Jamil Othman Ghanim was born in Aden, Yemen in 1941 into a cultured family. He was introduced to poetry by his grandmother and the poet Lutfi Jafar Aman, and to music by his maternal uncles – the oud players Ahmad, Taha and Khalil. In 1960 he became a primary school teacher in Aden and put together some musical ensembles. His only musical knowledge was from the Yemeni oral tradition, experience of local oud playing, and Egyptian music from popular films and songs.
With a desire to improve, he accepted a scholarship to the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad. He was amazed by the flamboyant style of Jamil Bashir, which was his first taste of the Baghdad school of oud playing founded in 1936 by Sherif Muhieddin. He discovered more about this refined music under the guidance of Salman Shukur and Jamil Bashir. They believed that in order to become a virtuoso oud player one should practice for ten hours a day. After five years Jamil Ghanim was able to play the ‘Caprice’ of Sherif Muheiddin, the most difficult piece for the oud, and he ranked amongst the ten best oud players in the Middle East.
However, at that time the public were strongly manipulated by the media, and no Arab instrumentalist (except Jamil Bashir) was able to give a solo oud recital without resorting to singing or the attraction of a casino, for example. Without an attentive audience such sophisticated music would die. And so it was Europe that discovered Munir Bashir in 1971 and Jamil Bashir in 1974.
Jamil Ghanim returned to Yemen in 1968 and became a teacher of music history at a college. As the Yemeni public were just as incapable of listening to his sophisticated oud solos, he began to work with the Ministry of Culture to safeguard the ancient music.
He was invited to Germany by the musicologist Jurgend Elsener and so went to East Berlin, where he was introduced to the European lutes. Ghanim subsequently acquired a French lute and performed a recital for television. He then returned to Aden to set about practising both Eastern and Western lutes, and he subsequently developed a great mastery and unique style. From 1971 he managed the National Institute of Music in Aden and toured in numerous countries.

You can hear Jamil Ghanim on the "Rare Recordings" page at www.mikeouds.com