mepop

Soap Kills, Qalbi (with English subtitles)

2011-12-15T23:15:00.000-06:00

Great song, essential band. Typically described as "Lebanese trip-hop." The two members of the band, Zeid Hamdan and Yasmine Hamdan, have been working on solo projects since the mid-aughties. It's unclear whether or when they will get back together. In the meantime, check this out.

Galeet Dardashti

2011-11-30T21:20:00.001-06:00

Galeet Dardashti's website is here.

Music, bio, programs, schedule...

Rabbi Haim Louk sings piyyutim and Andalousian

2011-11-30T21:08:00.001-06:00

Recorded in Los Angeles, where Haim Louk formerly served, and backed by the Orchestre Andalou de Rabat. Presently Haim Louk resides in Israel. He was a protegé and pupil of the celebrated Moroccan Andalousian master, Abdessadeq Cheqara.

Here, Haim Louk doing Andalousian, backed by the same orchestra, but on a later occasion. I guess recorded in Morocco?

More great concert footage of Haim Louk can be found here.

Footage of Cheikh Raymond Leiris

2011-11-30T20:52:00.001-06:00

The original footage is from Algerian television, from the colonial era, which began broadcasting in 1957. The colonial authorities broadcast Arab musicians (in an attempt to co-opt them), particularly on the show, "Rythmes et Chansons," which ran from 1958 to 1962. It seems to have been broadcast in France, on a show that featured Enrico Macias (born Gaston Ghrenassia), who was Cheikh Raymond's protegé, and his father, the violin player Sylvain Ghrenassia, a member of Cheikh Raymond's troupe.

The title of the video is, of course, all wrong. Cheikh Raymond was not Amazigh (Berber), but an Algerian Jew.

Moshe Habusha, Piyyut (Religious Devotional Poem), to the tune of Um Kulthum's "Al-Ward al-Gameel"

2011-11-30T20:32:00.000-06:00

Read about the remarkable Jerusalem cantor and payy'tan (one trained in the art of singing piyyutim) Moshe Habusha here.

A first-rate study of the piyyutim (and bakashot) is Kay Kaufman Shelemay's Let Jasmine Rain Down.

Five Sufi Hadras in Egypt

2011-11-21T22:38:00.000-06:00

Here is footage of five Sufi hadras, courtesy ethnomusicologist Michael Frischkopft, filmed 1996-1998.

Five Sufi hadras: Sufi chanting in Egypt 1996-1998 from Michael Frishkopf on Vimeo.

This is extremely useful, especially because Michael translated the lyrics of the chants.

The most interesting footage, to my mind, is that of the munshid Shaykh Yasin al-Tuhami, who is simply terrific, and is a real superstar in Egypt. Thousands and thousands of people show up whenever he performs. I've seen him perform twice at mulids in Cairo, and once at the Festival of Sacred Music in Fez. I highly recommend the one CD of Shaykh Yasin that is available in the US, The Magic of the Sufi Inshad. He has released many, many cassettes in Egypt, many of which I purchased when I live there. I assume that they are now available there on CD.

Ziad Hamdan / ShiftZ

2011-11-12T00:36:00.000-06:00

Please check out Ziad Hamdan (ex-Soap Kills) and his band ShiftZ on ReverbNation. Music to listen to and videos to watch. Esla7hat featuring Maryam Saleh is especially terrific.

Dana International, "Saida Sultana" with Ofer Nissim

2011-10-31T10:33:00.000-05:00

Yaron Cohen's career took off in Israel, and the Dana International character was developed, when Ofer Nissim dreamed up a drag scenario in which Yaron performed as Whitney Houston, singing her 1991 hit “My Name Is Not Susan,” in Arabic, in a concert in Saudi Arabia. Yaron/Dana's camp-Arabic version was called “Saida Sultana,” and in the chorus, she screams “My name is not Sa‘īda!” The song was her first cult hit on the Israeli drag circuit.

113 feat. Rida Taliani, "Partir Loin" (rai 'n' b)

2011-10-31T10:27:00.000-05:00

From the 113 album, 113 Degrés (2005). Rapping on this song is done by Rim'K.

Lyrics (from here)

Reda
-Ouais gros!!
-elle est où Joséphine!
-allez laissez moi de toi!
-ah bon c'est comme ça!
-mat hanich!
-113 Taliani!
-c'est bon!

refrain:
(Reda Taliani)

Yal babour ya mon amour
Khalejni mel la misere
Fi bladi rani mahboure
Aite aite ou j'en ai marre
Matrabish vocation
Fi dari sa fait montemps
Hada nessetni qui je suis
Nkhdem aali a jour nuit
Yal babour ya mon amour
Khalejni mel la misère
Evasion spéciale L'Algérie l'occidentale

rim-k:
Moi je suis de kabylifornie
On fumait 350 benji
Sur les bords de la corniche
Habsini maalich
Rien a perdre Rim-k le malade mentale
plus connu que le hadj memba
Jvoudrais passé le hénné a ma bien aimée
Avant que je taille
Comme Cheb Hasni jsui sentimentale
Partir loin,rien a perdre
C'est Boston ou la cheba
Laissez moi de toi
Comme Robinson sur une ile
Mon mouton je l'apellerai Mercredi
Dès que l'avion atterie
Comme les chibanies jvou rends la carte de residence
Un moment d'évasion ya yma leve toi et danse

Réda taliani:
ça fait plaisir

Refrain :Reda taliani
Yal babour ya mon amour
Kharejni mel la misere
Fi bladi rani mahggoure
Aite aitou j'en ai marre
Matratish l'occasion
Fi dari sa fait longtemps
Hada nessetni qui je suis
Nkhdem aali a jour nuit
Yal babour ya mon amour
Khalejni mel la misère
Evasion spéciale L'Algérie l'occidentale

Jreste bledard, debrouillard
Jtannonce ammene moi loin de la misere
Mon + fidele compagnon en route pour l'elolado
Tellement plein c'est quoi dirou lsac a dos
Partir loin sans les cousin
Le plein toujour les carages c'est dur
Jme considère chanceux d'etre en vie
Pourvu que sa dur
J'ai grandis qu'avec des voleurs
Du haut toujours les youyous qui résonne
Dans ma tete etre a la quete du bonheur

Reda Taliani:
Yal bledi nti fik el khir
Nedi elii hanousse zhar ya aachlei
Andou lktef wou tzidi loul baloul bahr

Refrain : Reda taliani
Yal babour yamon amour
Kharejni mel la misere
Fi bladi rani mahggoure
Aite aitou j'en ai marre
Matratish l'occasion
Fi dari sa fait montemps
Hada nessetni qui je suis
Nkhdem aali a jour nuit
Yal babour ya mon amour
Khalejni mel la misère
Evasion spéciale L'Algérie l'occidentale

R2da Taliani
Yal babour ya mon amour
Kharejni mel la misere
Fi bledi rani mahggoure
Aaite aaitou j'en i marre
Matratish l'occasion
Arwah arwah c'est le moment
Hada nessetni qui je suis
Nkhdem aali a jour et nuit

Yal babour ya mon amour
Kharejni mel la misere
Fi bledi rani mahggoure
Aaite aaitou j'en i marre
N'sacrifie wine dire
Nta rouhi ntala wilili chah

Rim-k:
Algéri,Maroc,Tunisie
Viens jt'enmmene vien vien
(Taliani : ya yaaaa Yaaaa,ya Wouldi Ya Wouldi,wouldi)
Laissez moi de toi ! rraaay
VIVe la J.S.K
MAGHREB UNITED
Algérie, Maroc, tunisie réuni fi
Maghreb United
Partit Loin,

pour fuir les problemes qu'on a dans la tete mec !
Farid Williams o clavier, Rachid le toulousain o percus,
Maghreb United !

Cheikha Rabia Live

2011-10-31T10:14:00.000-05:00

CHEIKHA RABIA Live from Dinamyte on Vimeo.

Here's what Amazon.Fr says about Cheikha Rabia, regarding her 2007 release, Liberti:

En ce temps-là, le long des plaines riches en vignobles de l'Oranie, la vie n'était pas si belle, mais le soleil était plus brûlant qu'aujourd'hui. Le jour, des troubadours, sous une chaleur accablante et une poussière âcre, hantaient les souks de leurs refrains, contant leur quotidien, dont même un chien ne voudrait pas, juste sauvé par le gong du tempo. La nuit, à la fraîche, les chants deviennent encore plus gris, lors de gasra (veillées entre hommes, animées par des femmes-maîtresses), où la danse fi nissait par l'emporter sur l'apitoiement sur son sort. Leur musique était estampillée gharbi (l'ouest en arabe) et repose sur une dizaine de modes, baptisés le plus souvent du nom de la région d'origine et se jouait sur cinq rythmes différents : le tenqar (lent, sorte de blues calqué sur le pas de chameau), le hamza (un peu plus vif), le alaoui (très rapide et générateur d'une danse aux confi gurations fascinantes), le guebli (montagnard, léger) et le taoussi (imitant la démarche du paon). C'est à ce trab (terre, terroir...), comme l'on nomme le raï des racines, et à sa verve poétique sauvegardée par la tradition orale, que Cheikha Rabia, est restée fi dèle. Elle l'illustre, à l'enseigne de cet album, par une voix pathétique et des complaintes narrant, sur fond de gasba (fl ûte de roseau) et de guellal (percussion longiline),des histoires d'amours contrariées, des rêves d'évasion ailleurs pour échapper à la solitude et à la détresse morale et sexuelle, ou le destin, parfois tragique, de femmes trahies par leurs sentiments. A côté de ces histoires d'amour qui fi nissent mal en général, on sent parfois poindre une lueur d'espoir ou une profonde nostalgie. Née il y a un peu plus de cinquante ans à Relizane, une ville des plaines oranaises, Rabia n'a pas eu une vie facile. Après la Première Guerre Mondiale, son père, qui a combattu pour la France, revient avec deux pieds en moins, puis il meurt, bien des années plus tard, en 1954, en laissant neuf enfants. Une tante férue de raï les prend en charge. En 1962, Rabia, âgée de 16 ans, entre dans la vie professionnelle comme secrétaire auprès d'un médecin français mais, à l'heure de la sortie, elle se mêle aux spectateurs des fêtes de mariages et de circoncisions animées par les meddahates (ensembles exclusivement féminins). En 1965, elle se produit elle-même dans un café algérois, puis dans quelques boîtes où elle se fait un petit nom. En 1977, elle débarque à Paris où elle ouvre un bar qu'elle tiendra jusqu'en 1988. Au cours de la même période, elle enregistre plusieurs cassettes, avec la complicité des musiciens Baghdad Saïdi et Abdallah Relizani, sans pour autant arriver à se faire entendre. Il est vrai que le raï électrique des Cheb, mais aussi la présence de Cheikha REMITTI tenaient le haut de l'affi che. Cheikha Rabia, qui a introduit des choeurs féminins dans ses chansons, va enfi n trouver quelques oreilles attentives au Bédjaïa Club, le dernier lieu mythique parisien où l'on peut encore écouter du trab. Aujourd'hui REMITTI n'est plus (elle nous a quittés en mai 2006) et Cheikha Rabia perpétue seule un genre « habité », en voie de disparition dans sa terre d'origine. En son coeur et ses chansons brûle un feu qui ne s'éteindra jamais, celui de la passion pour un style à la fois hors mode et à la mode.

Breaking News, Tamer Abu Ghazaleh

2011-06-18T18:06:00.004-05:00

I love this song by Palestinian artist Tamer Abu Ghazaleh. I wish I had time to make an effort to translate. But here are the first two lines:

إلى كل الجعانين من تشيلي للصين
هناك أكل مجاني في أرض فلسطين

To all the hungry, from Chile to China/There's free food in the land of Palestine.

Tamer describes himself as follows: "A composer of alternative Arabic music, and an Oud, Buzuq, and vocal performer. The lyrics in his compositions are in formal (fus-ha), Palestinian, or Egyptian dialect, written by himself or by Arab poets. The lyrics, in general, are not directed towards a specific theme; they express an array of human experience that is not defined by time or place: love, challenge, insecurity, boredom, thrill, frustration, etc."

To learn more about Tamer and to listen to more of his music, go to his Myspace page.

Egyptian Sha'bi for the revolution

2011-06-18T18:03:00.001-05:00

Here's a quite wonderful song, in the sha'bi vein, from Mona Liza.

Somebody: please translate.

Khaled Mattawa on Libyan music

2011-06-17T21:44:00.004-05:00

Khaled's article recently published by The Daily Beast, "Libya's Explosive Music Revolution," is really invaluable. Links to lots of important youtube clips of Libyan singers, like Nasser al-Mezdawi and Ahmed Fakroun.

The Nasser al-Mezdawi vid is for a song called "Shantat Safar." Please go here (to my blog Kanz al-Tuhaf) for a different, and I believe, the original version of the song, provided to me by a Libyan friend.

Libyan Merskawi Music: 'Abd al-Jalil 'Abd al-Qadir

2011-06-17T20:59:00.002-05:00

Khaled Mattawa tells us that Merskawi music was one of two styles of urban music to emerge in Libya in the 1970s. Merskawi's "conventional lyrics and traditional rhythms along with the hard living of its singers made it the favored sound among the young and disaffected. Singing mainly at private gatherings, Merskawi performers commanded top dollar, as well as the commensurate supply of local moonshine and hashish, which were all happily provided to them even in conservative Libya."

Also courtesy Khaled, I learned of a fantastic Libyan Merskawi artist, 'Abd al-Jalil 'Abd al-Qadir. Please check him out. The performance reminds me a bit of Pakistani qawwali. It's partly the presence of the accordion, but it's also the relaxed feel, the spontaneity, the fact that the musicians are seated, and the length of the song. Below is part one of the song راد الله عليا. Please check out part two as well. It's really fabulous. Such a find!

R.I.P. Dimi Mint Abba

2011-06-17T18:42:00.002-05:00

Dimi Mint Abba, Mauritania's best-known singer (at least abroad), passed away in early June. Read Robin Denselow's obit in The Guardian here. And check out this brilliant live performance. R.I.P.

Mustapha Bakbou, live at Mawazine festival, 2011

2011-06-05T13:56:00.003-05:00

Yes, this is 'festivalized' Gnawa music. But it's one of the grand masters (m'allims) of Gnawa, Mustapha Bakbou (a.k.a. Baqbou), in great form. It's not a jam with foreign musicians. The accompanying percussion and electric bass for the most part firm up rather than overshadow the beats of the qraqeb and Bakbou's guinbri playing. The filming is crisp and the sound is excellent. Highly recommended. Although going to a lila is better, always. But not usually possible.

Highly recommended-- Houria Ivanan: Pop music From Kabylia

2011-04-25T22:23:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Abdellah, I just learned about the music blog Cartilage Consortium. They have many interesting tracks of Middle Eastern pop music to download. Check out the most recent post, with two tracks from 1984, from Houria Ivanan, an early pseudonym for Nora At Brahim. Great stuff!

Hussein Barghouthi and Sabreen

2011-04-16T12:02:00.002-05:00

Short doc on poet and Sabreen lyricist Hussein Barghouthi. Notable especially for footage in the beginning of Sabreen in concert. Footage must date from the early 80s?

Lebanese rap group Fareeq al-Atrash

2011-04-15T20:45:00.003-05:00

Some great beatboxing here. The group help raise money for the Free Gaza Movement, below. Love the use of the live instruments.

A review of Fareeq al-Atrash's album "Fareeq al-Atrash (pre-album) + a link to download is here. More on the group from BabelMed here.

Speed Caravan Live, feat. Mehdi Haddab on oud, "Galvanize"

2010-11-24T11:49:00.002-06:00

JEREMIX / SPEED CARAVAN from JEREMIX on Vimeo.

Great 'ud playing from Speed Caravan's Mehdi Haddab, ex-Ekova, and currently also 1/2 of DuOud. The percussionist, Mohamed Bouamar, formerly played with Natacha Atlas.

Mambo al-Sudani, Sayyid Khalifa

2010-10-20T23:11:00.002-05:00

From the film, Tamr Henna, starring Naimah Akif and Rushdi Abazah.

Ali Hassan Kuban vids

2010-10-20T22:47:00.002-05:00

In Abdeen and in his club.

In concert, in the seventies?

Karam Mourad, "Assaramessuga"

2010-10-20T22:33:00.002-05:00

Karam Mourad is the nephew of Hamza El Din, and here he performs a song by his uncle.

Take Away Show _ KARAM MOURAD (outtake) from Vincent Moon / petites planetes on Vimeo.

More Hamza El Din

2010-10-19T10:20:00.002-05:00

"The Wish": for a new Nubia, on the banks of Lake Nasser.

"Ollin Arageed" -- the song he used to perform with the Grateful Dead.

More on the tuffar

2010-09-15T13:03:00.001-05:00

From an essential article, "Hizballah's Domestic Growing Pains," by Marlin Dick, via Middle East Report Online.

On Hizballah and the tuffar:

Meanwhile, Hizballah has largely washed its hands of the tuffar -- outlaws in the northern Bekaa Valley involved in cannabis cultivation. The tuffarhave remained aloof from both the government and Hizballah, having retreated to the outer reaches of Lebanon, where they represent more a voice of protest than a plan of action. The popularity of their cause stems from corruption and waste in the central government, the lack of profitable alternatives to drug farming and the specter of nearly 40,000 outstanding warrants hanging over the heads of Bekaa residents. Hizballah leader Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah has demanded an amnesty or another solution to the warrants issue.

During and after the civil war, Syrian military and intelligence officials managed the unruly clans in the northern Bekaa, whose turf battles had a propensity for violence, and since Syria’s 2005 withdrawal, Hizballah has not filled the vacuum. While continuing to sponsor reconciliation between the area’s clans, it has not acted to end the disturbances once and for all. Hizballah is not pulling the strings of the tuffar movement, but rather eyeing it warily as an offshoot of the network of Bekaa tribes it has yet to fully coopt. Perhaps because of the charged sectarian climate of recent years, the party has not lobbied hard for the canceling of outstanding warrants -- a move that would benefit the Shi‘i community. Meanwhile, Hizballah has refused to condone the acts of violent Shi‘i clan members or criminals, or to protect the mini-industry of car theft centered in the village of Barital. Clashes between the Lebanese army and outlaws have become more frequent since Syria’s withdrawal and Hizballah has generally offered its tacit blessing for army intervention in towns like Baalbek, where clan members have engaged in shootouts in the streets, sometimes with rocket-propelled grenades.

Touffar, "Habr 'Awaraq"

2010-09-06T11:34:00.007-05:00

photo: Sam Tarling

Touffar are a terrific rap group from Ba'albak, Lebanon (I had thought they were Palestinian, but it seems not). I particularly like this song. Unfortunately, I don't have the time (or adequate skills) to try to work on translating and making sense of it, or other Touffar videos (there are lots on youtube). Here's an article in Arabic on the Touffar phenomenon (again, lack of time prevents me from further work.) So this note serves as (a) an expression of my fondness for the song in question (b) a kind of placeholder and (c) hopefully an incitement to someone who knows the dialect well to translate the song into English. The lyrics of the song, helpfully, are present as subtitles in this video.

