Christmas is over. The decorations are down, the cards (fewer in number again this year) are in the recycling and some London Christmas trees are still beached on street corners like misshapen whales, helpless and out of place. Yet on a cold and icy early January night, a group of singers and musicians kept the magic and mystery of the Christmas spirit alive for just a little longer.
In the church of St Mary Magdalene in Paddington, the Epiphany, both the arrival of the magi and the baptism of Christ and his first revelation to mankind, was celebrated as the meeting point of eastern and western Christian tradition through a series of performances by artists from the middle eastern diaspora.
The Arab Christmas by Candlelight event was organised by Grand Junction, a multi-arts venue and community hub based in the stunning Grade 1 listed Neo-Gothic church, and led by its creative and community director, Lucy Foster.
The church was built in the 1860s and 1870s by the great Victorian architect G. E. Street, who produced a masterwork combining architecture, sculpture, stained glass, and quite possibly the most remarkable painted ceiling in an English parish church.
Foster’s mission is to programme work which resonates culturally with local people, as well as wider London audiences, and Grand Junction has just launched a new National Lottery Heritage Funded project called You Are Here, which aims to connect people and places by celebrating the diverse history of the local community and the heritage of the Victorian building.
Over many years they have developed a deep, collaborative relationship with Arts Canteen, an organisation that empowers artists from the Arab world and beyond to tell their own stories and take centre stage. It organises artistic programmes that address the urgent social and environmental issues of our times.
This is the second year running they have brought together artists and musicians to perform an Arab Christmas. For Arts Canteen founder and managing director Aser el Saqqa, who opened the event, the night marked a celebration of the human voice, with song being a timeless medium of celebration across cultures, religions and societies.
Instead of dividing us, such cultural exchanges, so commonplace London but often unremarked on, are the bridge to connect all of us together in peace and solidarity.
As the lights dimmed and a hush fell on the packed audience a single, lit candle was brought down the nave by Najib Coutya performing in a sonorous voice a liturgical Christmas chant in the Greek orthodox tradition.
Coutya’s father was a choirmaster and singer of Byzantine and Arabic Church music, renowned across the Middle East. He explained how the word maqam describes both the melodic scales used in traditional Arabic music but is also a word for place, location or position.
And so began a musical journey across Egypt and the Levant and through time, with Laila Samy’s Coptic hymn reaching back to the reign of Queen Zanobia when Christianity first reached the ancient Syrian caravan city of Palmyra in the second century CE.
Sura, a Lebanese artist and singer born in Beirut but now working in London, began her performance with an Arabic rendition of Silent Night accompanied by her brother playing the Oud. This lay down a beautiful, hauntingly fragile accompaniment to the song, with Sura’s achingly beautiful voice rising high into the star-spangled vault.
But thoughts and prayers for those affected by conflict, displacement and homelessness were integral to the performances and heightened the engagement with the audience. Sura reflected on the cycles of violence that have affected Southern Lebanon since 1948 with each generation of her maternal line bearing the pain and suffering of dislocation and loss.
But her final song was a song about faith, not necessarily religious faith but faith that there is a better future out there for all peoples, and that cycles of violence can and will be broken. For if we do not have faith, what do we have?
The final set of songs was performed by Cambridge Takht and the Pomegranates. Established in 2021, the group brings together a unique blend of traditional and folkloric Arabic music with contemporary influences.
Beginning life in a front room to capture a homespun feel to creating and enjoying music, the group performed songs from Syria, Armenia and from the Coptic tradition. And in celebration of their London debut the audience were invited to join in Laylit A’eed (Christmas Eve) as a poignant send off.
Next up for Grand Junction is a Burns Night Ceilidh and then on 13 February they host local musicians from the Arab world joining together for Nagham Alsharq: The Melody of the East. And if you don’t want to miss the next Arab Christmas by Candlelight, a little whisper told me it is being pencilled in for 7 January 2026, so get the diaries ready!
Top photo from Grand Junction, middle photo of Sura and accompanist Nahi by Ollie Denton.
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