The piece, it turns out, was composed by Dena El Saffar, a Chicago-born Iraqi-American who has spent years learning to play the august classical music of her ancestors, the style known as maqam.

NPR: Salaam: From The Middle East To The Midwest

In fact, the venerable Iraqi art of maqam was overshadowed during the Ottoman Empire, in large part by the emergence of Egyptian cinema music, and later the great diva of Arabic music in the last century, Umm Kulthum.

NPR: Salaam: From The Middle East To The Midwest