The first I heard of Touffar (or Tuffar), was from Angry Arab, who wrote this on Nov. 9, 2009:

There is a movement that needs to be covered more in the press. It is the Tuffar movement in the Ba`albak region. Some [c]overage of the movement suffers from prejudices and from stereotypes about them as criminals and drug dealers. Even an article in Al-Akhbar a few months ago did not deviate from that norm. Tafar is being very poor, or penniless. Tuffar characterizes a movement associated with the Ja`far clan in Ba`albak and champions the poor and neglected in the region. It is Shi`ite but not with Hizbullah and not with the Amal movement, the two Shi`ite political groupings in the region. Many in Lebanon blame (often unfairly) the car theft and drug dealings on Tuffar. Tuffar is a lawless movement that champions rebellion against the government, and is more political than often assumes. A supporter sent me rappings by Tuffar which speak to their sentiments and feelings and political expressions. There is this one and this one. Listen carefully to the lyrics. By the way, the Lebanese accent of that region is my favorite accent from Lebanon. It is close to Fusha and I like how they stretch words: so jurd becomes jooord.

And after a little searching, I found a link to an article by Josh Wood on Touffar from Esquire Middle East. You can download it here. I excerpt below some interesting bits.

The disintegration of the legitimate economy means cannabis cultivation, gun-running, banditry and petrol smuggling have become a way of life for many in the [Ba'albeck] region. The illegal economy is complicated by the presence of a highly complicated system of clan politics – which, when combined with a general population that has more guns than the armies of many small nations, often leads to violence.

“Touffar” means outlaws, a reference to the men and women who have resorted to arms to protect their livelihood and land at all costs, both against the Lebanese government and others who wish to impede. It is a culture in the Bekaa resulting from absolute desperation, which the band points to in their music. The other side of the coin is the pride people feel to this region. Their loyalty to the land and to resistance are also major themes in Touffar’s music. This has helped create bridges between their music and unlikely listeners, such as Hezbollah, the Lebanese Party of God...

In Beirut, I finally meet up with Touffar at a currently hip “communist” bar in Hamra that serves up economysized beers at bourgeoisie prices, yet still attracts members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine along with plenty of Che-obsessed youths wrapped in kaffiyas.

Nasserdyn has long hair and a skinny face and enthusiastically talks about the band with good English. The author of most of the band’s lyrics, Jaafar, is slightly bearded and more reserved than Nasserdyn, butting-in at random moments of inspiration. While they are hip hop artists, the guys aren’t wearing bling, baggy clothes or stiff baseball caps. They opt instead for strikingly conventional t-shirts and shorts, making it hard for me to spot them as I walk into the bar. Together, Nasserdyn and Jaafar make up Touffar. They’re hanging out with a member of Katibe 5, a well-known local Palestinian rap group that emerged from Burj al-Barajneh, Beirut’s largest Palestinian refugee camp. The Palestinian refugees, numbering up to four hundred thousand in Lebanon, have a natural kinship in poverty and disenfranchisement with many from the Bekaa Valley.

Jaafar and Nasserdyn cut to the chase and lay out the essence of the group: “Touffar is the way of life that is outside of the law,” Nasserdyn explains. “We are the people the government wants to put in jail, and we don’t want to give ourselves up — we’re like outlaws.” Jaafar and Nasserdyn deny ever running into trouble with the law or engaging in any (really) illegal activities themselves. But they say that they took on the persona of outlaws to give the region a voice. They acknowledge that their spirit of resistance does in fact make them outlaws in the eyes of many, such as the Lebanese state...

Living as outlaws in the Bekaa, according to Jaafar, is “a way of living, because we don’t have another choice.”

“If you want to live, if you want to eat, you have to do certain things,” adds Nasserdyn.

From their brevity – and the angst in their lyrics – it seems that they might actually be the real deal: their way of life is something real and inescapable, not some lifestyle choice or teenage rebellion...

For Jaafar and Nasserdyn, rap has always been about resistance – an out to vent frustrations, to subvert the government and to bring about change. While they insist that their sound is not inspired by anybody in particular, they speak of older American rap music, written by frustrated African-American youth in the ghettos. This was long before before American rap turned more towards lyrics about dollar bills and swimming pools filled with girls in bikinis.

“Rap music is fight music,” explains Jaafar.

While the band repeatedly chastises those who leave the Bekaa, forced to move to Beirut or emigrate abroad due to the poor economic situation, it is ironic to find them in Lebanon’s capital. They assure me that they are only here for their concert and to complete their education and that they still live in Baalbek.

“If there was a university in Bekaa, the government would make sure that it was s***,” says Nasserdyn bluntly.

In the batch of songs they are currently recording, emigration to Beirut by Baalbek’s youth plays a key role. For Touffar, those who abandon the land of the Bekaa and give up the fight to protect the land, are racked up as traitors to themselves and their home. While they understand these motives, the band looks down on those from the Bekaa who take up menial jobs in Beirut (“they deserve a slap in the face every morning,” says Nasserdyn) and also the rogue clan members who have taken to armed robberies in the Lebanese capital.

Beirut bothers them, visibly...

Their song title “Al-Wasakh al-Tijari” or “Commercial Filth” is an Arabic reference to downtown Beirut’s commercial centre, which is called al-Wasat al-Tijari. The lyrics relentlessly attack the development of the city centre by Hariri’s company Solidere and question who benefits from these ventures.

“Our music is not just about Baalbek,” Nasserdyn tells me. “It’s about the people who robbed Baalbek to create this place [Beirut] for kings from Saudi and the Khaleej [the Gulf ].”

“They want to turn Lebanon into a big hotel… And we say that Lebanon isn’t a hotel or a brothel.”

This anti-commercial establishment sentiment spreads further than lyrics. Far from 50 Cent’s “Get Rich or Die Trying” model, Touffar says that they’re not in the business for the money. Given that they’ve refused to record an album onto CD thus far (they spread their songs virally through YouTube and from person to person on mobile phones) this claims might be valid. In their first headline concert in Beirut, the band charged a paltry two dollar entrance fee; just enough to cover overhead costs. If they feel that they have successfully brought about change, they suggest, perhaps they’ll stop rapping. If they start feeling that their music is doing little in the way of change, another path might be in order.

“Right now we are fighting with our lyrics. Maybe later we will fight another way to get our freedom and liberty.” says Jaafar “The real resistance is by bullets.”

Ali* al-Yaghi sits, like he does everyday, in a roadside café next to a grassy park in the relatively upscale Baalbek neighbourhood of Ras al-Ain, gently pulling on a Marlboro Light. A former hash and arms dealer, twenty-year-old Ali is now training to become a Hezbollah fighter and hopes to fight and perhaps become a martyr during the next war with Israel. He differs immensely from the arak-swilling socialist intelligentsia in Beirut, yet he is just as enthusiastic supporter of Touffar and a personification of the group’s lyrics.

“Ibn Baalbek ma yamot” he says upon being asked about the band, before breaking out into an impromptu performance of one of their songs. “The son of Baalbek does not die” — a motto of Touffar that epitomises the spirit of resistance held by the residents of the Bekaa.

We’re sitting under a large portrait of the turbaned and bespectacled Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in yellow chairs...Ali sits with his mobile phone on the table, alternating between Touffar songs and videos of Hezbollah fighters ambushing Israeli patrols...

Ali embodies the Bekaa tragedy that Touffar raps about. After finishing secondary education, he quickly realised that there were few opportunities to work. Like many, he chose to go illicit – selling hashish and guns until he was arrested by Lebanese internal security forces over a year ago. Hezbollah bailed him out. Then they handed him an American-made M-16 and he began training to join the Party of God’s military wing.

In an environment where work is nearly impossible to come by, even for the educated, the modest stipends of Hezbollah’s militia become an alluring factor for those not scooped up in the Bekaa’s illicit economy.

“Only Hezbollah saves Baalbek.” he says. “The only other work is hashish. If the government took care of Baalbek, then people wouldn’t grow hashish. Right now, all we do is sit and wait.”

The café owner looks up from his counter. “Look at Beirut: Saad Hariri p***es money!” he says scathingly, attacking the opulent reconstruction of downtown Beirut.

“We [in Baalbek] love Lebanon, but the state does not love us back. There is only Hezbollah for us here.”

Hezbollah and Touffar are odd bedfellows. While the rappers’ music obviously does not resonate heavily with many in Hezbollah, the message of resistance does. Similarly, Jaafar and Nasserdyn’s self-proclaimed secular attitudes clash heavily with the Islamist oriented mission of Hezbollah, but at the same time, they are fighting the same fight and thus enjoy a heavy following by those who identify with Hezbollah. The first line of their song “Madina al-Shuhada” (“City of the Martyrs”) gives light to the attraction: “The road to Jerusalem begins in the city of the martyrs (Baalbek).”

Yet Touffar is not a group of Hezbollah rappers. Nor are they socialists or gangsters or any other adjective that could be thrown in front of them. They are young, they are angry and they are very proud of their hometown, a city that was once an axis of empires, now fallen into disrepair. They tell me not to expect to see them on MTV or to see their albums on the Billboard charts. They just want to get their message out, they want to show the realities of life on the ground in the Bekaa and make their lives and the lives of those around them just that little bit better.

Again, inshallah someone will do more on this. If you check out the Touffar vids, you will see lots of shots of hashish plants. The Beqa'a Valley, where Ba'albak is located, is renowned for its hashish. (It's where "Lebanese blonde" comes from. You know, of course, the Thievery Corporation song by that name.) Conditions of production are pretty rough.

Zaid Hamdan & The Wings, Digla, Laal

2010-09-03T22:31:00.009-05:00

I was recently blown away by three great rock songs from the Middle East and South Asia, so I thought I would share.

1. Zeid & the Wings, "General Suleiman."

Zeid Hamdan was formerly in the fabulously terrific Lebanese band Soapkills, described by many as "Lebanese trip-hop." Zeid & the Wings is his new project. This song is so catchy and fabulous.

I can't get all the lyrics, but they include lines like "all the militias go home," "foreign intelligence go home," and so on.

Read more about the song here. And check out this episode of The Monocle for a long interview with Zeid (in English) and several of his songs.

2. Digla, "Highlights."

This is such a catchy pop-rock song. If the world were fair, it would be on the charts in the US and elsewhere. At first brush, you wouldn't imagine that it came from Cairo, Egypt. What I especially like about it is that it is not only Top 40 material (in a good way) but that it also expresses its Egyptianness in a seamless manner. About 1 minute into the song, the singer breaks into Arabic, singing "ya layl" (oh night, a stereotypical phrase of the Arab mawwal), with the added percussive backing of a tambourine (daff) and the derbouka--which also are shown in the video. The "Arabic" elements are integrated seamlessly, however, they don't break the rhythm or the feel of the song at all. You don't get any feeling of "hybridity" here, no sense of "East" and "West" being harnessed together. It just all works as a rock song.

I've not listened carefully to the lyrics, but these have their local flavor as well. One of the lines is about the juxtaposition of a donkey cart parking beside a tourist bus.

The video is terrific too, typical scenes of Cairo, but happy, upbeat ones. Just like the song. Some day, a group from Lebanon or Egypt will make it onto the Western rock charts, without the artists having to move to London or Paris or New York. The talent is certainly there.

3. Laal, "Doob Gaya Hai" (song for Pakistani flood victims)

I've written about this leftist Pakistani folk-rock group at hawgblawg. Just check out the remarkable images, which give you some ideas of the unimaginable devastation and suffering that have been wreaked upon the Pakistani people by the recent floods. If you feel so inclined, here are some ways that you can help.

Here are some recommended avenues for making donations:

Relief4Pakistan

Via the US government, if you are so inclined. It's easy, text "SWAT" to 50555 and make a $10 contribution that will help provide tents, clothing, food, clean drinking water, and medicine to people displaced by floods.

The Nation magazine offers an array of ways to help, in this article by Pete Rothberg.

Zar music in Egypt: al-Mazaher and Rango

2010-07-07T12:27:00.013-05:00

The zar cult is widely practiced in Egypt, the Sudan, and coastal East Africa. Anthropologists of the Middle East are familiar with it through the work of IM Lewis' classic Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession (originally published in 1971) and Janice Boddy's Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan (1989). The practices associated with the cult involve possession by spirits who then must be propitiated in ceremonies that involve the playing of music. The zar cult bears a family resemblance to the Gnawa cult of Morocco.

Although the cult is quite common in Egypt among the lower classes, and especially in Southern Egypt and among descendants of immigrants from the Sudan, at the time I lived in Egypt its rituals were pretty much in the shadows, as far as I can tell. I knew a student at AUC, Hager El Hadidi, who was doing research on the amulets associated with the ritual. Here's an example of a zar amulet, depicting one of the zar spirits, Yawri Bey, as an army officer.

Photo: Sigrid van Roode, from Bedouin Silver, with permission

Hager never got me to a zar ritual, and I don't know anyone who went during the time I spent in Cairo. In this regard, the zar was very different than the Gnawa cult in Morocco, where it is not hard to get into a lila, an all-night Gnawa ceremony, if you have the right contacts. Moreover, the music associated with the Gnawa is very well known in Morocco. In the 1970s the Gnawa ritual, music, and practitioners were quite marginalized; today Gnawa is at the center of Moroccan popular culture. The annual Gnawa festival in Essaouira is the country's biggest festival.

It appears, however, that things are changing for the zar in Egypt, and it is becoming more publicly visibile, as a musical, and ritual, practice.

First, through the appearance of a group from Cairo, al-Mazaher, that performs zar music in public. It appears that the main space where it performs is Makan, a performance space established by the Egyptian Center for Culture and Arts (ECCA) in Sayyida Zaynab, a popular quarter close to downtown Cairo. In addition to zar music from al-Mazaher, Makan has featured Nubian music (from famed Nubian musician Sayed al-Gayer) and baladi music from Mawawil. Here's a video of al-Mazaher at Makan:

And here's another, of al-Mazer performing with Oficina Zoè, from Salento, Italy.

And here's a brief clip featuring dancing to the accompaniment of the tanbura (or simsimiyya), a six-stringed lyre, which, in the zar ritual, is supposed to bring down the spirits, much as the ginbri does in the Gnawa ritual. The dancer is wearing a a percussive instrument called the mangour, a leather belt sewn with numerous goat hooves.

Rango is a related genre of music, played at ceremonies that closely resemble the zar. The chief difference seems to be that rango is specific to descendants of Sudanese immigrants to Egypt and that the chief instrument is the rango, a xylophone made of wood. The wooden blocks of the xylophone are attached to gourds, the vehicles through which the spirits manifest themselves and enter the devotees of the cult, when the music is performed at rituals.

The last (apparently) surviving rango musician, Hassan Bergamon, was "rediscovered," after the screening of a documentary on rango on Nile TV in the '90s. He has formed an ensemble, called Rango, and the group has been performing in Egypt and abroad, and the group recently released an album, called Bride of the Zar.

Here's a photo of Bergamon and his rango.

You can read more about the group, and listen to samples of the songs, at the group's website, here. The samples are quite interesting, and two of them resemble Gnawa music: track one, "Sawakin," and track four, "Ahlan be etlat asyad" (welcome to the three lords). The playing on the tanbura sounds like the ginbri, and the singing resembles that of the Gnawa. And track four, a song that, I guess, welcomes the coming of three of the spirits or djinns, would appear to be like the Gnawa songs that welcome the mluk, and in particular, the song "Merhaba."

And check out the videos of the group on youtube, accessible through the group's website. I particularly like this one, "Major."

Go here for another article about Rango, from the magazine Prospect. The author is incorrect about the "lost Sudanese tribal language called Rotana." Rotana is the colloquial name that Egyptians gave to the two Nubian languages, Feddika and Kenuzi. These languages are by no means lost, but are spoken by thousands, maybe tens of thousands of Nubians.

I find it of note that zar music as well as zar ritual has become much more visible in Egypt at the same time that orthodox Islamic views, which look with great disfavor upon such rituals that involve spirit possession and in which both men and women participate, are on the upswing. Stay tuned.

Added July 8:

Check out this account of Rango's concerts in Bradford and Selby, courtesy of the invaluable blog, Tales from Bradistan.

It states that all the members are of Nubian background. Given rango's origins in Sudan, this of course makes sense, and also makes sense of the fact that Prospect (see above) refers to lyrics in Rotana, the name Egyptians in the past used to describe the two Nubian languages. It means "gibberish," and is derived from the verb ratana (رطن).

It means, "to speak an unintelligible language, to talk gibberish, jabber" (Hans Wehr). The name reflects the fact that, back in the day, Egyptians considered Nubians to be "primitives." The term is still in use, and I once heard Nubian musician Ali Hassan Kuban use the term to describe speaking Nubian.

Graffiti in Beirut

2010-04-26T10:44:00.001-05:00

Natacha Atlas, "Habibe"

2010-03-25T11:46:00.003-05:00

Here's a quite wonderful track by Natacha Atlas, which I learned about courtesy Neil Sparkes of Transglobal Underground. It's from a 2008 album called Big Blue Ball, put together by Peter Gabriel from sessions recorded between 1991 and 1995 at Real World Studies, with the participation of lots of world music artists. Neil Sparkes appears on this track, as does the ubiquitous Hossam Ramzy. I especially like the violin playing that you hear in the opening. Check it out.

Lebanese rap from the Christian Science Monitor

2009-12-28T11:51:00.002-06:00

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

2009-12-28T11:21:00.003-06:00

"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.

Rai 'n' B

2009-04-13T09:38:00.003-05:00

I found this vid through this article from The Fader. (Some of the youtube vids have been taken down, and none of the vids are official except the one I've reproduced above, but the music is great.)

Jace Clayton describes the song as follows:

One of the collection’s [Urban Rai 2008] most popular tracks is an omni-genre stormer called Un Gaou a Oran (A Fool in Oran), a collaboration between the Parisian rap crew 113, the Ivory Coast supergroup Magic System and the Algerian crooner Mohammed Lamine. It’s a fantastic, effortless collision of Euro-African styles. A West African guitar melody circles what sounds like a sped-up reggaeton beat, and the song ends up striking a perfect balance between coupé décalé (the popular Ivorian genre pioneered by African expats in Paris) and French club music. That’s “French” as in couscous and post-riot Parisian suburbs – not Serge Gainsbourg or quiche.

Un Gaou a Oran’s YouTube clip boasts over two million views. It’s a joyful pastiche that nods to Mahmoud Zemmouri’s French Muslim slapstick musical film 100% Arabica (whose leads, Cheb Mami and Khaled, each have a few tunes here) as well as the colour-saturated magical whimsy of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie. Whereas the latter’s version of Paris had no black people, the Un Gaou a Oran video is literally crowded with them – as is the song itself, which houses no fewer than four languages.

