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Her name comes up whenever the Iraqi maqam is mentioned, Mrs. Farida Mohammed Ali who was born in the city of Karbalaa in 1963.
Her talent was discovered since childhood through participation in school and public teams led by Mr. Farooq Hilal in the 70s and 80s. later, she joined the big singer Ilham almadfaee’s band.
As she was one of the most promising talents, the great musician Muneer Basheer asked her to join him, and asked Hussain Alaadamy to train her and teach her some of the Iraqi maqam. She started to practice playing an instrument with the santoor player Saad Abdulateef.
After the hard time of grief and sadness she faced by losing her husband, Mrs Farida longed to singing, so she entered the Iraqi Music School as a student, and her colleagues, including the great artist Kazem El Saher, Mahmoud Anwar, Ahmed Neama and Nasir Shamma helped her to ease the painful memory.
She has specialized in singing Iraqi maqam in a wonderful way, especially the maqam of Aldasht. Mrs Farida, during her study of many types maqams, has learned 40, and therefore the artist Hussein Adhami said, “I was not a teacher but a guide to her talent”. Farida was in the lead among her peers in singing the Iraqi maqam and was the first female singer to earn an academic degree in music. Her first concert was when she was a student at the second stage. She sang the Orfa Maqam that she was trained on by her teacher, artist Hussein Al-Adhami, in 1985 at Rashid Theater in Baghdad.