Samira Tawfiq sings to Jordan's red kufiya

The famous Lebanese singer Samira Tawfiq (given name: Samira Ghastin Karimona) was born in the village of Umm Hartin, in Suwayda province, Syria in 1935. Her father Ghastin worked at the Beirut harbor. She made her career in Jordan, reportedly due to all the competition from other big names like Fairouz and Sabah and Wadi' al-Safi, and she became known especially for her songs done in Bedouin dialect. Here she is singing about the red(-and-white) kufiya, which is closely associated with Jordanian national identity, particularly due to the fact that it is worn by members of the armed forces. This patriotic song dates from the 1970s, and is no doubt somehow in response to Jordan's expulsion of the Palestinian resistance movement in 1970-71. (The iconic Palestinian kufiya is the black-and-white one.)

You can download a great Samira Tawfia (Taoufik) LP here, and frankly, its songs are better than the red kufiya one.

More on Saâda Bonaire's "Bedouin funk archive" & their "oriental disco-funk tunes"

"Bedouin funk archive" and "Oriental disco-funk tunes" -- this is how Dazed Digital describes the recent eponymous release of this '80s project's canned recordings. They also describe it thus: "Combining the occasionally stony, stark minimalism of European electronics with the groove-laden funk of Turkish and Kurdish folk."

Dazed Digital has interviewed DJ Ralph “von” Richtoven and singers Stephanie Lange (but not singer Claudia Hossfeld) on the occasion of the release. What I found of interest was how they describe the recordings "Eastern" feel. Excerpts follow:

von Richtoven: The band? Well there was no real band. It was a lot of friends from the music scene. I also gathered some traditional Kurdish folk musicians from the local Turkish communist party to play some more Eastern instruments on the tracks. I didn't really want a band – Saâda Bonaire was a pop-art project...

We saw the strong influence that Afro-Cuban sounds had on American music. We could hear the influence that Caribbean and Indian immigrants had on British music in the 80s. In France, they had the Rai music from the Maghreb and a lot of musicians from West Africa. In Germany, we only had Turkish immigrants... millions of them. In the 1970s I studied social work. By the 1980s, I was working for the German government's immigration department. I was responsible for many immigrant social clubs in Bremen. I was also collecting music tapes from Turkey and Egypt since 1975. In theory it was obvious what we had to do: fusion. In reality it was very difficult and almost impossible.

So there you have it: Cool German artists want to emulate the hip reggae and bhangra sounds coming out of England and the "rai" and West African influence on French music. [As an aside, I'm sure this an anachronism, as I seriously doubt that pop rai was much evidence in Germany as early as 1982.] But they "only" had Turks around...who happened to be Kurds who belonged to the Turkish Communist Party?

Don't you wish music journalists asked more questions?

But maybe not, if they don't know the difference between Bedouin and Turks...

Kufiyas and Straub & Huillet's "Moses and Aaron"

New Yorker Films

A review in the New York Times (February 2, 2012) of Straub and Huillet's 1975 film Moses and Aaron reminded me how common it has been for films to depict the biblical Hebrews as Bedouin. This film, however, is anything but what one youtube commenter calls a "sword n' sandals" epic, Hollywood style. The music is by Schoenberg, meaning it is in many ways the antithesis of Hollywood soundtracks.

And the Times reviewer, David Kehr, informs us that the directors "had come to prominence as the creators of a meticulously Marxist-materialist presentation of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, 'The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach' (1968), and the same systematic refusal of transcendence is at work here." And Kehr concludes, "more than ever 'Moses und Aron' seems like one of the monuments of 20th-century cinematic modernism..."

 And yet, those costumes still remind one of Hollywood representations, don't they?

Check out this scene from the film. Love the dancing in front of the golden calf.