Listening to this song, a remix of a remix, provides the giddy experience of hearing discrete musical cultures accelerate together to a blur. The exuberant dance groove and torrent of styles are not about complete understanding (the quadrilingual music market ain’t what it used to be). Instead, it’s about creating a space of real, untranslatable difference – and finding shared comfort there. (Of course, it’s also about silly lyrics and physical humour.)

This is the same sort of space referred to by the title’s use of the word “urban”: a cosmopolitan space where foregrounded otherness doesn’t lead to exclusion. 113, Magic System, Lamine and their countless fans are moving beyond France’s cherished fraternité into al-ikhaa’ and badeya. True multiculturalism isn’t about fusion — that World Music buzzword of the Nineties. It’s about transforming cultural and sonic friction into useful heat.

This is from Clayton's review of two recent rai compilations, which sound essential, and which you must get hold of. I plan to.

Amira Kheir: Jazz Sudani Style

2009-04-13T09:10:00.003-05:00

I really know nothing about Amira Kheir. I was turned onto her by Omar, and I really like what she does. It's Sudanese music with a jazz inflection. Very tasteful.

Here's what Amira says about herself and her music on her myspace page:

I am Sudanese – Italian and I have lived in 3 continents through out my life – hence my music is a direct reflection of this multicultural legacy. The North of Sudan, being at the crossroads of Middle Eastern and East/Central African culture has a very particular and ancient musical tradition finding its roots in the Nubian civilisation of my ancestors.

Please give her a listen. Three songs are up as of today, on her myspace page.

Iraqi Jewish musicians, the al-Kuwaiti Brothers

2009-03-21T11:15:00.004-05:00

From the BBC, this wonderful story by Tim Franks, reporting from Jerusalem. South Tel Aviv has a new street, Rechov Ha'achim al-Kuvaiti, or al-Kuwaiti Brothers Street, named after Saleh and Daoud al-Kuwaiti. They were big stars in Iraq before emigrating to Israel. In Israel, they were basically unknown, confined to the Arab-Jewish cultural ghetto. In Iraq, according to Shlomo, Saleh's son, the Kuwaiti brothers music remained massively popular, but without credit being given to them. Today, Daoud's grandson Dudu is reviving and recording his grandfather's and great-uncles music in Israel.

Here is more on the al-Kuwaiti Brothers, from Ha'aretz. In fact, it's a better article than Franks', with more detailed information. We learn that the al-Kuwaitis are today getting much more recognition, in post-Saddam Iraq (Saddam worked hard to have them purged from Iraqi cultural history), in Kuwait, and in Israel. Saleh wrote a song specifically for Umm Kalthoum, "Your Heart is a Rock," and also collaborated with Muhammad 'Abd al-Wahhab.

Daoud & Saleh Al-Kuwaity's album, Their Star Shall Never Fade, produced by Shlomo al-Kuwaiti, is available emusic and iTunes. It's highly recommended. And don't forget the recent release Give Me Love: Songs Of The Brokenhearted - Baghdad, 1925-1929, almost entirely composed of tunes from Iraqi Jewish musicians. Courtesy Damon Albarn's label Honest Jon's.Go here for a useful overview of modern Iraqi music, which includes the al-Kuwaiti brothers in the story.

Hamza El Din video

2008-12-08T13:47:00.001-06:00

This video will serve, for the moment, as a kind of placeholder. In future, hopefully, I'll put up more here about the great Nubian singer and 'ud player, Hamza El Din.

Beirut rappers promote peace, funded by USAID

2008-12-03T19:47:00.004-06:00

Article from today's Daily Star. I don't know the groups, but you have to wonder about Lebanese hip-hop with USAID funding! More cultural diplomacy?

"Beirut hip hoppers sound out the rhythm of peace"
By Raphael Thelen
Special to The Daily Star
Thursday, December 04, 2008

BEIRUT: "Hip Hoppers for Peace" was the slogan under which 11 artists of all political and religious backgrounds met Saturday night at the Student Lounge in Hamra to present and perform songs of their new album "Peace Beats." Lebanon's small but emerging hip hop scene flocked into the apartment-like rooms of Student Lounge, a space dedicated to intercultural understanding and dialogue, to see the latest project of the Permanent Peace Movement (PPM), a Lebanese peace-building NGO.

Supported by the United States Agency for International Development and executed by the members of the PPM, the project aimed to "bring together hip hoppers of different backgrounds and find ways to promote peace," Shant Kabakian, assistant project coordinator of the PPM, told The Daily Star.

"The PPM was born in the midst of the 1975-1990 Civil War, and since then has been dedicated to promoting peace in Lebanon and throughout the whole [Middle East and North Africa] region," added Kabakian, who is a singer and producer himself.

"We had two workshops, both three days long, with people from all religious backgrounds participating," 16-year-old rapper Firas Hassan, aka Oxigene, told The Daily Star, adding that they "talked a lot about peace, and this is reflected in our lyrics."

The result of the collective effort was handed out during the concert in the form of a 14-track album, featuring all artists involved in the workshop, which will be available at Beirut's Virgin Megastores next week. The project featured 11 male and female rappers, of whom most rapped in Arabic, except two who performed in English, one in French and one in Armenian.

Oxigene was the first one to take over the stage and performed his song "Artistic Revolution," calling for peaceful change through diplomatic and economic means.

A couple of songs later the largely male crowd of Lebanese, mostly students, was already smoothly jostling in front of the stage, and the atmosphere began to heat up.

The audience was spared the usual lyrics about crime and sex, and instead was treated to intelligent rhymes and topics that came straight from the heart of artists, like "I-Voice," a duo of Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon, who started rapping in 2001, or "A-Boxx," who has been in the rap game for five years, recording and performing in Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.

A-Boxx's "No Change" kicks off the "Peace Beats" album, with lyrics like: "If I can switch position with rich politicians, I'd twist divisions of all these kids' religions so they could stop making all these sick decisions, quick collisions, leading them to split divisions."

The rappers displayed not only remarkable lyrical skills, but also creativity and a willingness to try out new ideas. One set of songs, for example, was accompanied by a human beatbox, a percussionist and a bagpipe player, while another piece saw a flute on stage.

Even if the sound equipment was not 100 percent professional, the endless rotation of artists on stage made up for it with their spirit and ability to improvise. Toward the end, the concert turned into a freestyle session, which gave everybody a chance to show her or his rap technique and lyrical talents to the steady flow of the two talented beatboxers.

The concert stood up to its name "Peace Beats," by not only raising hopes that there is a future for hip hop in Lebanon, but also for peace among its people.

Saudi Girl Rock Band, The Accolade

2008-11-28T11:54:00.003-06:00

New York Times, November 24, 2008
JIDDA JOURNAL
As Taboos Ease, Saudi Girl Group Dares to Rock
By ROBERT F. WORTH
JIDDA, Saudi Arabia

They cannot perform in public. They cannot pose for album cover photographs. Even their jam sessions are secret, for fear of offending the religious authorities in this ultraconservative kingdom.

But the members of Saudi Arabia’s first all-girl rock band, the Accolade, are clearly not afraid of taboos.

The band’s first single, “Pinocchio,” has become an underground hit here, with hundreds of young Saudis downloading the song from the group’s MySpace page. Now, the pioneering foursome, all of them college students, want to start playing regular gigs — inside private compounds, of course — and recording an album.

“In Saudi, yes, it’s a challenge,” said the group’s lead singer, Lamia, who has piercings on her left eyebrow and beneath her bottom lip. (Like other band members, she gave only her first name.) “Maybe we’re crazy. But we wanted to do something different.”

In a country where women are not allowed to drive and rarely appear in public without their faces covered, the band is very different. The prospect of female rockers clutching guitars and belting out angry lyrics about a failed relationship — the theme of “Pinocchio” — would once have been unimaginable here.

But this country’s harsh code of public morals has slowly thawed, especially in Jidda, by far the kingdom’s most cosmopolitan city. A decade ago the cane-wielding religious police terrorized women who were not dressed according to their standards. Young men with long hair were sometimes bundled off to police stations to have their heads shaved, or worse.

Today, there is a growing rock scene with dozens of bands, some of them even selling tickets to their performances. Hip-hop is also popular. The religious police — strictly speaking, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice — have largely retreated from the streets of Jidda and are somewhat less aggressive even in the kingdom’s desert heartland.

The change has been especially noticeable since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the Saudis confronted the effects of extremism both outside and inside the kingdom. More than 60 percent of Saudi Arabia’s population is under 25, and many of the young are pressing for greater freedoms.

“The upcoming generation is different from the one before,” said Dina, the Accolade’s 21-year-old guitarist and founder. “Everything is changing. Maybe in 10 years it’s going to be O.K. to have a band with live performances.”

Dina said she first dreamed of starting a band three years ago. In September, she and her sister Dareen, 19, who plays bass, teamed up with Lamia and Amjad, the keyboardist.

They were already iconoclasts: Dina and Dareen wear their hair teased into thick manes and have pierced eyebrows. During an interview at a Starbucks here, they wore black abayas — the flowing gown that is standard attire for women — but the gowns were open, showing their jeans and T-shirts, and their hair and faces were uncovered. Women are more apt to go uncovered in Jidda than in most other parts of the country, though it is still uncommon.

“People always stare at us,” Dareen said, giggling. She and her sister are also avid ice skaters, another unusual habit in Saudi Arabia’s desert.

The band gets together to practice every weekend at the sisters’ house, where their younger brother sometimes fills in on drums. In early November, Dina, who studies art at King Abdulaziz University, began writing a song based on one of her favorite paintings, “The Accolade,” by the English pre-Raphaelite painter Edmund Blair Leighton. The painting depicts a long-haired noblewoman knighting a young warrior with a sword.

“I liked the painting because it shows a woman who is satisfied with a man,” Dina said.

She had thought of writing a song based on “Last Supper” by Leonardo da Vinci but decided that doing so would be taking controversy too far. In Saudi Arabia, churches are not allowed, and Muslims who convert to Christianity can be executed.

Dina held out her cellphone to show a video of the band practicing at home. It looked like a garage-band jam session anywhere in the world, with the sisters hunching over their instruments, their brother blasting away at the drums and Lamia clutching a microphone.

“We’re looking for a drummer,” Lamia said. “Five guys have offered, but we really want the band to be all female.”

Although they know they are doing something unusual, in person the band members seem more playful than provocative. Unlike some of the wealthier Saudi youth who have lived abroad and tasted Western life, they are middle class and have never left their country.

“What we’re doing — it’s not something wrong, it’s art, and we’re doing it in a good way,” Dina said. “We respect our traditions.”

All the members are quick to add that they disapprove of smoking, drinking and drugs.

“You destroy yourself with that,” Lamia said.

Yet rock and roll itself is suspect in Saudi Arabia in part because of its association with decadent lifestyles. Most of the bands here play heavy metal, which has only added to the stigma because of the way some Western heavy metal bands use images linked to satanism or witchcraft. In Saudi Arabia, people are sometimes imprisoned and even executed on charges of practicing witchcraft.

The first rock bands appeared here about 20 years ago, according to Hassan Hatrash, 34, a journalist and bass player who was one of the pioneers, and their numbers gradually grew. Then in 1995, the police raided a performance in the basement of a restaurant in Jidda, hauling about 300 young men off to jail, including Mr. Hatrash. They were released a few days later without being charged. There is no actual law against playing rock music or performing publicly.

“After that, the scene kind of died,” he said.

Mr. Hatrash, who has graying shoulder-length hair, recalled how the religious police used to harass young men who advertised their interest in rock and roll. He once had his head was shaved by the police.

In recent years, with the religious police on the defensive, bands have begun to play concerts, and a few have recorded albums. Occasionally young men bring their guitars and play outside the cafes on Tahlia Street in Jidda, where young people tend to congregate in the evenings.

Although the music is mostly familiar to heavy metal fans anywhere — thrashing guitars and howling vocals — some of the lyrics reflect the special challenges of life and love in this puritanical country.

“And I Don’t Know Why,” a song by Mr. Hatrash’s band, Most of Us, has these lyrics:

Why is it always so hard to get to you

When it’s something we both want to do

Every time we have to create an alibi

So that we can meet and love or at least try...

As the Saudi rock scene grew, Dina gathered the courage to start her own band. It plans to move slowly, she said, with “jams for ladies only” at first. The band members’ parents support them, though they have asked them to keep things low-key. Eventually, Dina said, they hope to play real concerts, perhaps in Dubai.

“It’s important for them to see what we’re capable of,” she said.

Ramadan videoclips: exit the Girls, pump up the Sami Yusuf

2008-02-16T14:39:00.002-06:00

Very interesting post from Ramadan 2006, by Eli Eteraz. I only just found it...

And check out these Haifa Pepsi ads. This one based on her 2007 hit, "Bous El Wawa."

And the "Ana Haifa" one:

Katibe 5: Palestinian rap from the refugee camp of Burj al-Barajneh, Beirut, Lebanon

2008-01-30T21:40:00.000-06:00

Another interesting article about Palestinian rap, this time from Lebanon. I found this in today's Daily Star (Jan. 31, 2008). Go here for an interview broadcast on al-Jazeera English with the group in question, Katibe 5. It's useful because it gives you some idea about conditions in Burj al-Barajneh camp. Go here for a video of the group in concert. A more recent, short clip of the group live (and a better song) than the previous vid, is here.

The sounds of Public Enemy re-routed through Burj al-Barajneh

Five well-read, fast-talking, wisecracking young men are putting the social content and political volume back into hip hop

By Ayman Oghanna

BEIRUT: In the 1980s, hip hop exploded onto the world music scene like a heat-seeking missile. Groups like Public Enemy spat poetic political activism into the formerly apolitical "party music" of their predecessors. In doing so, they gave America's black, poverty-stricken and racially oppressed underclass much more than entertainment.

"Fight the Power," "Don't Believe the Hype," "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" - these were anthems of emancipation, empowerment and education, a lyrical call to arms charged with the poetry of Gil Scott-Heron and the fury of Malcolm X.

Today, however, political hip hop in the United States is as dead as disco. Flip through any of the music channels and a horde of diamond-encrusted children flog you with crass, self-indulgent materialism, vanity-label perfumes and a shopping list of expensive pretty things you will never own.

The articulate activism that once defined the genre has all but disappeared, leaving in its place a grotesque serving of the worst kind of capitalism - a vain, vacuous, self-serving materialism where you either get rich or die trying. Little wonder, then, that one of American hip hop's most successful sons, Nas, entitled his last album "Hip Hop is Dead."

But, then again, don't believe the hype. Hip hop as a political medium is far from dead. Throughout Africa and across the Arab world it is thriving. In particular, young musical renegades from Algeria to Gaza have embraced the genre as an exciting new sociopolitical platform. The subculture of Palestinian hip hop is adeptly captured in Jackie Salloum's critically acclaimed documentary, "Slingshot Hip Hop," which made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, earlier this month. Salloum's film profiles a number of home-grown hip-hop groups, including DAM, Palestinian Rapperz (PR), Arapeyat, Abeer, Mahmoud Shalabi and more.

Another group at the forefront of this musical intifada is Beirut's latest hip-hop sensation, Katibe 5. Refugees straight outta Burj al-Barajneh, these five talented twenty-something MCs are the heirs of Public Enemy and its ilk. As artists who combine Arabic music, political activism, social commentary and, of course, hip hop, they are creating a fresh, dynamic form of political resistance.

Each member of Katibe 5 goes by his chosen nom de guerre. Nadir, or Moscow, is the group's stern-faced, serious and solemn pragmatist. The affable Amro, aka C-4, boasts a confident, extroverted charisma that is nowhere near as menacing as his plastic-explosives nickname would suggest. Katibe 5's resident graphic artist is Tarek "The Butcher" Jazzar. Bobo is quick-tongued and articulate, originally from Sierra Leone. And Yousri, known as Molotov - "Or Molo," he quips, "What name do you want? I've got plenty" - is the joker of the pack.

These eclectic characters have been recording music together since they were 15-year-old mates in a Burj al-Barajneh school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). "No, not a school exactly. It was a small prison," Bobo promptly clarifies.

The group recently signed a deal with Lebanon's Incognito, an upstart record label and independent distributor associated with La CD-Theque, a record shop with branches near Sassine in Achrafieh and the American University of Beirut in Hamra.

"Like the name says, they're not commercial," says Bobo. "They're underground." Katibe 5's first album, "Welcome, My Brother, to the Camps," is due to be released on Incognito in two weeks' time.

The group's music encompasses a variety of subjects, including the conditions of refugee life, corrupt humanitarian aid agencies and non-governmental organizations, Iraq, capitalism, Palestine, the 2007 conflict in Nahr al-Bared and relaxing on a Saturday night. Inspired by the older, more political generation of US hip-hop acts, Katibe 5 shares their same idealism.

"We're the students of Public Enemy," says Bobo. "They succeeded in teaching people and we want to continue this. Our message is sociopolitical. You can't separate the social from the political."

Chatting on the roof of the building in Burj al-Barajneh where Jazzar lives with his family, the members of Katibe 5 converse about politics, philosophy, literature and economics with the same passion and energy they put into their music.

"Have you read Nietzsche?" asks Moscow. "You like Frantz Fanon?" chimes Bobo. "What about Yukio Mishima?" adds Molo. "You don't know Mishima? Kenzaburo Oe then? C'mon, man. You must read Mishima, Oe, all the Japanese writers, man. They're good. They're like this," Molo explains, holding his thumb and forefinger together to create an exact, precise point. "They give the wall its true image."

These well-read, fast-talking, wisecracking, chain-smoking refugees don't present themselves as musicians but rather as Marxist revolutionaries - more PFLP than Notorious B.I.G.

"We are part of a revolution," says Moscow, "a musical revolution. It's happening here and all over the world. We're the adverb. We come before the verb. We're preparing people for action," he says, a Che Guevara bracelet slipping out from under his sleeve to punctuate his revolutionary rhetoric.

Katibe 5 sees itself as being on a genuine musical mission to increase awareness, educate people and instigate global action and resistance.

"We want people to wake up and realize their rights and responsibilities. We want people to realize that companies are trying to control their behavior," says C-4.

The audience that Katibe 5 addresses doesn't only reside in the refugee camps. The group expresses a Trotskyite solidarity for all of the world's oppressed.

As Moscow explains Katibe 5's aims, "We have a responsibility not just to reflect this life. We're not just Palestinian refugees speaking about our problems, or our lives in the camps, because the problems we face are not only a Palestinian problem. All over the world there are people who are oppressed, people who are incarcerated, people who are suffering."

So what or who, in Katibe 5's view, is the cause of this global suffering? "It's the system, man," says Bobo/

"The system" is a recurring bogeyman in Katibe 5's music and ideology: a perceived, pervasive superstructure that keeps people ignorant, poor and backward.

"We're fighting the system," Bobo expounds, "the system that makes people blind, and makes people ignore their rights and responsibilities.

"Look at hip hop," he adds. "The mainstream record companies want to say that hip hop is about cars, b****** and getting money. You should have this, you should have that. You should have a mobile phone because if you don't have a mobile phone, you're not a human. [But] hip hop's not about that."

