On December 1, 2104, Eyal Sagui Bizawe, one of Ha'aretz's most interesting writers (see what he has written about here) published an article entitled "Lebanese singer Fairuz is finally fashionable in Israel." He starts by telling us about traveling to Amman in 1999 to see Fairuz in concert (at that time it was somewhat normal to go to Jordan for such events.)
He goes on to say that Israeli society has "opened up somewhat to Arab music since then," although it still looks down on Mizrahi music. As evidence, he cites, first of all, the fact that Palestinian-Israeli singer Lina Makhoul, the winner of the second season of the Israeli TV program The Voice of Israel, performed a Fairuz song, "Bizakker Bel Kharif" (I remember autumn), at her audition in 2012. The song, set to the tune of "Autumn Leaves," was a great success with the judges as well as the audience.
Bizawe also cites the Israeli band Turquoise (Fairuz means turquoise in Arabic) which recently released a mini-album in tribute to Fairuz. It includes a version of Fairuz's "Sa'louni Al-nas," (The people asked me).
Turqouise's release has stirred up some controversy, with Abdul Rahman Jasem, a Palestinian writer based in Beirut writing in Al Akhbar that the recording was yet another example of Israeli Zionists stealing Arab culture, as they had done with hummus, felafel and tabbouleh. Turquoise argues however that they are just trying to bring Arab culture to the Israeli public, in the interests of bringing people together. I'm not unsympathetic to that project, but musically, I don't find Turquoise's version very appealing, as it seems to have very much toned down the Arab quality of the original, I guess with the idea of making it acceptable to a wider Israeli audience. Here's the original, you decide.
I also learned from Bizawe that Fairuz's son Ziad Rahbani is reportedly considering moving to Russia. Or, at least, moving to Russia for a time to work on a TV show.
Eyal Sagui Bizawe, meanwhile, is of Egyptian Jewish origin, and his grandmother was a cousin of the great Egyptian Jewish actress and singer Leila Murad. Bizawe has made a film, called Arab Movie, about the screening of Egyptian films on Israeli TV. You can see a clip and read about the film here. Bizawe is also a DJ, who spins discs on occasion at the very hip Jaffa bar Anna Loulou, which has a mixed (Palestinian and Jewish) clientele.
When I posted Bizawe's article on FB, I got varying reactions from FB friends. A Palestinian remarked, "they steal everything." One Israeli said that you couldn't attribute Israeli fans of Fairuz to a right-left split, whereas another Israeli claimed that it was leftists who were into Fairuz.
More research needed. Meanwhile, please follow Bizawe on Ha'aretz.
It is mp3s of 50+ 78s from the 1930s-1950s. Unfortunately the person who has posted them does not read Arabic, and some labels do not use Latin characters. There is some wonderful stuff here from well-known artists like Mohamed Abdel-Wahab, Umm Kalsoum, Sabah and Fayrouz -- and a lot by artists I did not know. A great source to explore.
The tracks I found most interesting were two by Hanan and Fayrouz (yes, the Fayrouz). In English they are identified only as "Swing" and "Rhumba."
The "swing" track in Arabic is
غيب يا قمر (Ghayb ya 'amr), and the "rhumba" is يا سميرة (Ya Samira). The label says they were written by the Rahbani Brothers, and according to this post on Soundcloud they date from between 1951 and 1954, that is, very early in Feyrouz's career. I'd like to know more, both tracks are so delightful. Harmonies! Especially on "Ghayb ya 'amr," which has a bit of an Andrews sister feel to it.
The Arabic lyrics for "Ghayb ya 'amr" can be found here. (I think the translation is more or less, disappear, O moon, but hopefully someone who reads this will come up with a more colloquial translation.)
This is tumblr account so new stuff keeps showing up. It's a pretty wide variety, stuff like Sayid Darwish, Warda, Nass El Ghiwane, and so on.
But it's what you might not have heard of before that might be the most interesting. I'd never heard of the Syrian singer Mayada El Hennawi before, and I just love this album of hers: Moush Aweidak/Ashwak.
And I had never before heard Egyptian composer Riad el Soumbati performing his composition Al-Atlal, made famous of course by Umm Kalthoum. His version is great, fabulous oud playing.
One warning about this site: some of the records are scratched and skip or stick...But ma'leesh.
More in the ongoing series of miscellaneous items I've come across and want to record for...my own future use.
1. A report on hip-hop in Tripoli, Lebanon, from Jackson Allers, menassat.com, reposted on the World HipHop Market blog, and focusing on Kimo and Balsam, of the group Mic-Rob. The two talk about their neighborhoods and do an acapella rap.
At least 90 people have died this year in the Tripoli violence that has mainly been between the rival ghetto youth from Bab al Tabaneh and neighboring Jabal Mohsen, wioch is dominated by the Alawites, an offshoot of the Shia branch of Islam.
