Interesting film, "Palestine Red Crescent Society" (1979, dir. Monica Maurer and
Samir Nimer). Filmed in 1978 in Lebanon, it examines the development and the
work of the PRCS. Its work encompasses not just pre-natal health and "normal"
medical functions, but also the treatment of the wounded and the rehabilitation
clinics that handle those mutilated or left handicap by periodic Israeli attacks
and the Lebanese Civil War. Attacks on Palestinian health infrastructure did not
start in Gaza in 2023....
This is an AP wire photo that I purchased off of ebay a couple years back. I don't know whether the photo ever showed up in any news report on the event. A group of Americans, I don't think belonging to any particular organization, put on this event, a two-day march to Sidon. The following year they organized another march, from Sidon to Tyre. (That's me in the middle, with the headband.) I was too involved in marriage preparations to go. The following spring, 1975, no march was organized, it was the early days of the civil war.
Two things I notice here: (1) the woman next to me (whose name I forget) is wearing a kufiya, reminding me that expats in Beirut would do this in the early 70s, and (2) I'm carrying a plastic bag from the Rebeiz record store, one of the two best record stores in Beirut at the time. It should be noted that the march proceeded just a few days after Israeli special forces entered West Beirut and assassinated three PLO officials: Muhammad al-Najjar, Kamal Adwan, and Kamal Nasser.
RIP
my old pal Otis Grand (on left), who passed away on June 7in
London. Me in the middle, on vocals, on the right, Walid Boustany. We
got our start playing 'unplugged,' in 1973. then got a full, electrified group
going called Bliss Street Blues Band. On harmonica, George Bisharat, AKA
Big Harp George. Bass: Todd/Craig Lichtenwalner. Drums, Raja Kawar.
Then we dispersed, Otis ended up in London, eventually
started his own band, and was such a prodigious talent that he was
voted 'Best UK Blues Guitarist' seven years running (1990–1996)
by the British Blues Connection magazine. (After 7 years, his name was
retired.) He issued lots of recordings, they are easy to track down.
I'll have more to say about Otis in future.
Habibi Funk is offering some rare tracks by Lebanese artists, with 100% of the profits going to the Lebanese Red Cross. This is a great chance to get your hands on some rare and very good Lebanese music and help out Lebanon, which very much needs our assistance. Music by Rogér Fakhr, Ferkat El Ard, Toufic Farroukh, Munir Khauli, Abboud Saadi and Force. To download, and to read more about the musicians, please go here.
And in case you want to donate straight to the Lebanese Red Cross, go here.
My review of Syrian Prayers: Sacred Music from Bilad Al Sham was just published by RootsWorld.
You can read it here. Here's a sample from the review:
Erik Hillestad of the Norwegian record label KKV, in an attempt to
highlight the diversity of religious faiths in the Arab world, traveled
to Lebanon and made a series of recordings of Christian and Muslim
vocalists, including Syrian and Iraqi refugees now living in Lebanon, as
well as Lebanese nationals. The singers represent a broad range of
religious traditions, all with deep roots in this region, known in
Arabic as Bilad al-Sham (in English, the Levant, encompassing Palestine,
Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan). On this recording, we hear a sampling
of just a few of the many Christian churches in the region: Armenian
Apostolic (Orthodox), Maronite, Syriac Orthodox, Greek Orthodox,
Chaldean Catholic, and the Assyrian Church of the East. We also hear
from Muslim vocalists representing the two main branches of Islam, Sunni
and Shi'ite. A hear a range of languages as well: Arabic, Armenian,
varieties of Eastern Aramaic (Syriac, Assyrian, Chaldean), and Greek.
And please watch Hillestad's documentary about the project.
The great Lebanese alt-rock band Mashrou' Leila is on tour in the US (and bands like this, of course, always skip Arkansas in such cases), and they played DC and showed up in the NPR studio to do a Tiny Desk concert. Their appearance (Monday June 13) coincided with the news of the Orlando massacre. Their lead singer, Hamed Sinno, is out gay, and they have been the subject of some controversy in Lebanon for their queer positivity.
Anastasia Tsioulcas (NPR Associate producer), who you should, btw, follow on twitter -- @anastasiat -- writes: The group opened its Tiny Desk set with "Maghawir" (Commandos), a
song Sinno wrote in response to two nightclub shootings in Beirut — a
tragic parallel to what happened in Orlando. In the Beirut shootings,
which took place within a week of each other, two of the young victims
were out celebrating their respective birthdays. So "Maghawir" is a wry
checklist of sorts about how to spend a birthday clubbing in their home
city, but also a running commentary about machismo and the idea that big
guns make big men.
"All the boys become men / Soldiers in the
capital of the night," Sinno sings. "Shoop, shoop, shot you down ... We
were just all together, painting the town / Where'd you disappear?"