So what, exactly, is hip hop about, then?

"Hip hop is a weapon for all oppressed people," says C-4.

"Hip hop is a movement," says Bobo. "It has always existed because hip hop is life. From the beginning there were always people living, people suffering. Hip hop is the art of talking, of expressing yourself. Lyrics are its base. You find it in poetry, essays and here in Arabic culture. It has existed from the beginning. As long as people are oppressed and incarcerated they will have something to say."

Illustrating their point, they start free-styling over the camp's background beats: children playing, hammers hammering, the call to prayer coming from a nearby mosque and - this being last Sunday afternoon - the sounds of deadly riots in the Dahiyeh.

"Hip hop is based on the street and so it cannot be anything but political," says Bobo, satisfied with the clarification.

Perhaps it's a reflection of their context, youth or political and musical influences but there is an ominous paranoia undercutting Katibe 5's worldview, as well as an open acceptance of resistance by any means necessary.

"You know what, man?" C-4 warns. "They know what hip hop does to society and they want to kill it and stop its flow."

"You have to fight for your rights," adds Molo. "Peace means politics, politics means negotiations, negotiations are meant to sustain negotiations and not bring a solution. So I say, f*** negotiations, f*** politics and f*** peace."

Putting aside the philosophical musings and antagonistic worldview for a bit, what really counts is the music and, thankfully, Katibe 5's debut album is good, good enough to give some merit to Katibe 5's grand ideas and political pretensions.

The group's sound - a mix of traditional Arabic melodies, rap, beat-boxing, poetry and sampled news footage - is in many ways unique. It's a far cry from the majority of loved-up popular Arabic music and perhaps more importantly, it's enjoyable to listen to. Think Public Enemy with an Arabic twist - loud, satirical, relevant and hard to ignore.

The contrasting voices and styles of the five members complement one another well, and they give the music variety and depth. To be sure, some songs are a little rough around the edges, but that is also part of the appeal. On track after track, Katibe 5's sincerity, raw energy and youthful vigor carry their music. Furthermore, the group isn't afraid to experiment. This gives them the potential to get bigger and better, and to receive the attention they deserve.

But ultimately, they couldn't care less about what other people think. "All that matters is this," insists Molo. "Know your aim in life, do it and then die. There's nothing else. Everything else is emptiness."

Egyptian rock

2008-01-11T11:50:00.000-06:00

Check out this post from hawgblawg.

Omar Souleyman from Sublime Frequencies

2008-01-10T13:18:00.001-06:00

You must check out this videoclip of Syrian singer Omar Souleyman. The great and wackily creative label Sublime Frequencies put out an album from Omar Souleyman last year, but I only just became aware of it. (Sublime Frequencies also released a highly regarded of Saddam-era Iraqi pop and folk music called Choubi Choubi!). I don't really know anything about Omar Souleyman or the genre(s) that he is working in, but trust me, the music on the clip will knock you out. About all I can find about him is what Sublime Frequencies writes on their website, which is reproduced below. Note, however, that it says that Omar Souleyman considers himself a man of integrity. This may be true with regard to his music, but politically? One of the songs on the album is entitled "Bashar Ya Habib al-Sha'b (Bashar, the People's Beloved." Maybe Sublime Frequencies thinks that such adulation of the Grand Leader, Syrian President Bashar al-Asad, is...quaint? Maybe they should consult the Human Rights Watch reports on Syria. Really, they could have left this song off the album.

Other than my "ideological" objection to that song, it is great stuff.

Omar Souleyman is a Syrian musical legend. Since 1994, he and his musicians have emerged as a staple of folk-pop throughout Syria, but until now they have remained little known outside of the country. To date, they have issued more than five-hundred studio and live-recorded cassette albums which are easily spotted in the shops of any Syrian city.

Born in rural Northeastern Syria, he began his musical career in 1994 with a small group of local collaborators that remain with him today. The myriad musical traditions of the region are evident in their music. Here, classical Arabic mawal-style vocalization gives way to high-octane Syrian Dabke (the regional folkloric dance and party music), Iraqi Choubi and a host of Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish styles, among others. This amalgamation is truly the sound of Syria. The music often has an overdriven sound consisting of phase-shifted Arabic keyboard solos and frantic rhythms. At breakneck speeds, these shrill Syrian electronics play out like forbidden morse-code, but the moods swing from coarse and urgent to dirgy and contemplative in the rugged anthems that comprise Souleyman's repertoire. Oud, reeds, baglama saz, accompanying vocals and percussion fill out the sound from track to track. Mahmoud Harbi is a long-time collaborator and the man responsible for much of the poetry sung by Souleyman. Together, they commonly perform the Ataba, a traditional form of folk poetry used in Dabke. On stage, Harbi chain smokes cigarettes while standing shoulder to shoulder with Souleyman, periodically leaning over to whisper the material into his ear. Acting as a conduit, Souleyman struts into the audience with urgency, vocalizing the prose in song before returning for the next verse. Souleyman’s first hit in Syria was "Jani" (1996) which gained cassette-kiosk infamy and brought him recognition throughout the country. Over the years, his popularity has risen steadily and the group tirelessly performs concerts throughout Syria and has accepted invitations to perform abroad in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Lebanon. Omar Souleyman is a man of hospitality and striking integrity who describes his style as his own and prides himself on not being an imitator or a sellout.

Sublime Frequencies is honored to present the Western debut of Omar Souleyman with this retrospective disc of studio and live recordings spanning 12 years of his career, culled from cassettes recorded between 1994 and 2006. This collection offers a rare glimpse into Syrian street-level folk-pop and Dabke– a phenomena seldom heard in the West, not previously deemed serious enough for export by the Syrians and rarely, if ever, included on the import agenda of worldwide academic musical committees.

Go here for a review of the album from Popmatters.com.

Ten Best of 2007 from Beirut

2007-12-28T16:49:00.000-06:00

This list is from Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, writing in the Daily Star (Beirut), on Dec. 29. The DJ Spooky mix is terrific, and you can download it for free here. In fact, it's mostly African music, with a bit of North African. The Jajouka-Abdel Nasser-Umm Kulthoum segment is particularly fun. I love Nass al-Ghiwane, but I've not heard their new one. I'm familiar with but not wild about Rabih Abu-Khalil, and I've seen Rami Khalife perform with his father Marcel, and heard a couple interesting cuts by him. As for Bikya, you can listen to four of their tracks on their myspace page, and if you've got a myspace account, you can download two of them. I've not listened enough to evaluate them. The other stuff, I've not heard of. Track it down and tell me about it!

DJ Spooky
"Ghost World: A Story in Sound"

Though he is best known for spinning records, DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid started out in the art world and continues to create inventive, cross-disciplinary hybrids that find him wearing the hats of artist, writer and theorist as often as that of the DJ. For the first-ever African pavilion at this summer's Venice Biennale, organized around an exhibition entitled "Luanda Pop," DJ Spooky mined music from across the continent for a seamless, 1-hour, 19-minute and 19-second mix. Masterfully meshed and interlaced selections include Tunisian hip-hop outfit Lotfi Double Kanon and a mind-blowing transition that begins with Morocco's Master Musicians of Jajouka featuring Talvin Singh and mixed with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's "Independence Forever" speech, segues through Duke Ellington's "Afro-Eurasian Eclipse" and end up with a heavy, drum 'n' bass remix of Umm Kulthoum's "Hob Eih." A prodigious adherent of world music in its most contemporary, urban incarnations, DJ Spooky is closely tracking the development of hip hop in the region and has lined up a track featuring Palestinian rappers DAM for his next album.

Nass al-Ghiwane
"Ennehla Chama"

The third album from Moroccan heroes Nass al-Ghiwane since the death of founding member Larbi Batma, "Ennehla Chama" features Rachid Batma, Hamid Batma, Chifaa Abdelkrim and Omar Sayed. Nominated for a 2008 BBC World Music Award, it features the group's characteristic blend of traditional instruments, metaphorical lyrics, rousing rhythms and malhoun, gnawa and chaabi styles.

Bikya
"Betrayal"

The independent record label 100 Copies in Cairo may be the single most exciting experimental musical outfit in the region, and it only got better in 2007 with the release of the first album from Bikya. The group consists of label founder Mahmoud Refat on drums and electronics, Mahmoud Waly on bass and electronics and Maurice Louca on guitar, keyboard and sampler. Their first, untitled album features eight tracks and the first, "Betrayal," is as masterful as Massive Attack circa "Blue Lines." The group performed in Beirut last month at Basement as part of the Meeting Points 5 contemporary arts festival.

Rabih Abou-Khalil
"Songs for Sad Women"

Lebanese oud player and composer Rabih Abou-Khalil released his 19th album this year, the mournful, seven-track sequence that is "Songs for Sad Women." Framing the haunting sound of Gevorg Dabaghyan's duduk, a 3,000-year-old Armenian instrument that sounds like an oboe and looks like a clarinet, Abou-Khalil's latest adds to his impressive eclecticism.

Rami Khalife
Piano Concertos"

Rami Khalife, 25, is nothing if not wonderfully precocious. His third album to date - after "Live in Beirut" and "Scene from Hellek" - is his first recording with an orchestra and features compositions by Prokofiev and Abdallah al-Masri."

Munma
"34 Days" and "Black Tuesday"

The first two albums in a trilogy, "34 Days" and "Black Tuesday" attest to the singular talent of Jawad Nawfal, aka Munma, a name that he refers to as his "resistance moniker." The sounds here are, by turns, beautiful, disturbing, enigmatic and abstract.

Joanna Andraos
"Khimaira"

She's an artist, actress and classically-trained pianist. Joanna Andraos is, piece-by-piece, constructing an entire creative universe around her multidisciplinary efforts. "Khimaira" takes some of the structures, movements and lines of classical music and pushes them into ghostly territory. The results are spare and lush at once.

Lena Chamamyan
"Shamat"

Syrian-Armenian singer Lena Chamamyan's "Shamat" is an album of old folk songs salvaged from obscurity and rearranged with the help of Basel Rajoub, who plays saxophone and trumpet.

Hewar
"Nine Days of Solitude: The Damascus Sessions"

This album, launched during the jazz festival in Syria over the summer, features Kinan Azmeh, Issam Rafea, Manfred Leuchter, Antoin Putz and Dima Orsho. The stunning first track, "Wedding," is grooving, nimble, playful and soulful.

More Palestinian Rap

2007-12-19T22:36:00.000-06:00

This is one of many articles on Palestinian rap, from 2005, but what really struck me was the photo, of one of the rappers from the Gaza rap group R.F.M., in performance.

Acrassicauda, "Iraq's Only Heavy Metal Band"--Now in Turkey

2007-12-06T13:40:00.000-06:00

Here's the latest from the BBC on Iraqi heavy metal band Acrassicauda, until recently in exile in Syria, now in Turkey.

It's quite interesting how much coverage this band has received. No doubt it's largely the novelty factor.

Here's their myspace page (three songs to listen to--no downloads).

There is a new film about Acrassicauda, called Heavy Metal in Baghdad. Check out the preview (and more information) here. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last month.

Go here to listen to an NPR report (June 5, 2007--fortieth anniversary of the June War!). The Wall Street Journal covered the band in August 2004--read an excerpt here.

Saudi Arabia makes first music video

2007-11-12T11:23:00.000-06:00

I missed this report when it first came out in August.

"You Only Have God to Count On" uses upbeat music to tell the story of a successful man who had strayed from the path of true Islam. He smokes, flirts with women even though he's engaged and doesn't join his colleagues at work in performing the five daily Muslim prayers.

Things slowly start to go bad: He has a flat tire and problems at work and his fiancee leaves him when she sees him talking to another woman. He then has a serious accident while recklessly driving his motorcycle. After he recovers, the man starts to pray, stops smoking, wins back his fiancee and excels at work.

Significantly, the man sports a hip goatee and doesn't grow the big, bushy beard favored by fundamentalist Muslims. He still wears T-shirts and jeans and sticks to his old friends, including a man who favors the much-frowned-upon ponytails.

Khalass! - Together to Save Lebanon

2007-11-11T17:02:00.000-06:00

Interesting article from The Daily Star about a concert organized to try to promote dialogue and to downplay sectarianism (leaders of the Khalass! movement don't give family names). Oumayma al-Khalil is renowned as a vocalist who has sung with Marcel Khalife for years. (I think it's Oumayma who is pictured below.)

Open-air concert sends message to politicians
Event aims to stimulate will for consensus
By Dirk Schoenlebe
Special to The Daily Star
Monday, November 12, 2007

BEIRUT: Khalass!, an emergency campaign to awaken Lebanese citizens to the dangers of state collapse and the use of violence, organized a concert in a parking lot on Hamra Street on Friday night. Khalass! - "enough" in Arabic - chose the venue, a parking lot next to Antoine's bookshop and beneath Ta-Marbouta, for its symbolism. A free concert in an open place in a busy quarter of Beirut seemed an appropriate venue to garner interest in their cause.

"Only days away from the election of a new Lebanese president, we want to show the people, that we still can have fun, despite politicians and politics being the number one in every day life," one of the organizers said.

More than 100 supporters and spectators enjoyed the evening with Lebanese musicians Oumayma al-Khalil, Tania Saleh, Hiba Mounzer and the band Blend. People waved from the balconies of neighboring buildings and pedestrians and motorists slowed down and watched with curiosity, some of them holding up traffic in an effort to see what was going on.

The young Lebanese activists in Khalass!, easy recognizable by their white Shirts with the slogan "Khalass! - Together to Save Lebanon," busily explained their aims to the visitors.

"People want stability, security and a national dialogue - that is the least people can ask for," explained Zeina, a senior Khalass! member. "We are here to make this demand publicly."

All the activists refused to be called by their family names "because it is not about us, it is about Lebanon," Zeina said.

She added that the difficult situation in Lebanon should be no excuse for the politicians to further divide the nation.

"Because if there is a will, there is a way," Zeina said, "and we want the politicians to show us that they have the will."

Whoever is selected as the new president, "we will not stop to push them. We don't have the luxury to stop."

Many of the concert-goers agreed with Zeina's sentiments, including Raed, 27.

"We are sick of the whole situation. It is time to tell them," he said.

Many people unfamiliar with Khalass! also filled the parking lot, which was decorated with a huge Lebanese flag. Some were simply attracted by the spectacle.

Nada, 25, who heard the music and came with her sister said, "We are happy for such a public activity in Hamra ... Hamra needs this."

She did not know about the aims of Khalass! but asked for information. So did Hamad, 20, who was on his way to a party when he heard the music.

"I like it," he said. "People have to love Lebanon. All Lebanese people."

Despite the joyful atmosphere, the gravity of the cause was not lost. As Blend front man Jad Souaid said on stage: "If we end this situation, we will be the winners. But if we don't, we will be the biggest losers. All of us."

Michael Frishkopf, Shaykh Yasin al-Tuhami

2007-10-01T10:17:00.000-05:00

Ethnomusicologist Michael Frishkopf, interviewed by al-Ahram Weekly, and speaking very perceptively about the great Egyptian Sufi munshid Sheikh Yasin al-Tuhami. (Frishkopf was doing his dissertation research in Cairo while I was teaching at AUC.)

I've seen Sheikh Yasin perform at mulids a few times in Cairo, and once in Fez, and I've met him thanks to Michael. He is really, really fabulous.

Iranian popular music

2007-09-26T11:18:00.000-05:00

I just found this interesting article (April 22, 2007) from Martin Hodgson about the popular music scene in Iran. I've not heard the bands discussed here--but I've been able to find music from rock band O-Hum (available from emusic for listening and downloading), rap band Hich Kas (download here), and folk singer Mohsen Namjoo. I figure it's something we need to pay attention to, since we may be at war with the country soon. And an alternative image of Iran to circulate.

Algerian Chaabi

2007-09-11T23:09:00.000-05:00

Interesting AFP story about Algerian chaabi, undergoing a kind of revival. I got this from the Daily Star. I'm glad to see that Damon Albarn is involved in promoting this. I met briefly him in 2003 through Anglo-Algerian d.j./producer U-Cef, and it seems that Damon is seriously interested in Arab and especially North African music.

One important dimension of chaabi that the article below fails to discuss is the importance of Algerian Jewish musicians. Luc Cherki, Rene Perez, and Maurice El Medioni, are all Algerian Jews, and are all terrific. Read on!

"Love, loss and mandolins: Algerian folk music goes global"
By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Friday, September 07, 2007

MARSEILLE: Singing tales of love and exile to the trill of mandolins and the beat of Arab percussion, 40 masters of Algerian chaabi, a century-old folk music tradition, have been reunited after decades for a four-nation tour that started on Thursday. Dubbed "El Gusto" - slang for high spirits - the tour is to be followed with an album in October produced by Damon Albarn, lead singer of the British pop band Blur and a long-standing fan of world music, and a film to be released next spring.

It was first dreamt up by Safinez Bousbia, an Irish-Algerian woman, after she was introduced to the genre three years ago by a musician in the Casbah in the Algerian capital Algiers.

Seized with curiosity about the musical tradition, which saw its heyday in Algiers in the 1940s and 1950s, she decided to set out in search of the artists who made it famous.

"I just wanted to put them back in touch. The idea of the film and the album came later," Bousbia says of her project - a North African version of Ry Cooder's mission to reunite the members of Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club.

As with the Cuban adventure, most of the artists involved in the chaabi tour, which kicked off Thursday in the Mediterranean port of Marseille before heading to Paris, London, Berlin and New York, are now in their 70s.

Many of the musicians who flew in from Algiers and Paris for the Marseille concert parted ways four decades ago.

"The greatest pleasure is simply to meet again. It's going to be extraordinary to make music together," says the singer Luc Cherki, who was recently reunited with old friends and fellow musicians Ahmad Bernaoui, Rene Perez, Abdelkader Chercham and Maurice al-Medioni.

Chaabi - which means "popular" in Arabic - first appeared in the late 19th-century, inspired by vocal traditions of Arab Andalusia, the home of Flamenco music.

A typical song features mournful vocals in Arabic set against an orchestral backdrop of a dozen musicians, with violins and mandolins swelling and falling to a piano melody and the clap of percussion beats.

While it shares many themes with flamenco - love, loss, exile, friendship and betrayal - chaabi is part of a deeply conservative tradition, its lyrics often carrying a strong moral message.

"This music is part of the culture of Algiers, it cannot be separated from everyday life there," says Al-Hadi Halo, the show's conductor and son of the pioneering chaabi musician Hadj Mohammad al-Anka.

"Even though it doesn't get a lot of media attention, it is everywhere: weddings, circumcision ceremonies, religious festivals," says Halo, who teaches a new generation of chaabi musicians at the Algiers conservatory.

In recent years, chaabi has been largely overtaken at home by rai, a spicy North African brand of pop music with often explicit references to sex.