“The problem is that the majority of the people doing the fighting are poor street kids who are looking for any excuse for a fight. No money. Fucked up families. And here they have guns,” says Balsam, who lives in the neighboring area of Bab al Rmeil...
and from their rap:
"They – the politicians and the corrupted Made us live In a nightmare that we can’t wake up from We got no money or prospects So our pockets are starving”
2. Playlist is a terrific series, focusing on "fusion" music, from Al Jazeera English. I've not even watched all the episodes dealing with Middle Eastern music from this rich and varied series. I hope to post on them in future. Interesting, isn't it, that no US cable news network has tried to do anything remotely approaching what Al Jazeera English has done. Thanks to the Detroit rapper Invincible, who clued me into this episode (series 2, episode 10, part 2), where Playlist goes back to some of the "fusion" artists they had interviewed and asked them what fusion artists they were paying attention to. The Palestinian rappers DAM say, check out Invincible, and so, we get to see clips from Invincible's video, "People Not Places," from her album Shapeshifters. (I've written about the song previously, but had not seen the vid.)
Be sure to watch the whole segment--the kuduro group Buraka Son Sistema are not to be missed!
3. Kronos Quartet's latest album, Floodplain, is out, and it is, well, all Middle Eastern/North Africa and Balkan and Central Asian. Spinner explains its genesis:
The seeds for the Kronos Quartet's new album, 'Floodplain,' an exploration of the rips and seams of Middle Eastern, North African, Balkan and Central Asian cultures through the distinct Kronos artistic lens, started to sprout a decade ago in a Beirut marketplace. The group was there to perform concerts, and founder-violinist David Harrington asked friend and sometime collaborator Ali Jihad Racy, who was joining Kronos for these shows, to take him music shopping.
"He took me to a record store," Harrington reminisces. "I just wanted to get a sense of Lebanese music and basically he helped me pick out 30 or 40 representative albums. And in going through these later, I heard this incredible son sung by Fairuz, when she was a very young woman. It blew me away."
The song, 'Wa Habibi,' (a video of a later Fairuz performance is here) tantalized and mystified Harrington with repeated listening.
"It sounded like it could have been Jewish music or Islamic or Christian," he says. "It turned out it was a song for Easter time. And I asked [composer-arranger] Steve Prutsman to make a version of it for us to play."
And that piece became a staple of Kronos concerts about eight years ago -- not long after the events of 9/11 charged perceptions of the Middle East with the air of suspicion and fear. It was a perfect statement: music that sounded, to Western ears, Islamic but intended to convey a Christian message of devotion, acceptance and sacrifice.
I love it: inspired by a trip to Beirut (where I lived for nearly 11 years) and an encounter--mediated by the esteemed UCLA ethnomusicologist and buzuq and saz player Ali Jihad Racy--with the divine Fairuz!
And even better, Floodplain has a contribution from the Palestinian hip-hop ensemble, Ramallah Underground (as advertised previously on Hawgblawg). Spinner continues:
It was an entirely different marketplace in which Harrington found the seeds of another one of the album's key pieces.
"Eventually I was casting about on MySpace several years ago and came upon this band from Palestine called Ramallah Underground and I loved their music," he says. "It was something I'd never heard before. So I got in touch with them and asked them to write for us. And they did the track for 'Tashweesh.' "
It's a striking collaboration, with Kronos playing over the electronics assemblage created by the Palestinian group, a perfect representation of the title, explained in the liner notes as meaning "interference or static, and by extension miscommunication and not hearing or understanding correctly"...
Read the rest of the article here. And to listen to segments from each of the tracks on Floodplain, go here.
4. Palestine's First National Rap Talent Contest, sponsored by the Sabreen Association and the Palestinian Broadcast Corporation, is taking place in May and June, 2009.
Here's the notice of the event, courtesy HipHopf. (I've edited it just a bit.)
“HipHopKom“ is Palestine’s first national rap contest and climax of the previous held training courses and Hip Hop promoting events as part of Project Hip Hop Palestine. Rappers and Hip Hop fans all over Palestine are now waiting to prove their talents to Palestine.
The contest is based on the concepts of ”Star Academy” and MTV’ Arabia’s “HipHopna” and is a national contest, which will take place as an open public show and be broadcast on TV.
A locally based film crew in the West Bank and Gaza will follow the event outline and document the development of the day. This will be broadcast live from the venue and projected in the Gaza and Ramallah venues. The event will be broadcast on PBC 36 local tv stations, the satellite channel Palestine TV and the local radio network.
14 Palestinian groups/artists selected by a jury in two prior auditions in the WB and Gaza will perform live on TV presenting their contribution to the rap contest.
Based on prior advertisement Palestinian rappers residing in ‘48 and the West Bank will be invited to participate in an audition for the contest. 10 participants will be selected by the jury from the WB audition out of an estimated number of 200 participants. A second audition might be arranged according to the number of registered rappers.
All of the rappers of the Gaza Strip will be invited to participate in a closed audition for the contest. It is assumed that rappers from 12 Hip Hop groups will join the audition. A jury of two persons will assess the performance of all artists and select a maximum of 4 persons to participate in the final contest.
