Lebanese oud player Marcel Khalife, recognized by millions in the Arab world as a cultural icon, opens the University Musical Society's Arab World Music Festival with a concert Saturday night in Hill Auditorium.

The oud is a 12-string lute considered by some to create the most evocative sound in Arabic music. Khalife will appear with his Al Mayadine Ensemble, which he founded in 1976.

Khalife said his goal is to renew the character of Arab song, breaking its stereotypes and advancing the culture of the society that surrounds it.

"I do not fit in a cultural box, nor do I want to," wrote Khalife, who now lives in Paris, on an Internet Web site devoted to his tour.

"I have strived all my life to break free of old traditional constraints, to let music speak for itself unshackled by predetermined traditional rules. I have defied identities and categorizations, which only serve to blind us to the vastness and complexity of humanity. ... My music, it all comes together for the sake of humanity."

The Arab World Music Festival has been four years in the making, according to the UMS' Ben Johnson, who organized the event, which he said was planned even before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

"There are 21 countries that self-identify as the Arab world, excluding the Middle East. We wanted to paint a positive cultural portrait of the diversity that exists within in those 21 countries, but knew that we couldn't present 21 different artists," explained Johnson. "We decided to present a selection of artists who represent the best of popular, classical, religious, contemporary and traditional music. We have artists from Morocco, the Sudan, Mauritania, Syria, Lebanon. ... We are offering people the opportunity to be exposed to the different aesthetics of the Arab world."

He said he and UMS worked with a number of different groups, including the Dearborn-based Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, the University of Michigan Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies and many Arab-Americans who live in Ann Arbor.

"The Arab community has been kind, generous and supportive of this whole idea, promoting it to the much broader community," Johnson added. "A lot of people seem to associate Dearborn and Detroit with the Arab community, but there's actually a large, significant population here."

Johnson said Marcel Khalife was chosen to start the festival because "he's really considered a voice of the people within Lebanon, and we wanted our opening concert to be an artist from Lebanon because a significant portion of the Arab community in this region is Lebanese."

Khalife will be performing with Al Mayadine Ensemble, a group that he founded in 1976. Al Mayadine has the double-meaning of "village square" and "battlefield." Khalife will be joined on the tour by his long-time vocalist Oumaima Khalil, who has been performing with Khalife since she was 12 years old. The Al Mayadine Ensemble also features Yolla Keryakos as second vocalist, Rami Khalife on piano, Peter Herbert on double bass and Bachar Khalife on percussion (riq, tabla, mazhar, vibraphone, congas and bongos).

"This work attempts to elevate Arabic music to a level that allows it to express profound human emotions, not by mere performance, but by empowering the music to mature and develop into a universal language of expression," Khalife said of his latest CD, "Caress," and the tour that brings him to Ann Arbor.

"If the new world order gives me the culture of McDonald's and Pepsi Cola, I question that. Those things disappear after a short while. What we are doing is a project that will take years and years."

UMS will host a community reception following Khalife's Arab World Music Festival performance at Oz, Ann Arbor's Middle Eastern-themed nightclub, which will feature local Arab artists and DJs.

Other upcoming Arab World Music Festival concerts include Ensemble Al-Kind and the Whirling Dervishes of Damascus (with Sheikh Hamza Chakour), at the Michigan Theater Nov. 14; Sam Shalabi and The Osama Project, at Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre Jan. 12; Malouma with Sahel Hawl Blues, April 9 at the Michigan Theater; and Songs of the Sufi Brotherhood, featuring Hamza El Din, Hassan Hakmoun, and Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali, April 10 in Rackham Auditorium.