The genres overlapped in 1998, when rai superstar Rachid Taha scored a hit at home and abroad with a cover version of "Ya Rayah," a 1970s song about exile by chaabi artist Dahmane al-Arachi, who died in 1980.

Organizers hope the tour will help introduce Algerian chaabi to a wider audience, as "El Gusto" travels from Marseille to Paris on September 29, followed by London on October 10, Berlin on October 31 and New York next year. - AFP

Lebanese "post-punk": Scrambled Eggs

2007-09-02T14:53:00.000-05:00

From the Daily Star, a useful account of one of Lebanon's most prominent rock bands, the post-punk Scrambled Eggs. Go here for some photos of Scrambled Eggs playing last summer at an event called, "Musicians against Monsters," during Israel's murderous bombing campaign. Go here for more info and to listen to a couple of their songs. Their myspace page is here.

The photo of Scrambled Eggs (thanks Jim) is Ousama Ayoub, and from AFP. The caption: Young Lebanese revellers gather inside a bar in the Gemmayze area at the heart of Beirut late 04 July 2007 as part of a campaign to revive night life in the fashionable area not far from where anti-government opposition parties have been camping for the past eight months. Gemmayze, once vibrant with shops and cafes, is now struggling to cope with a drastic fall in passing trade and diving sales. The area has been abandoned by revellers in favour of roof top bars to which Beirutis have flocked for fear of recent bomb at attacks at street level. AFP PHOTO/OUSAMA AYOUB

A luta continua!

Here's the Daily Star article:

"Scrambled Eggs on the back burner: Beirut's post-punk pioneers take five (months or so)
Members will use hiatus for studies in America, possible shows in Europe, new material"
By Bojan Preradovic
Special to The Daily Star
Friday, August 31, 2007

BEIRUT: When the local post-punk outfit Scrambled Eggs took to the stage at Basement last week, it was to play their last show in Beirut for some time to come. The band, made up of vocalist and guitarist Charbel Haber, guitarist Marc Codsi, bassist Tony Aliyeh and drummer Malek Rizkallah, is putting itself on self-imposed hiatus for the next few months, pending Rizkallah's return from studying in the United States.

Scrambled Eggs has been a prominent member of Beirut's alternative rock scene for a solid decade now, and, despite the band members' taking a much-needed break, there seems to be no end in sight as far as their creative antics are concerned.

"The band will pick up again around January," Haber says, "but we may do some concerts in Europe in the meantime."

Haber and his bandmates are generally delighted to offer a long list of obscure, experimental ambient-electro artists as their influences, but they are also equally careful to mention that most of their writing is done through improvisation, evocative of the technique spearheaded by jazz legends such as John Coltrane.

The members of Scrambled Eggs are, however, renowned in Beirut as partisans of now-classic acts such as Sonic Youth, who, among other New York groups in the 1980s, pioneered the so-called "no wave" movement in art and music (a special brand of indie underground music permeated by a re-evaluation of punk rock credos).

The band's love affair with experimentation, improvisation and, more notably, with atmospheric resonance and feedback, seems interminable, at least for the moment. In addition to those shows in Europe, Haber has his record label Those Kids Must Choke to think about, and it is likely Scrambled Eggs will take advantage of some down time to start assembling material for the band's next album.

"I am too busy right now to even think about the label," Haber admits, "but I can do 500 records, and they'll all be the same twisted underground stuff," he says, laughing. "I don't want it to grow beyond that or diversify - that's the spirit of the label and that's what I'm sticking to."

In terms of the band's music, he explains: "We are currently heading in the same direction, but at the same time, we never know for sure where the next album will take us.

"It should feature the familiar punk vibe, with our own brand of ambient, but again, the way we compose in rehearsal is by improvisation, which obviously implies unpredictability, so you never know.

"I draw the inspiration for the lyrics from human relationships and the spirit of the times - the songs are about people you love, those you hate, and those you don't hate," Haber says.

When asked what he is currently listening to, Haber exclaims, with a mischievous smile: "Nothing, zero!"

Scrambled Eggs' concert last Thursday began more than an hour behind schedule, but the band's repertoire for the night certainly lived up to its reputation: Aliyeh drove his fingers across his bass for the improvised opener, generating a haunting, oriental-sounding melody, which was repeatedly drowned out by the howling feedback from Codsi's and Haber's guitars. If those in the audience who had never been to a Scrambled Eggs show before were at all thrown off by the plush sonic sounds that filled the room as the band sank deeper into the proverbial maze produced by their instruments, the entrance of Haber's vocals dispelled any doubts with respect to these musicians' punk credentials.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb

Haber's meaningful yet somehow sarcastic wails signaled a break from the singing style he employed on such Scrambled Eggs releases as "Human Friendly Noises" from 2002. But at the same time they positioned him clearly as an heir to the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten.

Haber's lack of inhibition in expressing his sensitivity as a songwriter comes out in lyrics such as "I don't want you to see me cry," displaying a covert vulnerability parallel to a show of strength, itself synonymous with the brave face most young Lebanese performers have had to put on during these taxing times the country is enduring.

Haber reinforced that point with a defiant allusion to Lebanon's current situation: "See you in Beirut, whatever happens," he said, before launching into a song bearing the same name, showcasing an industrial-sounding mid-section and a twisted, anthemic chorus.

During the instrumental sections of songs, Codsi shredded what appeared to be a Fender Stratocaster, a guitar typically played by puritan rock and punk musicians. The simple yet overwhelmingly potent single-note guitar solos, played at a pace reminiscent of Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, supplemented each song with an appropriately authoritative closing statement.

"Murder" opened with an organ sample that sounded like a musical excerpt from a horror flick. Then Rizkallah took over the rhythm section. The drummer's startlingly simple set-up - consisting of just the basic toms, snare drum and one or two cymbals - reverberated throughout the club in a sequence that most accurately resembled the sound of war drums.

The band rolled through the night's musical menu, with songs such as "Bleeding Nun," "Salt and Sugar" and "Lightning Bolt" finding their way onto the set list. "Russian Roulette" featured a straightforward two-note progression in the verse played by Aliyeh, with Codsi occasionally harmonizing to Haber's vocal lines.

Offstage, Haber lamented the intractability of some members of the audience: "It's difficult to move them, and I would attribute this to the 'culture' of the audience and how in touch with rock music they are, as well as how many live shows they've been to.

"It wasn't always like this, but generally, the younger people in the crowd are the ones jumping around," he adds with a smile.

Iran: Mohsen Namjoo

2007-09-02T13:39:00.000-05:00

I'd never heard of Mohsen Namjoo until I read this article. It's pretty easy to "google" him and find some mp3s to download and some youtube vids to watch. I've not yet had the time to listen closely, and have not yet formed an opinion, although I certainly find the music interesting. But why must Bob Dylan be the gold standard of "cutting lyrics" and cultural "daring"? (I love Bob, but couldn't Fathi also be the Fela Kuti or the Bob Marley or the Woodie Guthrie of Iran?)

New York Times, September 1, 2007
"Iran’s Dylan on the Lute, With Songs of Sly Protest"
By Nazila Fathi

Tehran

He plays the setar, a traditional Persian lute, and is a master of classical Persian literature and poetry. But the sounds he draws from the instrument, along with his deep voice and his playful but subtly cutting lyrics about growing up in an Islamic state, have made Mohsen Namjoo the most controversial, and certainly the most daring, figure in Persian music today.

Some call him a genius, a sort of Bob Dylan of Iran, and say his satirical music accurately reflects the frustrations and disillusionment of young Iranians. His critics say his music makes a mockery of Persian classical and traditional music as he constantly blends it with Western jazz, blues and rock.

Mr. Namjoo, 31, is a singer, composer and musician, but most of all, his fans say, he is a great performer.

“I wanted to save Persian music,” he said in an interview at one of his studios in Tehran. “It does not belong to the present time and cannot satisfy the younger generation. The fact is that Persian music is very close to other styles, and it is possible to mix in other styles with a little shrewdness.”

His blending of Western and Persian music produces unexpected moments that jar the traditionalists but are thrilling to his fans, who are mostly young artists and intellectuals. His music sounds Persian, but the melodies take away the melancholy that often suffuses classical Persian music.

But it is Mr. Namjoo’s lyrics, his fans say, that make his music so important. He sings old Persian poetry, such as works by the 13th-century mystic poet Rumi or the 14th-century poet Hafiz, with its connotations of love and lust. But with his mastery of Persian literature, he is able to write his own lyrics into the accepted forms, adding layers of meaning.

“The first time I listened to his music, I found it unexpected,” said Mahsa Vahdat, a 33-year-old singer. “It started with a laugh for me and ended with a cry. His music and his lyrics express the bitter situation of my generation, and they represent the society we live in.”

Defying Iran’s cultural police, he does not shy away from contemporary issues.

“What belongs to us is an apologetic government,” he sings in a song called “Neo-Kanti.” “What belongs to us is a losing national team.” Those are references to the widespread disappointment with the government of the former reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, and the constant losses of Iran’s soccer teams.

“What belongs to us, maybe, is the future,” he adds, in a voice that is more resigned than hopeful.

In another popular song he sings, “One morning you wake up and realize that you are gone by the wind, there is no one around you and a few more of your hairs have gone gray, your birthday is a mourning ceremony again.”

After throwing in an unexpected Western melody, he goes on in a lower voice, saying, “that you are born in Asia is called the oppression of geography, you are up in the air and your breakfast has become tea and a cigarette.”

Atabak Elyassi, a musician and a professor of music at the Music College at Art University in Tehran, said there was protest and satire in Mr. Namjoo’s music. “In the meantime, it is very Iranian,” he said, “because he constantly points to issues that are about the lives of Iranians.”

MR. NAMJOO was raised in the religious city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, where he started learning classical Persian music when he was 12.

As he grew older, he said, he listened to Western music and became interested in Jim Morrison, Eric Clapton and the Irish pop singer Chris de Burgh. He read philosophy and Persian literature, and developed a fondness for a strain of modern Persian poetry that stresses phonetics over the meanings of words.

But what changed his approach more than anything, he said, was his experience in the theater. When he was admitted to the University of Fine Art in 1994, he was told that he had to wait a year before starting classes. So he decided to pass the time studying theater.

“A musical instrument is a medium for a musician to play music,” he said. “So is the voice of a singer — it is like a medium to sing through it. But neither of them is involved in building relations with a living creature.

“But when I studied theater I learned to connect with my audience, and that was when my poems changed,” he said.

It is hard to gauge Mr. Namjoo’s popularity, for he has come of age in a time of intense pressure on Iranian music.

Most music was banned after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, with only religious and revolutionary songs deemed appropriate. To this day, women are not allowed to sing. Over time the restrictions were eased, first on classical Iranian music and then, in the mid-1990s, on pop music. But after the election in 2005 of Iran’s current, conservative president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, music came under a cloud once again.

The authorities canceled a concert of rock and jazz music in Tehran in July. In August, more than 200 people who attended a private rock concert in Karaj, 30 miles west of Tehran, were arrested. The public prosecutor in Karaj, Ali Fallahi, called the concert “satanic,” local news agencies reported.

Mr. Namjoo himself has not yet been able to give a live, public performance, and he has not received a government license to sell his CDs. But he is able to perform privately, his CDs are sold on the black market and, in an inexplicable twist, his songs are played on Iranian radio stations. As of early August, his manager said, 1.6 million people had heard his music on YouTube.

In July, he did receive an invitation to a government ceremony to sing a few songs in praise of Imam Ali, the martyred son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad and the man whom Shiite Muslims consider Muhammad’s legitimate successor. Yet, the room was filled with artists and musicians, rather than government officials.

BECAUSE of his cutting-edge style, Mr. Namjoo is under another kind of pressure. Most classical musicians are purists, insisting that the music not be altered in any fashion. They dismiss Mr. Namjoo’s music as absurd because of the way he has incorporated Western influences.

If you take Iranian classical music on one side, and Western music on the other, said one critic, Reza Ismailinia, who runs a small art gallery in Tehran, “then I think Mr. Namjoo’s music is like a caricature in between, or a kind of fantasy.”

But many disagree with Mr. Ismailinia.

“I think he will be remembered as a courageous artist who opened a window toward creating something new and for going beyond traditional barriers,” said Alireza Samiazar, the former director the Contemporary Museum of Art in Tehran. “I think his contribution to our music will be great.”

Undeterred by the critics, Mr. Namjoo says his next ambition is to study music abroad.

“I want to be challenged and get acquainted with Western music,” he said. “I was accepted too easily here.”

Freemuse on "Underground" Music in Lebanon

2007-08-04T15:20:00.001-05:00

Very useful report from Al-Hayat on the Freemuse conference in Istanbul earlier this year, specifically on three papers dealing with music censorship in the Middle East. Most interesting is the report on Lebanon, which discusses, among other things, crackdowns on heavy metal music, rapper Rayess Bek, and Hizbollah's liberalizing attitudes toward pop music. There's also a short report on a presentation by Ourrad Rabah of the fabulous Algerian rap group MBS.

Lebanese Hip-Hop

2007-03-04T22:47:00.000-06:00

From the Daily Star:

"An American success story, Lebanese style"
Four-day 'Poetry in the Street' hip hop showcase mixes tropes of genre and homegrown touches
By Nichole Sobecki
Monday, March 05, 2007

BEIRUT: While music critics in the West loudly proclaim the mortality of "real" hip hop, a point driven home by Nas' December release "Hip Hop Is Dead," Lebanon struggles to give birth to a sustainable movement. "Poetry in the Street," which began on Thursday and concluded Sunday, was the latest effort, a four-night hip hop event headlined by MC RGB. The beats of MCs Joker, Mo and 6K, the expertly mixed tracks of DJ Lethal Skillz and the Blaze Crew's rhythm-packed breakdancing routines created a multidisciplinary performance rarely seen in Beirut theaters.

"It's fresh, it's young, it's authentic," declares Zeid Hamdan, former member of the Lebanese electro-acoustic band Soap Kills and co-producer of the event.

Playing to a half-full auditorium, the performance opened Thursday with Lethal Skillz laying down beats in front of a graffiti-filled replica of a building facade, designed by French artist Charles Vallaud. Moving between human-sized building structures, the artists performed in Ecko-wear sweats and Timberlands, cornrows and baseball caps. RGB slid onto the stage as a smoke machine churned out the night's atmosphere.

In short, all the symbols of the urban ghetto, common throughout global hip hop, were present and accounted for. So what made the nights performance more "real" than the currently popular and often empty references to b*****s, cars and bling that characterize the popular Western hip hop scene?

As Hamdan explains: "RGB's music tackles social issues such as freedom, national unity, exile, racism and disillusionment that stem from his own experiences."

Growing up on the streets of Beirut's suburbs, Ragab Abdel-Rahman, who goes by the name RGB, started to rhyme and beat-box at an early age. His ascent into the genre began with the formation of Kita Beirut, one of Lebanon's first hip hop groups featuring RGB, Stress, Joker and 6K. Formed a decade ago, Kita Beirut struggled with issues of nationality and citizenship, causing members of the group to be shuffled around, with RGB spending years in France before returning to Lebanon.

The Dubai-based production company LCI Entertainment, which co-produced the Masrah al-Madina performances, has recently signed RGB and 6K.

"Ultimately we would like to reunite Kita Beirut," says Wadih Safieddine, LCI's general manager in Beirut.

Throughout the performance, RGB's lyrics spoke of his experiences abroad and the bitterness he felt upon realizing the immigrant dream was nothing but an illusion.

"What it is this immigration? It is every man for himself and one swindles his brother and it is a vicious circle where each one lives on the treachery of the other," proclaims RGB in a track entitled "Treason." RGB's lyrics often reference political dissension as a backdrop to his own life.

Although RGB's words display a balanced political stance, some saw the sponsorship of the Madina performances by the "I Love Life" campaign to be a less politically neutral choice. Several Beirut merchants refused to display posters for the event in their storefronts due to the controversial nature of the campaign, the logo of which was prominently displayed on the event posters.

Although the "I Love Life" campaign desires to be seen as nonpartisan, the campaign found support among the ranks of the March 14 coalition and the opposition launched its own version with slogans such as "I Love Life, Undictated." For the producers, having invested their personal funds into supporting past hip hop events such as a three-week workshop at Beirut's French Cultural Center (which inspired "Poetry in the Street"), the decision was between giving up on the show or accepting the sponsorship.

Hamdan hopes the reaction to the "I Love Life" sponsorship will be to encourage debate.
"It is not productive to judge and condemn without understanding," he says.

In general the audience seems to understand the motivations behind the sponsorship as well. "If they can get money to make their art then I am all for it," says Firas Abi Ghanem, a Beirut resident in the audience.

Still, it remains to be seen whether Lebanon's rising hip-hop movement will gain the success that so many hope for.

"We don't know if it will turn out that way," Hamdan says. "But if it does it will be an American success story, Lebanese style."

Bawdy Moroccan Music: Taixor and Berkaniya

2007-02-18T23:52:00.000-06:00

I found this by reading some comments on 'Aqoul. Check out this uploaded telecast of Moroccan artists Taixor and Berkaniya singing "Khalli babak mahloul" (Leave your door open). Here's the translation of the lyrics, courtesy of Faycal:

Taixor (the guy) : Leave your door open; I am planning on spending the night. You know I am crazy. I am wild about girls.

Berkaniya (the girl) : Consider it your home. Do come, you are very welcome. If the door’s locked just knock and I’ll open it.

Taixor : I am afraid of the neighbors ! If they tell my wife, she’s going to make a scene.

Berkaniya : Come at midnight when everyone’s asleep. Don’t bring the car. That way you don’t make any noise.

Taixor : I will take the bus and walk the rest of the way. If the police catch us, tell them that I am your husband.

Berkaniya: Don’t worry about the cops or the gendarmes. My uncle is a superintendent. He’ll settle the situation.

Taixor : I will bring a Coke or some juices, and if I can maybe some beers too.

Berkaniya : I don’t want to drink. Just bring enough for you. I just crave some bread and some kefta (ground meat)

And Faycal comments: "what really struck me while translating was the last line. A girl saying: I just want some bread and meat. It's shocking not only because I don't see a western girl saying that, I don't see a bourgeois arab girl saying it either. This rabelaisian gluttony is really only acceptable within the innards of popular culture (culture populaire)."

fat planet on palestinian hip-hop

2006-12-26T00:21:00.000-06:00

the great fat planet's post on Palestinian hip-hop, focusing on Ramallah Underground, with good mp3's to download.

Fairuz in Beirut, 2

2006-12-03T17:30:00.000-06:00

Another account of Fairouz's performance of Sah al-Nom in Beirut, by the inimitable Jim Quilty, writing in the Daily Star (Beirut).

Musical comedy, both timeless and timely
Fairouz returns to Beirut stage with a revival of the Rahbani brothers' 'Sah al-Nom'

By Jim Quilty
Daily Star staff
Monday, December 04, 2006

BEIRUT: "Sah al-Nom," a musical comedy starring Fairouz, directed by Ziad Rahbani and written by Assi and Mansour Rahbani, began a three-night run at the Beirut International Exhibition and Leisure Center (BIEL) on Friday night. It opened to somewhat less than a capacity crowd, a fact that says more about the prevailing political environment than the reputation and popularity of the artists involved.

