Back to Ramallah
In the summer of 2000, after completing his Master’s, Boulos headed to his hometown and became a music teacher at the Friends Elementary School and a part-time instructor of Western music theory and history, ʿūd, choir, Ensemble, and theory of Arab music at the National Conservatory of Music (currently the Edward Said Conservatory) in Ramallah. He continued being active as a composer, songwriter, and player. He composed a collection of Ṣūfī poems by al-Hallaj. He performed them for the first time on December 16, 2000, at the Al-Kasaba Theatre in Ramallah with local musicians, who ended up recording it later in an album. The songs explore the philosophy and tragic ending of  Abū al-Mughīth al-Ḥusain Ibn Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj.

During this period, the Second Intifada started, which was a significant uprising by Palestinians against the Israeli occupation. Unlike the first one (1987-1993), this was characterized by heightened violence. This impacted children tremendously, and Boulos recalls that it made music lessons at the Friends School, where he taught more challenging. To help the children cope with the situations they’re facing on a daily basis, Boulos developed a series of activities that helped the children channel their emotions. The idea grew into the Little Composers Program, which was adopted by the Conservatory, Tamer Institute for Community Education, Save the Children, and sponsored by various other organizations. Upon his return to Chicago the following year, the program was introduced to the community at the Southwest Youth Collaborative and the Arab American Action Network. Most recently, Boulos conducted in-person and virtual workshops for music students between the ages of 14 and 18 in the West Bank and Gaza, culminating in the album Shurufat.

Boulos at the University of Chicago
Boulos acted as director of the University of Chicago’s Middle East Music Ensemble from 1998 to 2010, with one short interruption when he served in Ramallah at the National Palestine Conservatory. During his tenure as Ensmeble’s director, he created an ecosystem around the Ensemble. He grew its membership exponentially through engaging with Chicago’s diverse Middle Eastern communities and by offering educational and performance opportunities to those who otherwise didn’t have any venues or outlets to showcase their talents and culture. He obtained support from the University and the community, and the Ensemble continued to grow and flourish. At some point, President Don Michael Randel and the Music Department requested that he collaborate with the renowned Silk Road Ensemble and Alim Qasimov, who were coming for a residency at the University, and the collaboration was a significant success.

During his tenure, he arranged hundreds of songs and instrumental repertoire from Turkey, the Arab World, Iran, Asia Minor, Greece, North Africa, and Central Asia. He covered a vast array of genres from muwashshaḥ, folk, contemporary, pop, classical, Arabisque, Ottoman, and protest to malūf. He put out hundreds of concerts around Chicago and at the University of Chicago community and grew every venue the Ensemble occupied with all sold-out events. By the time he left the Ensemble to lead the Qatar Music Academy, Ensmeble’s membership was over 70 individuals who performed on and off, depending on the repertoire it performed. Boulos recorded and released the Ensemble’s only album, which was a culmination of the efforts and input from members of the community and Chicago’s musicians.

Collectively, Boulos’s works include traditional and contemporary maqām compositions and arrangements, jazz, avantgarde, film, and theatre scores, notably those for Lysistrata 2000, Catharsis, and the documentaries The New Americans and Nice Bombs. 

Boulos uses a variety of traditional instruments and utilizes the melodic material of maqām. His blend of tradition and innovation has forged important musical links between various musical traditions. He has received many awards and fellowships.

Career
He acted as director of the Middle East Music Ensemble at the University of Chicago, the Head of Music at the Qatar Music Academy, and is currently the Manager of the Community Music and Art Center at Harper College.

Boulos obtained his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Leiden University in 2020. His dissertation is entitled The Palestinian Music-Making Experience in the West Bank, the 1920s to 1959: Nationalism, Colonialism, and Identity.

Throughout his career, Boulos has given numerous workshops, lectures, demonstrations, and concerts at several American and European institutions and colleges, including the University of Chicago, Yale, Oxford, University of Texas, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, University of Wisconsin, Michigan University, and many more.