It's a terrific song, very moving, and wow, so appropriate.
In an article about Mashrou' Leila by Kim Taylor Bennett, on Vice's musical channel Noisey, the group elaborate further about the song:
"‘Maghawir’ narrates a possible version of a club shooting in Beirut,
drawing on references to real Lebanese case histories from two
different shootings that took place within the same week, both of which
resulted in the deaths of extremely young victims, each of who was out
celebrating their birthday.
"The lyrics are formatted to read like a list of steps to follow on a
night out in Beirut, satirically referencing the hordes of
tourist-targeting bucket lists that overshadow readership on Lebanon
like 'Things to do in the city of nightlife,' while maintaining a
conscious attempt to sketch out the more tangibly tragic facets of such
rampant and un-policed violence and gun ownership by accentuating the
innocence of the victims involved—be that by opening the lyrics with a
happy birthday wish, or only alluding to the actual death of the victim
by running the metaphor of losing someone in the crowd of a club.
"On the other hand, the lyrics constantly brings up gender to situate
the events within a broader discourse on gender and the recruitment of
Lebanese men into locally-revered militarized masculinities, where said
violence often becomes not only common, but rather part of a list of
gendered provisions for the preservation of men’s honor, as demonstrated
in the case studies the song refers to, where both assailants shot in
retaliation to having their pride (masculinity) publicly compromised.
"In marrying the lyrics with upbeat dance-worthy music, the song
gestures towards the evident normalization of such behavior, wherein
lies the critique of the 'capital of the night,' by questioning whether
or not violence is just another thing we can dance to, another element
of the country’s nocturnal paysage under the continued patronage of the
political elite which often chooses to protect criminals because of
vested political interests."
Three different transliterated and translated versions of the song are here.
Also, check out this very smart article from Good by Tasbeeh Herwees, who interviewed Mashrou' Leila when they performed in Los Angeles in November 2015, on their first US tour. (They're now on their second.) A few choice excerpts: The musicians, however, are rarely asked to talk about technique and
style. “We’ll go to France, someone will ask how we feel about Charlie Hebdo,” says Sinno. “Or we'll go to Italy and someone will ask us if we can buy CDs where we come from. It's embarrassing.”
With the advent of the 2011 Arab uprisings,
Mashrou Leila’s fans conceived new explications for the music. “The
interpretations go their own way,” says Abou-Fakher. “[Our music] gets
appropriated for movements in Egypt at a particular time or to a cause
in Palestine at another time.” Songs that previously gestured at
discontent were reappropriated as calls to revolution. They were played
at political rallies in Cairo, Tunis, and Amman, where the band has
massive—and growing—audiences. “Inni Mnih,” a song on their 2011 album El Hal Romancy—in which Sinno sings, “let’s burn this city down and build a more honorable one”—was misread
as an anthem for the Egyptian revolution. Once, at a music festival in
Beirut where the group Gorillaz was also playing, the band sang an
Arabic rendition of Gorillaz’s “Clint Eastwood” as a tribute. The clip
found its way online, where it was reinterpreted as a rallying call for
protesters in Tunisia. “It gets all these political associations slapped
onto it,” Sinno says...
In “Djin,” the third track, Sinno sings, “I don’t do sodas, I don’t
do teas / I drown my sorrows, forget my name and give myself to the
night / liver baptized in gin, I dance to ward off the djin.” The lyrics
are an exercise in demystification, an attempt to dismantle the myth of
Beirut as a playground for Western jet-setters and nightclub-hopping
tourists. “At the very beginning, we were sort of pissed off about the
way Beirut is always portrayed as this party destination,” says Sinno.
“For people who live there, there's a lot of actual politics that get
negotiated in these spaces, in bars and clubs.”
The “danciest”
song on the album is also one of their most sobering. “Maghawir”—which
begins by narrating a night out in Beirut—is about nightclub shootings
in Lebanon. “Shootings in clubs in Beirut happen more frequently than I
think people would like to admit,” says Sinno. Only last month, a club
shoot-out in the city killed eight people. “Wear your black suit and come down,” Sinno
sings on the track, “bearing that when snow caps the hill / all the
boys become men / soldiers in the capital of the night.”
And...here's what Sinno said in the group's Washington, DC concert on Monday, according to CNN.
He reacted strongly to a crowd following the mass shooting
at an Orlando gay nightclub, lamenting the attack against the LGBT
community as well as the rhetoric against Muslims and Arabs that
followed.
"Suddenly, just
because you're brown and queer you can't mourn and it's really not
f---ing fair," Sinno said on stage while performing at the band's sold out show
Monday night at The Hamilton in Washington. "There are a bunch of us
who are queer who feel assaulted by that attack who can't mourn because
we're also from Muslim families and we exist ... this is what it looks
like to be called both a terrorist and a faggot."