Like so much of the Rahbani brothers' work, this play could be termed an allegorical fairytale. The writer-composers favored village idylls for their settings - places where folks burst into choral song at the drop of a hat and fall naturally into dabkeh-inflected dance.

"Sah al-Nom" is set in such a place. At center stage is a grand villa, in miniature, called the "Qasr al-Nom" (the Palace of Sleep) where the aging local wali (or lord) lives, apparently spending most of his time sleeping.

From time to time, though, he does rouse himself to actually rule. With great ceremony, he and his retainers assemble a court in the village square and hold a diwan where the villagers can approach him with their petitions.

The lord isn't exactly the model of enlightened governance. He listens to the villagers' petitions but seems as likely to relieve a petitioner of some possession he has taken a fancy to as to grant his wish. If it suits him, though, the lord grants the supplicant's wishes and stamps the document with his much-prized royal seal.

While most of the villagers seem content with their lot, one umbrella-toting village girl named Rumfoul (Fairouz) is a nagging inconvenience to the wali. Forever petitioning to have the roof of her house fixed, she carries the umbrella, she explains, to protect her from the elements.

Exhausted after listening to a few supplicants, the lord orders his retainers to leave him to sleep outside in his throne. Once he's asleep, Rumfoul swipes his royal seal and stamps the petitions of all the supplicants - all but one. Mischief done, she throws the seal down a well.

In Act II the wali wakes up from another long slumber and repeats the diwan ritual, only to realize his seal is missing. This causes all manner of grief and confusion, since without the seal he has no authority to rule.

One of the villagers - whose petition Rumfoul has torn up - suspects she has the seal and squeals on her. The lord confronts her and she admits to having thrown the seal down the well. With the help of the other villagers, then, she goes into the well to retrieve it.

The wali is so delighted to have regained his authority that, rather than having Rumfoul put in irons, he makes her the keeper of his seal when he's asleep. "When you were in the well," he says, "I wasn't thinking about the seal at all. I was worried about you."

There are any number of ways to approach "Sah al-Nom." It is, first of all, populist political satire - critical, then, but entertaining as well.

As a piece of restored popular theater, the revival's production values are about as sharp as you could hope for - particularly in the acoustic nightmare that is BIEL. The stage design of faux "mountain architecture" looks more genuine than some of the restored buildings in Solidere and the performance seems utterly true to the stage conventions of the 1960s and 70s.

Like the Rahbanis' music, the costuming is folksy and contemporary at once. The dancing (there's plenty of that) is crisp and tasteful, without the excesses of the more self-conscious neo-folk dance productions. The acting is both stylised and folksy and the spoken and sung text blends about as seamlessly as possible.

There were those in the audience who were of the opinion that the songs were performed in playback - "lip-synching" for those of the Milli Vanilli generation. These opinions couldn't be confirmed or denied when The Daily Star went to press.

If these songs were indeed taped in the studio before the show, though, the stage direction ensured that they were not obviously so. Nor is it difficult to discern why there would be pressure to pre-record - one informed estimate has it that Nouhad Haddad, the woman who became Fairouz, was born in 1935.

A lot has happened since this sweet little riff on Lebanon's neo-feudal political system was first staged 36 years ago.

On one hand Fairouz, the Rahbani brothers and Ziad Rahbani became cultural icons without peer in Lebanon. The distinction comes from the fact that, though their work has been politically engaged, they continued to be loved by Lebanese regardless of their sectarian, tribal or class association.

As such, their stature harkens back to a period when the things that divided Lebanese seemed less important than what unified them - whether to one another, the Palestinians or the wider Arab world.

"Sah al-Nom" - the plays of Assi and Mansour Rahbani generally, in fact - has thus accumulated layers of significance that make it a good deal thicker than it was when originally devised.

This musical's weight increases still more when you augment these combined layers of meaning with the piece's recent production history.

The Baalbek Festival announced that "Sah al-Nom" would open its 2006 season. When Baalbek fell victim to the July-August war with Israel, the metaphorical weight, especially for Lebanese of a certain generation, was much greater than you'd ascribe to a mere play.

Baalbek announced that it would stage the play in December - before anyone knew that the opening night would correspond with an open-ended opposition sit-in involving hundreds of thousands of Lebanese in Downtown Beirut.

By the time it opened on Friday evening, then, this work of childlike playfulness had become the artistic equivalent of a black hole - a play that absorbs any meaning you care to project onto it.

All the more reason, arguably, that the star's voice should sound as strong as possible.

It is highly informative of the Lebanese condition that (based on the number of times the audience burst into applause on Friday evening) "Sah al-Nom" still resonates with audiences in late 2006.

The orange tinge of Rumfoul's dress and umbrella, on the other hand, was surely no more than a trick of the stage lights.

Fayrouz performs in Beirut

2006-12-03T10:22:00.000-06:00

New York Times, December 3, 2006
A Diva Brightens a Dark Time in Beirut
By KATHERINE ZOEPF

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 2 — As she stepped onto the stage, a tiny figure in apricot-colored silk, some in the audience broke into tears, while others clapped and cheered. As she lifted her lace parasol, turned her famous hooded eyes to the balcony, and her song began, ululations of joy erupted from several elderly Lebanese ladies in formal evening dress seated near the stage.

Fayrouz was performing in Beirut again at last, and her country, it seemed, had never needed her more.

In recent days, armored personnel carriers have moved into position along highway on-ramps, at major Beirut intersections and on a bridge overlooking the Hezbollah demonstrators at Martyrs’ Square, and fears and rumors that civil war might return have swirled. All the while, Beirutis of every sectarian stripe seemed to agree on this: Fayrouz must sing as planned.

In the Arab world, the emotional resonance this 70ish diva commands is difficult to overstate. Many of the great anthems of Palestinian and Lebanese nationalism — not factionalism — are her songs. Passengers on cheap overnight buses between Syrian cities know that morning has come and their destination lies near when the driver turns on Fayrouz.

From Damascus to Ramalla to Amman, Fayrouz’s unmistakable deep, quavering tones echo from radios and tape decks in cafes, shops and taxi cabs, reminding people of the long-lost rhythms of village life and the longer-lost, golden years of peace.

“Fayrouz is the music of our lives,” said a young Arab Israeli man in Haifa last week, who gave his name as Said. “She plays from dawn till midnight, every day, everywhere we go. She is the symbol of Lebanon and of Palestine. We all love her.”

Just how true that is in Lebanon seemed clear on Friday night, as she took the stage before tens of thousands of people at a convention center on the Beirut waterfront, to perform in “Sah el Nom,” a musical comedy. They had braved the demonstrations, blocked roads and multiple security checks to occupy white plastic chairs while scores of soldiers with AK-47s patrolled outside.

Some came from Beirut, some from Saida, a mainly Sunni town considered the gateway to southern Lebanon. Rosine Hajjar, 28, a psychotherapist from the Bekaa Valley, a predominantly Shiite region, said she had planned and saved for months for this night.

“Fayrouz is a dream for all Lebanese people,” Ms. Hajjar said. “She is majestic, she is mysterious, and it is very rare to see her. There were so many rumors this weekend of a coup d’état. But Fayrouz refused to cancel, and my sisters and I are so happy. Whether there is a new civil war or not, I feel sure that this will be the first and last time in my life that I will ever see her.”

Amal Hachem, 29, a lawyer from a Christian neighborhood in Beirut, said: “The fact that Fayrouz went ahead with this means a lot for Lebanese people. She is the symbol of Lebanon. Lebanon in war, Lebanon in peace, and Lebanon in revolution. She brings us together.”

“Sah el Nom” concerns a self-serving king who demands impossible favors when his people ask for help, but who comes to change his ways through the intervention of a good, brave village woman, played by Fayrouz.

But even symbolism and inspiration sometimes have to take a back seat to age and the sound requirements of a convention center. As the performance progressed, there were hisses and whispers — soon hushed by diehard admirers — as her lips occasionally moved out of time to the voice singing from the speakers, or as she focused on dancing, and the voice sang on.

Born more than 70 years ago — no one seems certain just how many — as Nouhad Haddad, she was dubbed Fayrouz, or Turquoise, by an early musical mentor. For more than 50 years, she and several family members — her husband, the composer Assi Rahbani, his brother Mansour, a lyricist, and a son, Ziad — have been the musical royal family of the Levant. The Rahbani brothers wrote most of the material that Fayrouz has regularly performed throughout her career, including “Sah el Nom.”

They are the rarest of public figures in Lebanon: artists whose standing is above politics. Throughout the 15 years of Lebanon’s civil war, they never took sides.

Fayrouz was to sing in “Sah el Nom” at the ancient Roman acropolis in Baalbeck, where an international music, theater and dance festival is held each summer. But the Israeli-Hezbollah war began that very evening, and the performance was canceled.

Throughout the 34-day war, Fayrouz’s patriotic songs, including “To Beirut” and “The True Lebanon Is Coming,” were everywhere. But she never appeared.

The festival’s organizers decided to move the program to Beirut. Fayrouz had not performed here since 1994, and ticket sales were frantic.

May Arida, the festival’s president, watched as the audience filed in on Friday night. “We knew there would be some fear,” she said. “We didn’t make the decision until yesterday, but we finally decided that the show must go on. In a difficult time, we need Fayrouz.”

Sapho, French-Moroccan-Jewish singer, in Beirut

2006-11-09T12:38:00.000-06:00

"French-Moroccan singer Sapho thrills audience with her modern rendition of timeless classics"

By Zeina Nasr
Special to The Daily Star
Thursday, November 02, 2006

Review

BEIRUT: Photographers hover around a slight woman, their cameras busily clicking and flashing. She wears a sleeveless black top and a long, sparkling silver skirt. A diaphanous white shawl is draped over her shoulders. Her thick curls surround a pale visage with dark eyes and fine features. Her lips are painted a deep red. She obliges the press with a sunny smile, playing the part of agreeable celebrity. Agreeable she is - sincere, warm and infectiously exuberant.

The French-Moroccan singer Sapho's two-night run at the French Cultural Center encapsulates Lebanon's recovery, marking one of the first international performances to be held in Beirut since the end of this summer's war. Prior to her first concert Tuesday night, she explained she had always wanted to perform in Lebanon but hesitated when people had told her the country hadn't become safe enough to receive her. Yet here she is, in the wake of Lebanon's least safe season in years.

Lebanon is "a country of conflict but also a country of encounters and of alterity," says Sapho, who harbors a lifelong attraction to cultures of clashing multiplicity. She says she came to Lebanon now both despite and because of the recent war. She wanted to make a statement of support and a gesture of understanding; she did not seek to simply distract a traumatized population with her music. After all, she is implicated by personal and artistic experience in the region's tumultuous history.

A Moroccan Jew born in Marrakesh, Sapho moved to France with her family when she was a teenager. After studying theater and music, busking on the cafe terraces of Saint-Germain-des-Pres and experimenting with numerous alter egos, she eventually adopted the stage name Sapho after the ancient Greek poetess. In the years that followed, she landed several record deals and performed in a dizzying variety of musical genres from American rock to flamenco and spoken word.

In 1992, she undertook Umm Kulthum's epic "Al-Atlal." Under the guidance of Lebanese orchestra conductor Elie Ashkar, Sapho managed to produce a critically acclaimed interpretation of the legendary song. "Al-Atlal" served as a defining moment, shifting Sapho's music toward an eclectic sound driven by Arabic and Andalusian influences. As she is fond of asserting, "I consider myself a citizen of the world and a singer of the world."

Sapho admits that despite an intellectual mastery of French, her singing voice moves more readily in Arabic - not classical Arabic but colloquial Moroccan, she explains, the language of her childhood and the language of the street, which melds her music into her political life. To sing in colloquial Arabic is to sing with the voice of the people.

Such a stance is not a matter of political ideology for Sapho but rather a means to convey honest and immediate experience. The political positions she takes, Sapho explains, embody her personal attempts to embrace her own culture: "We are, after all, simply subjects trapped in bodies, and our art is but a memoir of our experience."

In 1994, Sapho performed "Al-Atlal" to an audience of Israelis in Jerusalem. Four years later, she performed a seminal concert in Gaza. "Art is dangerous!" she exclaims, "whether one is politically engaged or not. To be an artist and a poet is to subvert language and to subvert meaning - to be subversive!"

Sapho's latest act of subversion involves setting Leo Ferre's classic songs to the flamenco guitar of Vicente Almaraz. First performed in the fall of 2005, the Ferre a la flamenco project continues to attract and charm audiences, having received abundant critical praise in France.

This is the repertoire Sapho brought to Beirut, aware that a Lebanese audience may feel the same formative love for Ferre as she does, having grown up with his erudite love songs, anti-war anthems and odes to anarchy.

"Ferre turned esoteric and inaccessible French poems into beautiful and popular music," she explains, and it is to this populist spirit of cultural engagement she pays homage.

The first of Sapho's two concerts opens with Almaraz's solo guitar. He has arranged the music in collaboration with Sapho, and it's clear from the inaugural melody that a distinctly Andalusian sound will characterize what follows.

Sapho appears on stage and slowly adjusts her shawl, leaning her torso forward to sing the opening lines of "Il N'Aurait Fallu" - a song set to a poem by Louis Aragon.

The words arise from her body like primal sounds that flirt with melody. She moves in and out of lyricism, lacing her notes with scratchy grit, bending her words to the stilted beats of speech. Her voice is at once grating and soothing, harshly guttural in its attacks and resonantly fluid in its releases. As the song unfolds, it is clear that she has succeeded in mastering Ferre's approach while preserving the recitative rhythms and poetic expression of Aragon's verse.

As she moves through a careful selection of Ferre's vast catalogue, singing favorites like "Est-Ce Ainsi Que les Hommes Vivent," "Monsieur William," "Avec le Temps" and "Comme a Ostende," Sapho proves herself as not only a singer with a striking voice, but also as a sensually theatrical and deftly charming stage presence.

"Isn't it strange," she quips, "that all these sad songs and depressed poets bring us nothing but happiness?"

As her final song comes to an end, the crowd asks for more, and Sapho impishly expresses her relief at being asked for an encore. The night's surprise guest, oud virtuoso Charbel Rouhana, waits in the wings. What comes next is the climax of the performance: a rendition of "Avec le Temps" sung in colloquial Moroccan followed by an excerpt from "Al-Atlal."

The crowd at the French Cultural Center is astounded. For those who know and love Umm Kulthum, Sapho's rendition is uncanny. For those who are not ardent fans of the original, Sapho's more accessibly modern approach is a revelation. The cante jondo ("deep song") of flamenco meets the soaring melisma of tarab and the results are nothing short of a fertile musical evolution.

More on Palestinian-Israeli Rap

2006-10-09T11:26:00.000-05:00

From the Washington Post:

"Yo, Word Up, Arabz"

By Richard Morin
Thursday, April 20, 2006; A02

Think black rappers are angry? Well, check out this raging rhyme tossed down in Arabic by Arab Israeli rapper Tamer Nafar and his crew DAM:

You're a Democracy?
Actually it's more like the Nazis!
Your countless raping of the Arabs' soul
Finally impregnated it
Gave birth to your child
His name: Suicide Bomber
And then you call him the terrorist?

The song "Meen Erhabe" (or, "Who Is the Terrorist?"), released in 2001 over the Internet, became the first Arabic rap hit and spawned a new kind of rap that is spreading quickly throughout the Middle East, communications lecturer Usama Kahf of California State University at Long Beach says in an article under review by the Journal of Popular Music Studies.

A dozen rappers -- mostly Palestinians -- fill the Arab streets with rap and hip-hop beats, according to Kahf's review of the nascent genre. DAM is the best-known. The trio has toured throughout the Middle East and in Europe. Other acts have emerged in Algeria, Lebanon, Egypt and elsewhere. Several Web sites, notably ArabRap.net, serve as nerve centers for Arabic rap and help spread the music under the radar of government censors.

Still, many nonsecular Arabs view rap as another intrusion of Western culture and "an affront to [Arab] heritage or an imitation of the West," Kahf wrote.

Arabic rappers respond to the challenge by using traditional instruments behind familiar rap beats. They defend Arabic rap by contending in their rhymes that rap is the new universal musical language of marginalized people, Kahf said. And instead of rapping about Cristal and bling, they focus on social and political problems.

More on Palestinian and Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli hip-hop

2006-08-20T22:10:00.000-05:00

Article entitled "Levantine Hip-Hop 101: Who's who in the Middle East rap game," by Neal Ungerleider, appearing in Slate on Friday. The title of the article is misleading, for this is really about hip-hop in Israel and Palestine. Over the last year or so, a number of such articles have appeared in the US media. And like the others, on the Palestinian side, the article focuses on the Palestinian-Israeli group Dam. Ungerleider is incorrect about the Arabic translation for "Dam": it means "lasting" or "persisting," not "blood." (It's pronounced more or less like the English word "dam"; "blood" in Arabic is "damm," with a short "a" and a doubled "m.") Ungerleider offers more discussion of Israeli rappers than I've seen before. Like the previous articles, he discusses Israeli rapper Subliminal, who used to be close to Dam's leader Tamer Naffar but has since become right-wing. He also mentions Sagol 59 and Rebel Sun, who he says, are leftwing, unlike Subliminal.

But here's the most interesting piece of info: he announces an "Israeli and Palestinian Hip-Hop Showcase for Peace," to occur in New York City in September as part of the Jewish Music and Heritage Festival. The organizers call a "hip-hop sulha." A "sulha" is a traditional Palestinian mechanism that aims at peacemaking and reconciliation. The artists include (and I quote) "Top-selling Israeli hip-hop artist Shaanan Street of HaDag Nachash (whose last U.S. tour sold-out coast-to-coast); Palestinian rapper Saz (who has been the subject of two documentary films); Jewish American beatboxer Yuri Lane; the godfather of Jerusalem's underground hip-hop scene, Sagol 59; Orthodox Jewish rap sensation Y-Love; turntablist sensation DJ Spooky; DJ Handler; and the frontmen of two of the West Coast’s leading Palestinian hip-hop outfits, Ragtop of the Philistines and Omar of the N.O.M.A.D.S."

Tags: Palestine, Israel, hip-hop

Struggling artisans remember when Iraq was better known for lutes than looting

2006-08-16T12:12:00.000-05:00

From Agence France Presse: "Baghdad used to be renowned for the quality of lutes turned out by its artisans. Iraqi lutes were so sought after that special government permission was needed for them to be exported."

Tag: Iraq

2006-08-07T20:13:00.000-05:00

Christina Aguilera & Elissa (Lebanon) Pepsi Commercial 2006

Christina bellydances!

2006-08-07T20:07:00.000-05:00

Christina Aguilera & Elissa (Lebanon): Football Pepsi Ad

Da Da Da!

