Sam Cronin (right) and Moses share the stage at the Thimun awards ceremony. The award was presented in the Best Sound category for the music video Child of the Nile.By Rubina SinghIf a marriage between art and culture is close to your heart, Qatar is undoubtedly the place to be, as Doha College student Sam Cronin, found out recently. Born in England, Sam, 18, has lived in five different countries and has been living in Qatar for the last six years.His compassion and sensitivity to other people’s experiences and openness to different cultures contributed a large extent to his work that won him acclaim at the recent Thimun awards, where his song Child of the Nile won in the Best Sound category. The event was created to encourage high school students to use film as a tool to advocate for social change and development.The song is a cumulative outcome of his travels, empathy to those less fortunate as himself, openness to other cultures and as he fondly reiterates, his friendship with one of the Ugandan security guards at his school, a man called Moses. Excerpts from the interview ...Do you think your travels and living in different countries had an impact on your personality and artistic expression? Going to new countries has always been exciting, and actually living in them you can definitely learn more than you can from a short holiday. Moving around is a lot easier as a child than as a teenager, but I still remember the feelings of those first couple of months in a new school, new country, new culture, and that it wasn’t very easy. Interestingly, every time I go back to England, it feels more like a holiday rather than “returning home”. But if I look back on it now, I’m very thankful to have been able to experience so much of the world from an early age. It has inspired me to experience even more during the rest of my life, which completely negates any difficulties encountered.What inspired the award-winning song Child of the Nile?Last year I started putting together a music project combining my life as an expat kid and my passion for music. I called it the Third Culture Project, as it would consist of songs about people from different countries, incorporating traditional music from their countries into my own English folk style of acoustic storytelling music. The term ‘Third Culture kid’ refers to people who have been brought up abroad during their childhood, thus combining elements of their birth culture and the culture of their new country, so the name seemed perfect. The concept of the project was to have songs to each represent one country, reflecting my own mobile lifestyle, and using the different indigenous sounds and instruments found in those countries in the composition of the songs. For example, in one song I am currently working on about Thailand, I am using a ‘saw u’ which is a violin-type instrument indigenous to Thailand.This idea was first inspired by my friendship with Moses — one of the Ugandan security guards who works at my school. I used to take violin lessons at school on Thursday evenings and Moses was always guarding the gate after my lesson, so we started talking every Thursday, exchanging stories about our lives and sharing our different cultures. When I mentioned that I liked to write songs, it was his idea that I should write a song about him, to tell the world of his story of leaving his family in Uganda and travelling to Qatar to work as a security guard. I felt it was a fantastic idea, and had always been interested in making some African music, so we decided to make a song together and incorporate some African instruments into the recording.The song’s title itself is very intriguing. How did that emerge?Towards the end of last year, we completed a recording of the song in my little bedroom studio. We called the song Child of the Nile, since Uganda is the site of the source of the river Nile, and the band arrangement included vocals from both of us, guitar, bass, ukulele, shakers, wooden frog and an African drum called a ‘djembe’. In the future I aspire to visit Moses in Uganda and re-record the song with an authentically traditional Ugandan band, but for the present stage we felt it was perfect. Thereafter, I learnt that part of my Media Studies coursework at school was to produce a short video, which led to Moses and I then creating a music video of the song we’d made centred on Moses’s life in Doha and our friendship (which is now available with the Thimun entry on my YouTube page “ThirdCultureBand”). Once we’d made that, my Media teacher, Luke Davies, suggested that we modified it into a documentary music video so that it could be entered into the Thimun competition. We then recorded an interview between Moses and I and layered it onto the song, editing the music to go quiet when we were talking. Then we made sure the narration fit with the video and changed the titles, and soon we had produced our ‘documentary music video’. You make it sound fairly easy, was it so?Preparing the song and filming the shots was fairly straightforward, but recording and editing the song and the video (especially to fit with the song) took a fair amount of time. For the interview we had to think of how to approach the subject of Moses’s treatment as a foreign worker — in terms of his low salary, lack of free time and the two years he has to spend away from his family. We soon agreed that Qatar was very good as it offered him a chance to earn a living more than he was able to do in Uganda, and since it is still very much in its development stages as a society there wasn’t really any room to criticise. Other than just taking a fair amount of time, the project ran quite smoothly.What were you hoping to achieve from it?Sam: I wanted to make music with someone and I think Moses really enjoyed having a bit of excitement, but in the end we felt strongly about the story we were telling and the point we wanted to make about the lives of migrant workers like Moses, as we really wanted to open our viewers up to the difficult lives of the many people around them, as most places all have foreign workers as security guardsMoses: I didn’t expect much, but when I heard that our video was nominated for some awards I knew that there was a chance for our message to reach a wide audience like we had hoped it would. I just wanted people to hear our message.Describe your feelings in the period up to the nomination ...Sam: I think I was just happy with the video I’d produced. I didn’t really have any huge expectations. However, when I heard there was prize money to be won, it made me more hopeful because I saw a great way to return the favour to Moses for helping me with my project. And after winning the award I know it was really great for him and I’m happy to have been a part of that.Moses: Similarly, I was really just content with having made what I felt was a good video, and had no major expectations.What was the message that you wanted to get across and why?Sam: The message was all about the difficulties of the non-Western migrant workers who make up a large percentage of Qatar’s population, all because there is not enough work in their country and they need to provide for their families. It was also to show how their situation could be improved by simple means such as establishing a minimum wage system or making their accommodation to a more comfortable standard. Yes, I feel the video definitely shows people a real insight into the life of a security guard and may cause them to see them in a completely different light.Moses: The point of the message was just to shed light on the life of security guards in the Middle East and to show my fellow security guards that they have reason to be proud of the job they are doing.Career ambitions...My ultimate ambition is to be a professional musician and continue with my Third Culture project, but other than that I’d just be interested in something media-based that involved exposing people to the different people and cultures around the world.Do you think there are suitable opportunities for you to realise your career ambitions here in Doha?Well, you definitely have a lot of time to think about what you want to do, as there isn’t very much to distract you. Living in Doha has not been as actively exciting as other countries I’ve lived in, but I don’t think anywhere else I would have realised my passion for music and people as much as I have in Doha, as I spend most of my free time playing music and socialising with anyone that comes my way.Things like the Thimun competition are something you definitely wouldn’t think of getting into anywhere else, and Qatar’s wealth, size and population contribute a lot to this because there is less competition and bigger opportunities.Do you think there is a suitable support system in Doha to help you carry your talent ahead after school into the professional world?Unlike in England, there are very few opportunities in Doha for amateur musicians like me to play in public. My performances are limited mainly to the school, and performance is my only chance at exposure for my original music. I even entered a local talent show two years ago but it was cancelled before they showcased the final round for some reason. As for filmmaking, this Thimun competition is great though. Lack of things to do in Doha definitely gives people time to practise for the professional world though ... and I’m sure Doha will only continue to improve, and the presence of establishments such as Katara show that culture and art are a priority for the country.For the official music video visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=boJEl49CAdU&list=PL_R-F_faSPdi1bp5a-XtEAKTcpKYICPMj& index=1