The recording has received a fair amount of press, and it is well deserved. Jannis Stürtz, who runs the label, describes the sound as "Arabic funk played with a punk attitude," and that seems pretty accurate. Even if the music was recorded before anyone in Morocco was imagining punk.
If/when you go to listen, I recommend starting with "Sid Redad," which is an Arabic cover of James Brown's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," and "Al Zman Saib," an Arabic cover of Free's "All Right Now." Then try "La Tiq Tiq Latiq," which is the Spencer Davis Group's "I'm A Man," in Arabic.
I was surprised by how "Al Zman Saib" (Times are tough, roughly) was rendered on the cover as الزمان صعيب as I would have thought that الزمان صعب was the correct spelling. But maybe that's how it is spelled in Moroccan colloquial?
2 comments:
thanks for the I'm a Man comment
thought it was just my imagination
Regarding the spelling of Jannis' album (Note: he's a close friend of mine, by the way), it is darja Moroccan and they 'clip' some parts of the Arabic words as a habit. Ez-zman Lesa'eib is how a Moroccan would say it (Arabic: إزمان لصعيب), simply because they are affected by their ex-coloniser's dialect French. Meanwhile, الصعيب, or الصعب are one and the same different spellings of the Arabic word for "hard/ tough" (as in 'Tough Times'; which is the title of the comp album), but صعيب is how Moroccans say it, and صعب is the formal Arabic word.
H.H.
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