2006-08-01T00:11:00.000-05:00

Arab Pop Tarts

Clips from Maria (Lebanon) and Ruby (Egypt)

Algerian Hip-Hop: MBS

2006-07-31T10:45:00.000-05:00

From qantara.de, a piece by Arian Fariborz on Algerian rap group MBS (Le Micro Brise Le Silence). MBS dates the origins of rap in Algeria to the urban uprisings of 1988. I have a copy of the group's only CD released in the US, Le Micro Brise Le Silence, which is fabulous. I've not heard Rabah President, discussed here.

"In its country of origin, hip hop culture now seems to mean little more than hedonism, conspicuous consumption, and illusory ideas about violence and sex. In Algeria, the almost-forgotten potential of that culture is audible once again. Here, rap means speaking about reality, about an everyday life that is often frankly depressing, about political injustice, terror and war."

Article on Shaaban Abdel Rahim

2006-07-17T18:10:00.000-05:00

From Transnational Broadcasting Studies (TBS) 16, a very useful article: "The Fool Sings a Hero's Song: Shaaban Abdel Rahim, Egyptian Shaabi, and the Video Clip Phenomenon," by James R. Grippo, UCSB PhD candidate in ethnomusicology.

Here's the last paragraph:

Contributing to ‘Abd al-Rahim’s controversial success is his social positioning as the next superstar descending from a historic line of political sha‘bi singers in Egypt. Finally, ‘Abd al Rahim’s success must be understood in the context of the West’s loosely defined War on Terror. The perception of cultural and political attack from outside the Arab world has sparked the need for amplified voices speaking sympathetic truths to a self-consciously cornered Muslim population. ‘Abd al-Rahim’s uncanny sense of Arab anger and frustration has enabled this illiterate ironer from Mit Halfa to become one of the loudest of these voices.

Lebanese vocalist Rima Khcheich: splicing the Eastern classical and jazz idioms

2006-07-13T20:20:00.000-05:00

Jim Quilty, writing in the Daily Star, on a Lebanese female singer in the vein of Ziad Rahbani.

Meanwhile, Ziad's mother Fairuz had her Thursday concert at the Baalbek International Festival "delayed" due to what the US press insists on calling Israel's "crossing" into Lebanon.

Iranian rock and hip-hop

2006-07-03T14:03:00.000-05:00

An interesting story on NPR, reviewing a documentary called "Sounds of Silence," by Amir Hamz and Mark Lazarz, on Iranian rock and rap. It includes samples from O-Hum, Barobax and Hich-Kas.

Go here to view a video by rap group Hich-Kas. Download songs by Hich-Kas here. Go to the Wikipedia article on Hich-Kas to find more zipped mp3s.

Palestinian stone thrower

2006-04-27T13:03:00.000-05:00

Typical image from the first intifada (1987-1993)

Lyrics for "Biladi" (Motherland) and "Ana Samid" (I Remain Steadfast)

2006-04-27T12:27:00.000-05:00

(from Palestine Lives! Songs from the struggle of the people of Palestine, Paredon Records, 1974.)

Biladi
Motherland, motherland
Fat'h is a revolution against the enemy
Palestine, the land of our forefathers
To you we will return
Fat'h is a revolution that shall win
Assifa is the hope of my motherland

Palestine, oh great love,
You are my goal and my destiny.
To you I walk, and my determination
Shall overcome oppression

Palestine, birthplace of Christ,
Destination of Muhammad's journey,
Liberate my wounded land,
Cleanse from it the usurpers.

Palestine, my only hope,
To you we shall restore
The dignity of our destitute people,
Under the banner of protracted struggle.

Palestine, your people shall not die
It shall defy silence, and Assifa
Shall keep the finger on the trigger.

Assifa walks there,
Planting the land with explosives
Loaded with destruction and doom
For every exploiter of the motherland

Samid (I Remain Steadfast)
I am steadfast, steadfast, I am steadfast
In my homeland, I am steadfast.
If they snatch away my bread, I am steadfast
If they murder my children, I am steadfast
If they blow up my house, O my house
In the shadow of your walls, I am steadfast

With pride, I am steadfast
With a stick, with a knife, I am steadfast
With the flag in my hand, I am steadfast
And if they cut off my hand and the flag
With the other hand, I am steadfast

With my field and my garden, I am steadfast
With determination in my beliefs, I am steadfast
With my nails and my teeth, I am steadfast
And if wounds in my body should multiply
With wounds and my blood, I am steadfast

Fayruz, "Sanarni'ju Yawman" (We Shall Return Someday)

2006-04-27T12:21:00.000-05:00

O Heart, slow down,
Do not throw yourself
In exhaustion on the road of return
For it pains us to see that tomorrow
The flocks of birds will return
While we still remain here

Lyrics for Fayruz, "Zahrat al-Mada'in (The flower of cities)"

2006-04-27T11:20:00.000-05:00

These are excerpts, from Joseph Massad's article, "Liberating Songs"

It is for you that I pray, O city of prayers
For you I pray, O Jerusalem

The gate of our city shall not be locked,
For I shall got to pray.
I shall knock at the gates,
And I shall open up the gates
O River Jordan, you shall wash
My face with your holy water
And you shall erase, O River Jordan
The remaining footprints of the barbarians.

For Jerusalem is ours, and the house is ours
With our own hands we shall restore the glory of Jerusalem
With our own hands, we shall bring peace to Jerusalem
Peace shall come to Jerusalem

Lyrics for DAM's "Who's A Terrorist?" (Min Irhabi?)

2006-04-25T12:59:00.001-05:00

Who's a terrorist?
I'm a terrorist?!
How am I a terrorist when you've taken my land?
Who's a terrorist?
You're the terrorist!
You've taken everything I own while I'm living in my homeland
You're killing us like you've killed our ancestors
You want me to go to the law?
What for?
You're the Witness, the Lawyer, and the Judge!
If you are my Judge
I'll be sentenced to death
You want us to be the minority?
To end up the majority in the cemetery?
In your dreams!

You're a Democracy?
Actually it's more like the Nazis!
Your countless raping of the Arabs’ soul
Finally impregnated it
Gave birth to your child
His name: Suicide Bomber
And then you call him a terrorist?

You attack me and then you cry
And then you rush to complain about me [to the world]
When I remind you that you started the whole thing,
You jump to say
"You let small children throw stones!
Don’t they have parents to keep them at home?"
WHAT?!
You must have forgotten you buried our parents under the rubble of our homes
And now while my agony is so immense
You call me a terrorist?

Who's a terrorist?
I'm a terrorist?
How I am a terrorist
When you've taken my land?!
Who's a terrorist?
You're the terrorist!
You've taken everything I own
While I'm living in my homeland

Why terrorist?! Because my blood is not calm
It's boiling!
Because I hold my head for my homeland
You've killed my loved ones
Now I'm all alone
My parents driven out
But I will remain to shout out
I’m not against peace
Peace is against me
It’s going to destroy me

You don't listen to our voices
You silence us and degrade us
And who are you?!
And when did you became ruler?
Look how many you've killed
And how many orphans you've created
Our mothers are crying
Our fathers are in anguish
Our land is disappearing

And I'll tell you who you are!
You grew up spoiled
We grew up in poverty
Who grew up with freedom?
And who grew up in confinement
We fight for our freedom
But you've made that a crime
And you, the terrorist call me the terrorist!

Who's a terrorist?
I'm a terrorist?
How I am a terrorist
When you've taken my land?!
Who's a terrorist?
You're the terrorist!
You've taken everything I own
While I'm living in my homeland

So when will I stop being a terrorist?!
When you hit me and I turn the other check
How do you expect me to thank
The one who harmed me?!

I tell you what!
You tell me how you want me to be!
Down on my knees with my hands tied up
My eyes to the ground
Surrounding by bodies
Houses destroyed
Families driven out
Our children orphaned
Our freedom chained up

You oppress
You kill
We bury
We'll remain patient
We'll suppress our pain
Most importantly you feel secure
Just relax and leave us all the pain
You see our blood is like that of dogs

NOT EVEN

When dogs die they receive sympathy
So our blood is not as valuable as a dogs
No - My blood is valuable
And I will continue defending myself
Even if you call me a terrorist

Sabreen lyrics, "Here Come the Doves" (Hussein Barghouthi)

2006-04-24T22:00:00.000-05:00

The Gypsy
I'm really a Gypsy
My job is to dance
To entertain whose who are sad
I tell fortunes for a penny-and-a-half
And I tell fortunes for the oppressed
Sitting around the hubbly-bubbly
Elbow-leaning by the fire
A boiling midnight fire
I eat only with the sweat of my brow
I'm no tyrant and no horse thief
My job is to dance
An off-beat dance
My beard is long and supports a family
And the prettiest girls are Gygpsies

I live on old things
Selling horses and antiue coins
Silver ankle-bracelets and tales
I've stood so often by prison gates
I danced and feared and said: it'll pass
I'm really a Gypsy
this is my fate
I read fortunes
In people's palms

Thirty Stars
Thirty stars twinkling over a cypress valley
Thirty stars twinkling
My heart is an open caern
If only the pretty one
Would understand
That the moon is wounded
But hope is power

Thirty stars falling over a cypress valley
Thirty stars falling
Half of a lifetime falling
And the days have changed
And dreams exchanged
And a cypress tree has broken

My heart is an open cavern
If only the pretty one
Would understand
That the moon is wounded
But hope is power

Ramallah 1989
Sometimes I walk alone
In the middle of the night
And the night is like a river
My hands in my pockets
I whistle, or smoke
In so much bitterness
The whole town is shuttered
No one around
But the void
And the army
And the wind playing
With the street lamps
Or in my hair
I stand by the fence
My chin in my hand
I stand and think, how?
All that's left of a lifetime
Is a month merely
Yet I walk, whistle or smoke
In so much bitterness

The Pirate
You are a rose
With a very thin waist
The world, rose, is made
Of strong and weak
And you are soft
Like chewing gum
And I'm an old Turkish pirate
I have a ship
Inside the harbor
The harbor is buying and selling and theft
The harbor is
Wheat and rice and water
And God has forgotten us
Inside the harbor
And I'm an old Turkish pirate
With a pipe in my hand
And a sheep-skin on my back
Carrying silver and coins
I have a ship, forgotten by God
And God has forgotten us
Inside the harbor
Come, rose, come with me
The sea is my father, keep company with me
For I'm just an old Turkish pirate
My intentions are good
And my heart is clean.

Sabreen lyrics

2006-04-24T21:21:00.000-05:00

Kohl (Ala Fein, lyrics Talal Heidar)
This earth is swinging
Swaying this way and that
It's so very light
It can be carried by two. And tiny
doves can cross it
in two days
So I thought it yet to come...
She knocked on Time's door
to ask if two nights, long lost
Were his
He offered her two days
And told me not to say
That the nights are now kohl in the eyes

Mayyala (Ala Fein, lyrics Talal Heidar)
La, la, uncle Lala
There's a woman named Mayyala
Come from a distant village
Come to sing her mawwal
People saddened her so
To sit in her shadow she did go
I planted her, as a willow tree
And so embarrassed was she

On Man (Smoke of the Volcano, words Mahmoud Darwish)
They gagged his mouth,
Bound his hands to the rock of the dead
And said: Murderer!

They took his food, clothes and banners,
Cast him into the condemned cell
And said: Thief!
They drove him away from every port,
Took his young sweetheart,
Then said: Refugee!

O you with bloodshot eyes and bloody hands,
Night is short-lived,
The detention room lasts not for ever,
Nor yet the links of chains.
Nero died, Rome did not:
With her very eyes she fights.
And seeds from a withered ear
With wheat shall fill the valley.

Lyrics for "Nafad Al-Ahwal 2"

2006-04-24T21:11:00.000-05:00

(from Wameedd, Kamilya Jubran & Werner Hasler. Lyrics by Paul Sha'ul)

Nafad Al-Ahwal

I stood in the middle of the room searching for my cases.

I inspected the lamp, the ashtray, loss and gain, the door and the statues. I got belittled in my own eyes so I stood in front of the mirror for long to see my face. I scrutinized the air full of smoke and coughs. I almost erased and forgot it.

I got belittled and belittled until I stood for long in front of the door to enter, then to exit, and then without a sound I stretched on the armless, open and mute bed. There I remembered what happened.

I remembered the day I was killed, raped, cut to pieces lemon by lemon, cigarette by cigarette, was ripped and for the first time I cried for my death and for nature.

Palestinian music websites

2006-04-24T20:50:00.001-05:00

Sabreen (pictured)
Kamilya Jubran (former Sabreen lead singer)
Ramallah Underground: download samples of Palestinian hip-hop and electronica from Ramallah. Check the links for more music!
Dam (Tamer Nafar).

CD of Arab Jewish musicians

2006-04-10T21:46:00.000-05:00

I will pass this CD out on April 11:

1. "Hineh Ma Tov," David and The High Spirit, The Jewish Sampler Vol. III
--This is an example of Shirei Eretz Yisrael (Songs of the Land of Israel): the hegemonic Ashkenazi popular music of Israel til at least the '70s

2. "Shir Shabbat," Nati Levi, 16 Oriental Israeli Soul Songs (vol. 3)
--An example of "Greek" sounding Mediterranean Israeli music

3. "Tipat Mazal (A Bit Of Luck)," Zehava Ben, Best Of Zehava Ben
--Zehava Ben's first big hit, "Turkish" style

4. "Hubi Ei," Zehava Ben, Best Of Zehava Ben
--Egyptian pop style

5. "Ma Yafou Dadaich - Mawal," Emil Zrihan, Ashkelon-Morroccan Mawal

6. "Ma Yafou Dadaich," Emil Zrihan, Ashkelon-Morroccan Mawal
--Zrihan is the cantor of the Ashkelon synagogue in Israel. This song is sung in Hebrew but the style is Moroccan Andalusian. The "mawal" is the vocal introduction, improvised; the instruments join in for the second part of the song. The melody is a popular song in the Andalusian repertoire, "Koum Tara." (Enrico Macias and Cheb Mami recorded it as a duet.)

7. "Ram Lechasdakh," Syrian Jews of Brooklyn, Let Jasmine Rain Down
--An example of the piyyutim, or religious poems, put to contemporary melodies.

8. "Yachid Ram," Syrian Jews of Brooklyn, Let Jasmine Rain Down
--Another example of piyyutim, this time performed in maqam bayati.

9. "Dana International (Airport Version)," Dana International, Danna International

10. "Samar Mar," Dana International, Danna International
--A version of a song originally recorded by Egyptian pop star Hasa al-Asmar

11. "Arusa," Dana International, Danna International

12. "Saida Sultana," Dana International, Danna International
--Whitney Houston ("My Name Is Not Susan") goes to Saudi Arabia

13. "Maganona," Dana International, Maganona
--Crazy!

14. "Paid in Full (Seven Minutes of Madness - The Coldcut Re-mix)," Eric B & Rakim, Colors (Soundtrack)
--This song, which samples Ofra Haza's "Im Nin'alu," made Ofra famous

15. "Im Nin'alu," Ofra Haza, Fifty Gates of Wisdom: Yemenite Songs

16. "Salma Ya Salama - Arabic Version," Alabina, The Album Vol II
--Eti Zach (pictured) & Los Niños de Sara. This song was a big hit for French star Dalida, who was born and raised in Egypt. The Dalida version was played when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat arrived at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel on his famous 1977 "peace" visit.

17. "Lolole (Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood)," Alabina, The Album Vol II
--"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" was a 1965 hit for The Animals (#3 in England, #15 in the US). Alabina sing it in Arabic and Spanish.

18. "Inqlâb Zidane 1," Enrico Macias, Hommage À Cheikh Raymond - Volume Un
--malouf from Constantine, Algeria

Guidelines for project 2

2006-04-07T20:51:00.000-05:00

Choose between the following 3 options:

1. Questions for the readings for weeks 9-11 (Arab Jewish music): Amy Horowitz, in “Dueling Nativities,” argues that the kinds of musical practices exemplified by Zehava Ben are potentially disruptive of fixed identities and polarized claims to ownership of territory. Instead, such practices and borrowings create a sense of flexible rather than rigid identities, and as such, might contribute to the cessation, or at least the destabilization, of war.

Discuss Horowitz’s arguments, drawing on examples from at least FOUR of the articles assigned for weeks 9-11. (Only ONE of those articles should be by Horowitz.) You may also employ additional material (in addition to the 4 articles you’ve chosen), including the film, Zehava Ben: A Solitary Star, materials found on the blog for this class (mepop.blogstpot.com), and others.

Feel free to use the materials to argue against Horowitz’s claims, if you like. There is no “right” answer, what I am looking for are informed and well-argued answers. In order to make your arguments, you need to be very familiar with Horowitz’s “Dueling Nativities.”

2. Jonathan Shannon, in “Sultans of Spin,” explores how musical performance practices that are represented as “authentic” local spiritual traditions obtain their “authenticity” and “locality” through their enactment and staging in global performance contexts. One might add that they can also obtain “authenticity” and “locality” through global or Western practices of publicity and recording (and the publicity associated with the recordings: liner notes and the like).

Discuss Shannon’s arguments, drawing your examples from at least FOUR of the readings assigned for weeks 5-8. In order to do this question, you need to be quite familiar with the arguments Shannon makes. You may also draw on any additional material that you can locate.

3. If you prefer, you may choose a topic of your own (one that deals with the materials from weeks 5-11), but you MUST have it approved by me IN ADVANCE.

Papers are due, ideally, on April 13 (Thursday). If this is too early for you, please contact me. If any question is not clear, please contact me as well.

More on Israeli Mediterranean Music

2006-03-16T11:26:00.000-06:00

Edwin Seroussi, "'Mediterraneanism, in Israeli music: an idea and its permutations." Great article, with sound samples.

Website of Zehava Ben

2006-03-13T23:09:00.000-06:00

Check out Zehava Ben's official website.

Listen to Bustan Abraham

2006-03-13T15:50:00.000-06:00

Bustan Abraham is one of the bands discussed in Benjamin Brinner's article.

Here are some samples of their music:

Muwashah (from Pictures Through The Painted Window)

Go here to listen to selections from their self-titled album.

Pop Inshad

2006-03-12T21:17:00.000-06:00

Here are a blog posting and an article from the Washington Post about "Pop Inshad," which has become massively popular in the Gulf and the Middle East. The most popular of these singers appears to be Sami Yusuf, a British citizen whose parents are Azerbaijani, and who has pop star looks. His videos are quite popular in Egypt, and Patricia Kubala explains why in a recent article in Transnational Broadcasting Studies (13). And Walter Armbrust provides an excellent analysis of Yusuf's video clip "Al Mu'allim" in the same issue of TBS.

Selim Nassib's novel about Umm Kalthoum

2006-03-12T12:42:00.000-06:00

Today's New York Times Book Review contains a review of Selim Nassib's novel I Loved You For Your Voice, a fictionalized account of poet and lyricist Ahmed Rami for the great Egyptian diva, Umm Kalthoum. Here's what's interesting about the review is that it recommends the following: "Readers interested in the powerful story of Kalthoum's life would do better to read [Virginia] Danielson's intelligent and moving biography, 'The Voice of Egypt.'"