As found on Mixcloud, courtesy Columbus Music Magazine, an Israeli outfit that seems to live exclusively on Mixcloud. I've no idea who the pair are that chose the songs, except that they are Israeli. And based on the choices they've made, we can presume that (a) they listen to a lot of Arab music (b) they have quite good taste and (c) they are not afraid of progressive political music.
Most of the tracks are what one might call "alternative" Arab music, with roots in rock, but there is also some hip-hop. "Arabic" for Engelberg and Jurkevitch seems to mean "Eastern" or "Mashreqi," as there are no tracks from any Arab country east of Egypt. Nonetheless it's a quite good set, and it introduced me to a lot of material I did not know. Of the artists I am familiar with, there are quite good tracks from Mashrou' Leila (Lebanon), Ramy Essam (Egypt, though now based in Sweden), Maryam Saleh & Zeid Hamdan (Egypt/Lebanon), DAM (Palestinian citizens of Israel), Zeid and the Wings (Lebanon), Massar Egbari (Egypt), and Youssra El Hawary & Salam Yousry (Egypt).
I was most impressed by the track by Jowan Safadi, called "To Be An Arab." It surprised me when I listened for the first time, because the vocals are in Hebrew, not Arabic, and the song is not rock or rap but sounds very much like standard Israeli Mizrahi pop. (There is, however, a spoken bit in Arabic.) I did a bit of googling and learned from an article on Mondoweiss that Safadi is a Palestinian citizen of Israel (don't you dare call someone like him an "Israeli Arab"), and that the lyrics are quite amazing. The YouTube video (below) is terrific, and it is aimed at/addressed to Israeli Jews of Arab heritage, known in Israel as Mizrahim (or alternatively, to use an earlier terminology, Sephardim). The video provides a translation of the Hebrew (and Arabic) into English, which Mondoweiss has helpfully transcribed. Here's a few sample lines. I urge you to watch the vid and read the article.
Hardcore homophobes Are the most gay on the inside Mizrachi Arabophobes Are Arabs themselves Who are just afraid And prefer to stay in the closet Because they know, they know the best That to be an Arab is not that great
Interesting, no, to compare Mizrahis who hate Arabs to homophobes?
The song represents a quite remarkable reaching out, on the part of a Palestinian Arab citizen of Israel, to the Mizrahi Jewish minority, who are of Arab heritage. When it comes to a one-on-one "talk," the address is in Arabic, presuming the ability of the Mizrahi addressee to understand the language of heritage -- which in fact many young Mizrahim would not. It expresses a great deal of sympathy for the Mizrahi position, but ends on a tough note: dude, you are in Palestine.
Hey you imported Arab Take it from a local Arab You were dragged here To take my place It’s hard to be an Arab It’s really hard, ask me It’s hard to be an Arab How much can one be black Under the rule of the rich and white In the land of Palestine
Hey you imported Arab,
Take it from a local Arab
You were dragged here
To take my place
It’s hard to be an Arab
It’s really hard, ask me
It’s hard to be an Arab
How much can one be black
Under the rule of the rich and white
In the land of Palestine
- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/radical-talent-safadis#sthash.dVU4a8Vc.dpuf
Hardcore homophobes
Are the most gay on the inside
Mizrachi Arabophobes
Are Arabs themselves
Who are just afraid
And prefer to stay in the closet
Because they know, they know the best
That to be an Arab is not that great - See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/radical-talent-safadis#sthash.dVU4a8Vc.dpuf
Hardcore homophobes
Are the most gay on the inside
Mizrachi Arabophobes
Are Arabs themselves
Who are just afraid
And prefer to stay in the closet
Because they know, they know the best
That to be an Arab is not that great - See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/radical-talent-safadis#sthash.dVU4a8Vc.dpuf
My post of April 19, 2007 had the following title: "Is this the best video clip of Arabic music ever?" (I don't know whether anyone who read the post realized the fact that the question was tongue in cheek, as the song is sung entirely in English with the exception of a couple of aywa's interjected.)
Accompanied by this video:
Who knew that I was part of what was to become a huge trend? Pierre France discusses the Bendaly (alternate spellings: Bendali, Bandali, Bandaly) phenomenon in a recent article on OrientXXI.
It turns out the family is from Tripoli, Lebanon. They were a very big live sensation in the seventies and into the mid-eighties, playing in the Arab capitals and as far afield as London and Australia. They did make recordings, but the thing was the live show. Because of this, their music does not show up on the collections of Arab music that are now being issued in a wave of nostalgia for the old stuff. Even though "Do You Love Me?" is a huge on-line sensation. I'm not sure where Pierre France gets his figure from, I guess it must be counting up the views from several different on-line versions. Let's hope, with Pierre, that the Bendalys do really get discovered, and start collecting some royalties.
