Jawa MANLA

Jawa Manla is a Syrian oud player, born in Aleppo, she grew up in Damascus, Syria. She started playing music at the age of eleven. She chose the Oud as her instrument because her father used to play it every day at home when she was young. Gradually, she fell in love with it and now feels an unlimited feeling of freedom while playing it. When she was six, she started ballet dance lessons.

At the age of eleven, she joined music classes in order to reach a higher level of ballet dancing. She studied music at Sulhi Al Wadi music institute in Damascus and after one year of studying music, the Oud became her passion. She decided to study music and six years later, she graduated from the same music school as to where I have started.

In 2012 she went to Egypt and continued her music study at “Beit El Oud” the Arabic Oud House institute under the supervision of the Iraqi Oud player Naseer Shamma. In 2014, she went to Istanbul to receive private lessons from the Turkish oud player Nacati Celik. Since June 2015, she is based in the Netherlands where she got to know great Dutch and international musicians whom she had the chance to perform and who allowed her to learn more and enrich her knowledge about music.

In 2016, she was accepted in Codarts, the conservatory of Rotterdam, where she is studying for her Bachelor of music at the world music department.