Born Abdallah Badawi in Lebanon in the Northern town of Amoun in 1957. His first interest in music started at age 6 and was greatly influenced by an uncle. By age 9 he was performing and continued to play accordion into the seventies, heavily influenced by the Rhabani Brothers and the music of the late Halim Hafez and Oum Koulthoum of Egypt .
After a short period in Kuwait in 1976 he arrived in Boston to attend college (1977). By 1978 he was playing at the Continental Restaurant on a weekly basis with other local musicians. At this time he met Amira, Katia, Morwenna and Nara Yaout who comprised the Middle Eastern Village Folk Dancers directed by Morwenna. He was completely surprised to see Western girls dancing to Arabic music with such passion. He continued playing and joined the group Al Badiah Band. At this time he started playing the Arabic Org. He started teaching piano throughout the Lebanese community. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.