Meet the musician who fights ISIS with music on the streets of east Baghdad

A bustling market is in moments a mass grave.

To the inhabitants of east Baghdad, Iraq, this decor of charred vehicles and fallen structures after a bomb blast is an all-too-common sight.

It's a constant reminder by ISIS that death is imminent.

But then, a burst of an impassioned music wakes the residents from their dreary routine. Passersby who faced a bomb attack hours before turn their heads in confusion to see what is disrupting this mournful time.

Then at once, they're mystified by the sight of famed Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra conductor Karim Wasfi perched on scorched debris, trembling his mop of jet-black hair with Beethoven-like earnest as he drives his bow across his cello.

"These streets would still have the wreckage of the previous incident and maybe some horrific scenes, and even ... the smell of death," Wasfi says, describing his morbid stage.

He plays a vibrato, weeping tone -- a passage of "Baghdad Mourning Melancholy," a classical piece he composed.