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 violinist, ‘ūd 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 owned a guitar, a melodica, and an air keyboard. I was fiddling with all of them and already playing songs.

Middle School
At age 13, during his middle school years, 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 either matched the right or played an occasional bass line, which didn’t make much sense to Boulos, who was already using both hands and figuring out harmonies and chord progressions on his own. Boulos recalls that he benefited greatly from Maher Turjman, the brother of Nabil Turjman, the group’s guitarist. Maher was a multi-instrumentalist who helped the band during rehearsals and offered tips on practicing and improving. 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 and a political and patriotic repertoire, including some he learned from his family. He was politically active and began writing his own lyrics and melodies.

1986 – 1994
Immediately after graduating from high school in 1985, he worked with various pop bands as a keyboard player, including al-Kawakib and al-Fursan. He also accompanied renowned singers on ʿūḍ, such as Zahi Ghrayyib. During the same period, he engaged with the music scene in Ramallah as an arranger and performer of both folksongs and contemporary works, and as a musician in the Ensemble of Sariyyat Ramallah Troup for Music, where he released the al-ʿĀshiq album in 1986. He established his group, Rājʿīn (We Shall Return), which eventually merged with the Raḥḥāla (Travelers) group, led by composer Jamīl al-Sāyiḥ. During the academic year 1988-1989, Boulos studied music in Chicago. 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, preventing him from returning to the United States to finish his degree.

Nonetheless, during this period, he collaborated with numerous bands and musicians. Between 1991 and 1993, he composed over 200 instrumental and vocal pieces, as well as 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 the 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, Boulos settled permanently in Chicago in 1994, returned to college, and enrolled in the music composition program at Columbia College Chicago, studying 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 Master’s degree, studying with Robert Lombardo and Ilya Levinson.

In most of his compositions, he maintained various aspects of the maqām 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 later recorded them for 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 face daily, Boulos developed a series of activities to help them channel their emotions. The idea grew into the Little Composers Program, which the Conservatory adopted, the Tamer Institute for Community Education, and Save the Children, and was 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 aged 14-18 in the West Bank and Gaza, culminating in the album Shurufat.

Boulos at the University of Chicago
Boulos served as director of the University of Chicago’s Middle East Music Ensemble from 1998 to 2010, with a brief interruption when he served in Ramallah at the National Palestine Conservatory. During his tenure as Ensemble’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 on hundreds of concerts around Chicago and at the University of Chicago community, and grew every venue the Ensemble occupied into all-sold-out events. By the time he left the Ensemble to lead the Qatar Music Academy, the Ensemble’s membership had grown to over 70 individuals, who performed on and off, depending on the repertoire. 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, avant-garde, 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, the University of Texas, Northwestern University, the University of Wisconsin, Michigan University, and many others.