Khabat
Abas

“The instrument,” affirmed the US soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, “that’s the matter, the stuff: your subject.” It is an affirmation we can use to start to understand the work of the Kurdish-Iraqi cellist, Khabat Abas. A composer, improvisor, and sound artist, Abas describes herself as an explorer “of the moment that I’m in and also the surroundings.” But her subject—one she has been exploring throughout her life—is her instrument, the cello.  

“My journey into music started when my father wrote a story for me of a girl’s dream about a cello with golden strings that plays colorful sounds. But my experience was quite different, my reality was rusted strings. Since then my life has mirrored this story.” 

She has also said: “My concept originates from my experiences with the cello. As my relationship with it has evolved, so too has my technique and playing style. I’ve shifted my focus from technique to exploring the sounds I can produce.” Consequently, we can see how Abas, who grew up in Sulaymaniyah in northeast Iraq during a period of war and conflict, uses the cello to articulate both personal biography and geopolitical realities. 

In the course of her explorations, she has subjected the cello to multiple preparations: she has draped it in a latticework of safety pins, as a reference to her mother who had to take on extra work as a seamstress; and sculpted a new cello body out of a bomb casing she found in a bazaar in Sulaymaniyah in 2019: “Through the form of a cello, the bombshell material has been transported from country to country, otherwise this would not have been possible; this demonstrates how society conforms to the power of the form of the cello without asking questions.” 

Such concepts seem far removed from her beginnings as a working musician, performing Beethoven and Mozart in the cello section of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra. But Abas says such foundational experiences, which also include later studies in Sweden and playing in the Gothenburg Academic Symphony Orchestra (GASO), still drive her explorations of her instrument: “The routine of orchestra life started to feel limiting. That’s when I began improvising and questioning the instrument itself: What if the material of the cello changed? How would the sound and my relationship to it change?” 

One of her cello modifications is titled Knot. “This preparation of the string is drawn from my experiences of learning to play in the war zone of Kurdistan-Iraq, a representation of the physical adaptations that were necessary because of the international trade embargoes, when we did not have access to materials and had to fix broken strings with knots. Therefore, I started to prepare my cello as a reflection on the sounds that were part of my daily life.” 

Abas has subsequently conceptualized the work Beethoven in Baghdad for musicians playing instruments with knotted strings, of which she says: “It reveals how music transforms under pressure, just like I had to.” Abas’s concepts are rigorous because they are rooted in lived experience. And this is why the music that emerges from them sounds so urgent and compelling.  

Since 2018 Abas has been based in London, where she has formed working relationships with musicians in the worlds of free improvisation and experimental music. Having lived in Berlin in 2016, she returns to the city as a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program 
in 2026; this residency will give her the time and space to deepen her explorations, as she points out that “breaking away from old traditions and investigating new sounds in new contexts within the body of the cello continuously renews my relationship with my instrument.” 

Tony Herrington