Lebanese rap from the Christian Science Monitor

In the days before the CSM went all-digital. Drat. On RGB, Yayess Bek (the godfather of lubnani rap), Malikah, and Katibe 5 (from Palestinian refugee camp Burj al-Barajneh). (A shorter excerpt of this article appeared earlier on hawgblawg.)

"Rapping Injustice in Arabic," by Eamon Kircher-Allen, CSM, Feb. 27, 2009, pp. 13, 16.

...unlike much of Beirut's music scene that draws heavily on foreign influences, rappers like RGB are fiercely Lebanese in everything they do. They talk about personal experiences in which they see the same kinds of injustice, violence, and lack of forums for addressing social problems that were the impetus for early African-American rap groups with a political message, such as Public Enemy...

"Most of the artists here are from the streets, they live in a very unfair system," music producer Zeid Hamdan says by phone... "[Lebanon] is a good ground for hip hop. The 'bling bling' hasn't arrived yet. The bling-bling scene is in the pop music"...

there are strong connections between hip-hop lyricism and Arabic's heritage of poetry. For centuries, writers who mastered the art of self-expression in Arabic have been folk heroes. According to Joe Namy, a Lebanese-American music producer and a fine-arts graduate student at New York University, that heritage has converged with the current social dimensions in Lebanon.

"Hip hop is becoming more popular now because there's a lot more frustration," he said. "The music lends itself to this need to express yourself. It's a very visual form of expression."

Lebanese hip hop reaches across the sectarian divide as well...RGB is Christian, Hamdan is Druze, and there are others in the hip hop collective 961 Underground – named after Lebanon's country code – who are Muslim.A group that epitomizes that diversity is Katibe 5 (pronounced ka-TEE-bé KHAM-sé), whose members hail from Burj al-Barajneh, a rundown Palestinian refugee camp on the south side of Beirut...

"For sure, that's why the Palestinians choose rap, because they feel they are like the black Americans," OS Loop [of Katibe 5] says. "They feel like the oppressed."

The group's first album, "Ahlan fikun bil Mukhayamat," ("Welcome to the Camps") was released last year. It tackles social issues head on – and aggressively...

OS Loop follows the American rap scene closely. His favorite artists are KRS-One, Wu Tang, and Paris...

OS Loop recalls a concert American superstar 50 Cent put on in Beirut in 2006, before the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon that killed more than 1,200 Lebanese. A native of Queens, New York, 50 Cent often raps about how he survived being shot nine times. But OS Loop isn't overly impressed with that – or the commercial turn that 50 Cent's music has taken.

"Now Snoop is coming, and Akon is coming [to Lebanon], but for me they are all commercial," he says. "I wish 50 Cent stayed in Lebanon for the war," he adds with a laugh. "I wanted to tell him what's the true meaning of gangsta."

Ahmad Zahir, the Afghan Elvis

"The Afghan Elvis 'Lives' 24 Years After His Death," by Amy Waldman, New York Times, March 20, 2003.



...like the real Elvis, to whom, with his black hair, sideburns and wide-collared shirts, he bore passing resemblance, his popularity has endured, his legend magnified...

the singer set great Persian poets like Rumi, Hafiz, Maulana Jami; the Afghan poet Khalilullah Khalili; and traditional folkloric songs, to music. He sang of love, pain and God. Never formally trained as a musician, he played the accordion, the piano, the organ, and the guitar and he absorbed the Western music spilling from radios in the 1960's and 70's. Some songs sound, instrumentally at least, vaguely like the Beatles or surf music.

He recalls a freer prewar Afghanistan when girls could rush the stage to grab his half-drunk soda, when women named a popular dress fabric ''Hair of Ahmad Zahir.''

He also reflects an Afghanistan that was far less ethnically polarized than it is today. An ethnic Pashtun who sang mostly in Dari, he won fans in all ethnic groups...

Mr. Zahir died in 1979 on his 33rd birthday. He was ostensibly killed in a car accident, but no one here believes there was anything accidental about it. Some say he was murdered by the family of his first wife [the NYT subsequently ran a correction, the rumor was about wife #2] in revenge for her death; after an unhappy marriage, he had been accused of her murder and briefly jailed.

Others say he refused to sing at the wedding of the Afghan Communist prime minister's daughter and paid with his life. Mr. Muhammad subscribed to this version but added the perhaps crucial detail that Mr. Zahir had chosen a song that displeased the Communists by suggesting that Afghanistan was living in slavery.

Zahira Zahir [Ahmad's sister] said the truth was simple and sordid. He was too independent for the Communists. They lured him out of Kabul, then shot him in the head.

I can't find anything on youtube that even vaguely suggests a stylistic connection to Elvis. I guess it's mainly the sideburns. And maybe the fact that Zahir died not too long after Elvis? However, Zahir put out 22 albums, so maybe someday I'll find those songs that sound vaguely like the Beatles or surf music.