Bravo for Ginny!

(But does her book contain details such as these, which reviewer Lorraine Adams apparently derives from Nassib's text: As Om's popularity grows, rumors about her personal life dog her. Why is she celibate? Is she a lesbian?")

Islamic/Sufi Music CD Tracklist

2006-03-11T22:59:00.000-06:00

Here's the tracklist to the CD I passed out on Thursday:

1. "Taa Deem (Remix)," Asian Dub Foundation, Star Rise: Remixes (Remixes of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook)
2. "Sweet Pain (Remix)," Joi, Star Rise: Remixes (Remixes of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook)
3. "Samai Shadd-Araban," Al Kindi Ensemble, Arab Classical Music
4. "Concerning the seeking of salvation, Khalid Belrhouzi featuring Yusuf Islam, An Introduction to the Burdah by Sharaf al-Din Abi Abdullah al-Busiri
5. "Qur'an Recitation And Azan," Unidentified, Egypt - Echoes Of The Nile

Jonathan Shannon & the Fes World Sacred Music Festival of 2004

2006-03-07T12:05:00.000-06:00

Read what Shannon says about the Fes Sacred Music Festival of '04 (scroll down a ways), and compare it to what he says about the '02 festival ("Sultans of Spin," p. 270. (He's pictured here with his wife, Deborah Kapchan; check out her remarks on the Gnawa.)

Najat Aatabou website with downloads

2006-03-05T16:18:00.000-06:00

Najat Aatabou is one of Morocco's foremost female singers. Two fine CD's that give a fine sampling of Najat's large corpus of songs have been released in the West, Country Girls & City Women and Voice of the Atlas. The Chemical Brothers sample her on their 2005 hit, "Calvanize." Check out Najat's website and the free mp3's.

Jajouka: tracklist

2006-02-21T12:29:00.000-06:00

The CD I'm passing out today:

1. "Gabahay," The Master Musicians Of Jajouka Feat. Bachir Attar, Apocalypse Across the Sky
2. "A Habibi Ouajee T'allel Allaiya," The Master Musicians Of Jajouka Feat. Bachir Attar, Apocalypse Across the Sky
3. "Bujloudia 'Bujloud Dancing with Aisha Qandisha,'” The Master Musicians Of Jajouka Feat. Bachir Attar, Apocalypse Across the Sky
4. "The Middle of the Night," The Master Musicians Of Jajouka Feat. Bachir Attar, Apocalypse Across the Sky
5. "55 (Hamsa oua Hamsine)," Brian Jones presents The Master Musicians Of Jajouka, Brian Jones presents The Pipes of Pan at Jajouka
6. "War Song/Standing + One Half (Kaim Oua Nos)," Brian Jones presents The Master Musicians Of Jajouka, Brian Jones presents The Pipes of Pan at Jajouka
7. "Your Eyes Are Like A Cup Of Tea - Beedie Mix," Master Musicians Of Joujouka, Brian Jones Presents The Master Musicians Of Joujouka -Remixes
8. "Under The Shadow Of Liberty," Bachir Attar, The Next Dream
9. "Track 7," Jajouka Musicians, One Night @ the 1001 vol. 1 (recorded by Brion Gysin)
10. "Up To The Sky, Down To The Earth," The Master Musicians Of Jajouka Feat. Bachir Attar, Master Musicians Of Jajouka (produced by Talvin Singh)
11. "You Can Find The Feeling," The Master Musicians Of Jajouka Feat. Bachir Attar, Master Musicians Of Jajouka (produced by Talvin Singh)

Excellent annotated bibliography on Moroccan music

2006-02-16T16:19:00.000-06:00

Here is a very useful annotated bibliography and discography dealint with the theme of "Moroccan Music: The 'Foreign' and the 'Familiar.'" Written by Karla Sabin as a term paper for a course offered at Oxford in Spring 2000 called Popular Culture in the Middle East (Sociology 470).

Greatest Gnawa

2006-02-16T08:35:00.000-06:00

Here's the track listing of the CD I'm passing out in class today. Note that the focus is on gnawa "fusion" rather than straight-up gnawa.

1. "Baba El Gnawi," Gnawa Diffusion, Algeria
2. "Lahilla Express," Gnawa Impulse, Living Remixes
3. "Baba L'Rouami," Gnawa Night Spirit Masters (Mustapha Baqbou), Night Spirit Masters
4. "Merhba," Saha Koyo, Hamid El Gnawi
5. "Jinger Mama," Hasna El Becharia, Djazair Johara
6. "Marahaba," Hassan Hakmoun and Adam Rudolph, Gift of the Gnawa
7. "Soudan Minitara," Hassan Hakmoun and Zahar, Trance
8. "Moussa Berkiyo / Koubaliy Beriah La' Foh," Maleem Mahmoud Ghania w/ Pharoah Sanders, The Trance Of Seven Colors
9. "Rojo Changó," Omar Sosa, Sentir
10. "Mimouna," Orchestre National De Barbès, O.N.B. en concert
11. "Allal," Ray Lema & Tyour Gnaoua, Safi
12. "Marhaba Moulay Koummy," M'aalim Sam, Gnawa Leila: Vol. 4-Red & Green Suites

Electro-Gnawa

2006-02-13T10:35:00.000-06:00

Here's a link to an article on a collaboration between Gnaouis and turntablists in Marrakesh, Morocco. The first couple paragraphs to the article are translated, and a link is provided to the original, which appeared in the Moroccan magazine Tel Quel.

The most interesting example of electro-Gnawa fusion I've heard is from Gnawa Impulse (pictured above), on their release, Living Remixes (GIP Music, 2002). It's a collaboration between a group of three Marrakesh Gnawa musicians who've recorded together as Gnawa Halwa, led by Abdenbi Binizi on lead vocals, and three German musicians active in the club scene.

"Aicha": Outlandish, Gellieman

2006-02-08T11:43:00.000-06:00

Yesterday in class I showed the music video of Khaled's "Aicha," on a DVD which comes with the import version of Khaled's latest release, Ya-Rayi. (The DVD also includes the clips for "Didi" and "Abdel Kader," as well as a great documentary about Khaled's career and the making of Ya-Rayi.)

Some of my students said they knew the song Aicha courtesy of an underground video that swept the internet a couple years ago. The video they had seen features a Belgian teenager named "Gellieman," lipsynching to a recording of Aicha put out by the Danish R&B group, Outlandish (pictured above). Outlandish's members are: Isam Bachiri (of Moroccan origin), Waqas Ali Qadri (Pakistani origin), and Lenny Martinez (Honduran origin). (I don't know how these guys are faring in the wake of the Danish cartoon uproar.)

You can view the Gellieman video here. Outlandish's "Aicha" video can be seen at the band's website. Go to "Media" and then to "Videos."

Khaled's "Didi" lyrics

2006-02-07T12:40:00.000-06:00

Here's a link to the lyrics of "Didi"--in Arabic, transliterated, and translated into English.

This link has now gone dead, it seems, so here's an alternative, from Leo's Lyrics Database:

ena bhar aaliya ou entia la
(I'm burning in the fire of love but you're not)
ma ndeerik ba'eeda ma nebki aalik
(I will not make you away from me so I don't cry later i.e. he wants to be always close from her)
la zhar la memoon la aargoob zine
(but I just have a bad luck and destiny)
CHORUS:
didi, didi, didi, didi, zin di wah
(take take, take take, take take, take take the beautiful girl away)
didi wah, didi, didi di hazzine daaayyeeeah
(take take, take take, take take take this beautiful girl away)
ma ndeerik ba'eeda ma nebki aalik
(I will not make you away from me so I don't cry later)
ma ndeerik ba'eeda ma nsaksi aalik
(I will not make you away from me so I don't ask about you later i.e. because she'll always be close from him he'll know everything about her and won't need to ask people about her)
la zhar la memoon la aargoob zine
(but I just have bad luck and destiny)
[CHORUS]
la baadouk aali l'jbal l'ghamqa
(even if they take you to the top of the highest mountain...)
derna l'melqa fil'jbal l'ghamqa
(I will still come to see you)
hzamt l'meryoula aala men darga?
(This literally means "who doesn't know her belt?". It's a metaphor that means "everybody knows her" or possibly means that she's known well by other men because she always hangs in bars, or maybe he's just saying "just like a woman that hangs in bars is known very well to other men, it's also very clear how I feel towards you (e.g. I love you)". This last one makes more sense to me and it's probably what Khaled is trying to say)
[CHORUS]
la zhar la memoon la aargoob zain
(I have a bad luck and destiny)
la zhar la memoon la qassam zain
(I have a bad luck and destiny)
qees el-shebka fil'bhar ou ebki aal'zhar
(drop the fishing net in the sea and cry on the bad luck -- this is another metaphor, he's describing his bad luck just like a fisherman who drops his fishing net in the sea and gets no fish)
[CHORUS]
hzamt l'meryoula aala men darga?
(who doesn't knokw her belt? (explained above)
rofd ahta ya moul el-taxi
(he's talking to the taxi driver but I'm not sure what he means by "rofd ahta")
hzamt l'meryoula khait spylo
(her belt is made of "spylo")

[CHORUS]

la zhar la memoon la aargoob zain
(I have a bad luck and destiny)
la zhar la memoon la qassam zine
(I have a bad luck and destiny)
qees el-shebka fil'bhar ou ebki aal'zhar
(drop the fishing net in the sea and cry on the bad luck)

[CHORUS]

aynik ki ayni aynik naymeen
(your eyes are sleepy -- he's describing her eyes, he says that they're not wide open, they're opened a little bit only. This is a sign of beauty (for him at least)
aynik ki ayni aynik mbalgeen
(your eyes are nice)
aynik ki ayni aynik shabbeen
(your eyes are beautiful)
[CHORUS]
derna el-melqa fil'jbal l'ghamqa
(I'll come to see even if you're on the top of the highest mountain)
derna el-melqa aand el-soosi jarha
(or I'll come to see you in the neighborhood (i.e. wherever she is, he'll do anything to see her)
rofd ahta aa moul el-taxi
(he's talking to the taxi driver, but again, I don't know what he means by "rofd ahta")

Lyrics of Khaled's "Aicha"

2006-02-07T12:33:00.000-06:00

Comme si je n'existais pas
Elle est passée a coté de moi,
Sans un regard, reine de Saba
J'ai dit: Aicha, prends tout est pour toi

Voici, les perles, les bijoux
Aussi l'or autour de ton cou
Les fruits bien murs au goût de miel
Ma vie, Aicha, si tu m'aimes

J'irai ou ton souffle nous mene,
dans les pays d'ivoire et d'ebene
J'effacerai tes larmes, tes peines,
rien n'est trop beau pour une si belle

Aicha, aicha, écoute moi
Aicha, aicha, t'en vas pas
Aicha, aicha, regarde moi
Aicha, aicha, reponds moi

Je dirai les mots, les poèmes
je jouerai les musiques du ciel
Je prendrai les rayons du soleil
pour eclairer tes yeux de rêve

Aicha, aicha, écoute moi
Aicha, aicha, t'en vas pas

Elle a dit garde tous tes tresors
Moi, je vaus mieux que tout ça
Des barreaux sont des barreaux mêmes en or,
Je veux les mêmes droits que toi
Du respect pour chaque jour
Moi, je ne veux que de l'amour

Comme si je n'existais pas
Elle est passee a cote de moi,
Sans un regard, reine de Saba
J'ai dit: Aicha, prends tout est pour toi

Aicha, aicha, écoute moi
Aicha, aicha, écoute moi
Aicha, aicha, t'en vas pas
Aicha, aicha, regarde moi
Aicha, aicha, reponds moi

Preliminary Book List

2006-01-23T11:41:00.000-06:00

A preliminary list of titles for students who want to write book reports (assignment #3)

V. Danielson, “The Voice of Egypt”: Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century

J. Goodman, Berber Culture On The World Stage: From Village To Video

A.J. Racy, Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Tarab

M. Regev, E. Seroussi, Popular Music and National Culture in Israel

K. Shelemay, Let the Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance Among Syrian Jews

M. Stokes, The Arabesque Debate: Music And Musicians In Modern Turkey

S. Zuhur, Asmahan’s Secrets: Woman, War, and Song

Schedule of Readings

2006-01-21T18:05:00.000-06:00

ANTH 3903/3923H Middle Eastern Popular Music

WEEK 1 January 17-19 Introductions: the dominant

S. Blum, “Hearing the Music of the Middle East,” V. Danielson et al, eds., The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music: The Middle East

V. Danielson, “Snapshot: Opening Night for a Star Performer—Umm Kulthum and Inta ‘Umri,” in Danielson et al

V. Danielson, “The Arab Middle East” in P. Manuel, ed., Popular Musics of the Non-Western World

“The Umm Kulthum Nobody Knows,” in E. Fernea & B. Bezirgan, Middle Eastern Muslim Women Speak

WEEK 2 January 24-26 Rai

L.J. Jones, “North Africa: Overview,” in Danielson et al

Start Marc Schade-Poulsen, Men and Popular Music in Algeria

WEEK 3 January 31-February 2 Rai

Finish Schade-Poulsen

WEEK 4 February 7-9 Rai & World Music

B. Mazouzi, “Rai,” in Danielson et al

J. Gross et al, “Rai, Rap and Ramadan Nights,” in S. Lavie & T. Swedenburg, Displacement, Diaspora and the Geographies of Identity

L. Werner, “Arab Pop on the World Stage”

P. Bohlman, World Music: A Very Short Introduction (excerpts)

A. Morgan, “Rai: Music Under Fire,” in The Rough Guide to World Music, vol. 1

WEEK 5 February 14-16 Gnawa

P. Schuyler, "Review of Gnawa Leila"

P. Schuyler, “Music and Meaning among the Gnawa Religious Brotherhood of Morocco,” The World of Music 23.1, 1981

D. Kapchan, “Music in Performance: Following the Entranced Ones,” in Danielson et al

D. Kapchan, “Possessing Gnawa Culture”

T. Fuson, “Gimme the One Who’s Going: Trance, Groove and Interaction on the Gnawa Ritual Floor”

D. Kapchan, "Moroccan Gnawa and Transglobal Trance," Expedition 46.1, 2004

WEEK 6 February 21-23 Jajouka

P. Schuyler, “Joujouka/Jajouka/Zahjoukah: Moroccan Music and Euro-American Imagination”

W.S. Burroughs, Liner notes to Apocalypse Across the Sky

R. Palmer, “Into the Mystic: Secluded in the Mountains of Morocco, the Master Musicians of Joujouka Have Been Casting Musical Spells for Centuries”

T. Fuson, “Renewed Pandemonium: The Continuing Legend of the Master Musicians of Jajouka”

WEEK 7 February 28-March 2 Sufi

M. Frishkopf, liner notes to Music of the Sufi Inshad: Shaykh Yasin al-Tuhami

M. Frishkopf, “Snapshot: Shaykh Yasin al-Tuhami,” in Danielson et al

M. Frishkopf, “Tarab (‘Enchantment’) in the Mystic Sufi Chant of Egypt” in S. Zuhur, Colors of Enchantment: Visual and Performing Arts of the Middle East

M. Frishkopf, “al-Inshad al-Dini (Islamic religious singing) in Egypt,” in Danielson et al

M. Frishkopf, "Inshad Dini and Aghani Diniyya in Twentieth Century Egypt: A Review of Styles, Genres, and Available Recordings." Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, Winter 2000

WEEK 8 March 7-9 Spirituality cont’d

J. Shannon, “Sultans of Spin: Syrian Sacred Music on the World Stage”

WEEK 9 March 14-16 Arab Jewish Music

A. Horowitz, “Israeli Mediterranean Music,” in Danielson et al

A. Horowitz, “Snapshot: Mizrahi Music in Israel,” in Danielson et al

A. Horowitz, “Dueling Nativities: Zehava Ben Sings Umm Kulthum,” in R. Stein & T. Swedenburg, Palestine, Israel & the Politics of Popular Culture

B. Brinner, “Beyond Israelis vs. Palestinians or Jews vs. Arabs: The Social Ramifications of Musical Interaction”

M. Regev, “Musica Mizrakhit: Israeli Rock and National Culture in Israel,” Popular Music 15 (3), 1996

WEEK 10 March 28-30 Arab Jewish pop: Dana International

T. Swedenburg, “Sa‘ida Sultan/Danna International: Transgender Pop and the Polysemiotics of Sex, Nation, and Ethnicity on the Israeli-Egyptian Border”

Y. Ben-Zvi, “Zionist Lesbianism and Transsexual Transgression”

C. Vancil, “Shushu, Zumzum, and Sumsum: Dana International and the Politics of the Other”

L. Moriel, “Diva in the promised land: a blue-print for newspeak?” World Englishes 17/2, July 1998

Check out the Non-official Dana website

WEEK 11 April 4-6 Arab Jewish pop continued

T. Swedenburg, “Against Hybridity: The Case of Enrico Macias/Gaston Ghrenassia,” in R. Stein & T. Swedenburg, Palestine, Israel & the Politics of Popular Culture

WEEK 12 April 11-13 Nubia

T. Swedenburg, “Nubian Music in Cairo,” in Danielson et al

L. Werner, “Music of the World”

R. Fernea & A. Rouchdy, “Contemporary Egyptian Nubians”

E. Smith, “Place, Class, and Race in the Barabra Café: Nubians in Egyptian Media”

WEEK 13 April 18-20 Palestine

A.M. Oliver & P. Steinberg, “Popular Music of the Intifada,” in Danielson et al

J. Massad, “Liberating Songs: Palestine Put to Music,” in R. Stein & T. Swedenburg, Palestine, Israel & the Politics of Popular Culture

“Improvisation and Community: The Music of Sabreen”

Newspaper articles about Palestinian hip-hop TBA

WEEK 14 April 25-27 Egypt

V. Danielson, “Stardom in Egyptian Music: Four Case Studies,” in Danielson et al

K. Zirbel, “Playing It Both Ways: Local Egyptian Performers between Regional Identity and International Markets”

J. Gordon, “The Nightingale and the Ra’is: Abd al-Halim Hafiz and Nasserist Longings,” in E. Podeh & O. Winckler, Rethinking Nasserism: Revolution and Historical Memory in Egypt

J. Gordon, “Singing the Pulse of the Egyptian-Arab Street: Shabaan Abd al-and the Geo-pop-politics of Fast Food,” Popular Music 22/1, 2003

E. Colla, “Sentimentality and Redemption: The Rhetoric of Egyptian Pop Culture Intifada Solidarity,” in R. Stein & T. Swedenburg, Palestine, Israel and the Politics of Popular Culture

WEEK 15 May 2-4 Oddities

G. Azar, “The Sultan of Surf”

M. Stokes, “Turkish Rock and Pop Music,” in Danielson et al

M. Stokes, “Music in Performance: Cem Karaca, Live,” in Danielson et al