In case no foreign artists can enter Gaza Sabreen organizes an audition in Gaza and transmits the audition to Ramallah where the whole jury resides. There would be no training program for the Gazans, only in Ramallah. The 4 selected talents form Gaza would perform in the Ramallah contest via a satellite transmission.
The jury, consisting of Shadia Mansour - British-Palestinian rapper, Zaki, the Danish-Egyptian rapper, and Mazzi, the Iranian-American rapper and breakdancer, will give their critique and assessment of the contributions together with the local rap pioneers Saz (Ramle) and Dam (Lid).
Between the auditions and the show the selected talents will be invited to undergo training with the jury preparing their performance for the show.
Voting and selection:
The show in Gaza will be held in al Hilal theatre in Gaza City and the West Bank show will be held in al Qasaba.
The winner will be chosen via SMS sent in by the television viewers. The show will see live performance by professional rappers.
The winners will be given the opportunity to travel to Denmark and meet and perform with the established Hip Hop scene in July 2009 + record the winning song on a single.
The program will be financed partly by the Danish Representative Office, the Roskilde Foundation and private Palestinian sponsors.
It's always an exciting event when a new Natacha Atlas album is released. Ana Hina is already out in Europe, but not due to be released on CD in the US until September. Fortunately, you can purchase downloads, from iTunes or amazon.com or emusic.com.
In some ways, Ana Hina represents a continuation of what Natacha has been up to since the beginning, "fusions" of Western and Eastern music. The difference is that this album represents more of a look backward, a "revival" of earlier fusion traditions. In particular, those of Abdel Halim Hafez (Egypt) and Fairuz (Lebanon). So rather than Arabic tunes set to reggae or hip-hop or dance beats, Natacha returns this time to famous East/West fusions that go back fifty years or so. As Natacha explained when she performed some of this material in Chicago in September 2006, she wants to show that East/West fusion isn't something "new" but something that musicians in the Middle East have practiced for decades.
My favorite tracks on this album are the 'Abdel Halim tunes and one of the Fairuz numbers. All of them are done pretty much as straight covers, as tributes, not deviating in any remarkable way the originals. (The bandleader, pianist and arranger, as in Chicago, is Harvey Brough, and the band plays all acoustic instruments.) When Natacha introduced the 'Abdel Halim Hafez songs that she performed in Chicago, she said what attracted her was their jazz feel. "Bayni wa Baynak Eh?" (What is there between us?) is a well-known 'Abdel Halim song, whose instrumental riff, if you can believe it, is drawn from the Woody Woodpecker cartoon theme song! (Thanks to Martin Stokes for this information.) The Woody Woodpecker influence is somewhat stronger in the Abdel Halim original. Check it out for yourself: here is Woody Woodpecker, and here's Abdel Halim. (For the lyrics to "Bayni wa Baynak Eh?", go here.) The other Abdel Halim song Natacha does is "Al-Aseel," a somewhat lesser-known song, and even more jazzy than "Bayni wa Baynak Eh?" (Listen to the original here.) Of the three Fairuz covers ("Ya Laure Hobouki," "Le Teetab Alayi," and "La Shou El Haki"), my favorite is "La Shou El Haki" (Why this talk?). Written and arranged by the Rahbani brothers, it has that typical light, snappy feel that is so characteristic of their work. The other song I particularly like is "Hayati Inta Reprise," a cover of a song on Natacha's previous album, Mish Maoul. Particularly effective on this track is the accordion work, and especially the solo, of Gamal Kurdi (who used to play accordion with Abdel Halim Hafez.)
These were the highlights for me, but all the tracks are of a consistently high quality. "Lammebada," the opening number, is a revered song from the Arab Andalusian tradition, that has been recorded numerous times. Check out Catalonian singer Maria del Mar Bonet's live version, on youtube. It has also been recorded by La Mar Enfortuna, who opened for Natacha at the Old Town School of Folk Music in September 2006. I'm never fully convinced by tracks recorded by Natacha in English, but her version of Nina Simone's "Black is the Color" is serviceable. Also worth mentioning is the very pretty, "He Hesitated," an anti-war song, which is about a soldier pondering whether or not to shoot.
If you are familiar with Abdel Halim Hafez and Fairuz, you might think, like one of my Palestinian friends does, that Natacha's versions are pale imitations. My response is, no, Natacha isn't Abdel Halim or Fairuz, nor does she pretend to be. She is doing tributes to their music and their spirit. I think they are admirable renditions, and I fully endorse the idea of trying to bring their artistry and their tradition of cultural openness to Western audiences. This is a great recording, and I recommend it highly. Check it out, and then go seek out the originals as well.
Professor of Anthropology, University of Arkansas. Author of Memories of Revolt: The 1936-39 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past. Co-editor of Palestine, Israel and the Politics of Popular Culture and of Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity.