Meanwhile, here are some great vids:
Live in Kuwait (this is the first of three). Really delightful.
"Alo, alo." Hilarious song.
"Ayilitna Ayilah" (our family's a family), where the stage looks like something out of Hollywood Squares.
"Ghazala." Nice oud from Roger Bendaly on this one, even if just a bit out of tune.
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.
Awhile back I posted about the Jewish-Lebanese singer Wadad, most famous for her unforgettable song "Tindam."
Now the invaluable music blog Naksh al-Sanadeeq has posted two more songs by Wadad, "Wedding Song - اتمخطري يا عروسة" and "Gypsy Fortune Teller's Song - بصارة براجة", both songs composed by Sayyid Darwish. They are both wonderful versions, and it's great to have access to additional Sayyid Darwish covers, as well as two more tracks from Wadad.
Here's a version of "Gypsy Fortune Teller's Song - بصارة براجة" by Horeya Hassan, and Sayyid Darwish's own version here. And here are the Arabic lyrics, by Yunis al-Qadi. Plus Munira Mahdia's version.
Here's Sayyid Darwish doing "Wedding Song - اتمخطري يا عروسة". Ismail Yasin and Feyrouz do a version of the song as well, but I can't find an online version.
I know, I'm not up to date at all. Catching up on items that I saved and didn't post about because I spent 7 weeks or so following the awful events in Gaza and not doing much else.
The great band Massive Attack however did do something.
First, when they headlined at the Longitude Festival late July, they sent messages to their audience about Gaza.
For more, read this article in The Independent. Second, also in late July (28), two members of Massive Attack, Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall, toured the Al Naqab Center at Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in Lebanon. The center
offers remedial classes, a meeting place for active youth and other
social activities, primarily for Palestinians
recently arrived from Syria. On the 29th, they staged a concert to benefit the Al Naqab Center, organized by the Hoping Foundation. The money also went to fund building a new public library in a camp in the
north of Lebanon and to supporting the ambulance service in Gaza. Read more here, also from The Independent.
Massive Attack at Burj al-Barajneh, wearing kufiya scarves.
Robert Del Naja is in front, Grant Marshall in back
Here's a short AFP report on the concert in Lebanon, and here is some amateur footage.
Finally, here's a post I did back in 2010 on Massive Attack and Palestine.
Sultan Hassan mosque, Cairo, December 1961 (Photo: Romain Swedenburg)
My family made its first trip to the Middle East in December 1961-January 1962. We visited Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan (East and West Banks), and Israel. In January 1964 we moved to Beirut, Lebanon. My parents lived there until fall 1972; I stayed on until January 1976.
The last time we were at my parents, my brother and I went through some of the many slides that my father took over the years, selected a number and had them scanned professionally. My dad was an amateur, but he was a quite accomplished photographer. I've started to post the photos on flickr, and assembled them in an album called Swedenburg Family, Middle East. You can access them here. I will continue to add 3-5 per week, so if you find them of interest, you can check back to find more in future. I have received very positive feedback when I've also posted the photos on Facebook, and I may do something further with the photos in future. At the least, hopefully, publish a photo essay. The photos are varied, all from the nineteen sixties: you'll find shots of Tahrir Square, Abu Simbel in the process of being raised, Jericho refugee camp, Aqaba, Sinai, Damascus, the Cedars...Please have a look. Feedback appreciated.
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.
Back in 2012, I posted (on one of my other blogs, mepop) about Yasmine Hamdan's self-titled album, released in Lebanon and France in 2012, and the song "Beirut" from the album. Here is the video that came out at that time.
The lyrics were posted as well, which I've copied below.
بيروت
شرب العرق
شرب العرق
لعب الورق
خيل السبق
صيد الحمام
رسمال بيروت
لبس الغوى
شم الهوى
اكل الهوى
شاغل عقول
سكان بيروت
بيروت
زهرة من غير أوانها
بيروت
محلاها ومحلا زمانها
بيروت
يا حينها وياضيعانها
تدبل
ما في عمل
ما في امل
برك الجمل
ركب النحس
تجار بيروت
الغندرة
والفنغرة
والبهورة
كتر البطر
هالك بيروت
Beirut
Arak drinkin'
Card playin'
Racehorse cheerin'
Pigeon huntin'
The essence of Beirut
Seduction crowd
Cruisin' around
Foolin' about
Tis' all there is on the minds
Of the citizens of Beirut
Beirut
A flower off its terrain
Beirut
Oh her beauty, her good old days
Beirut
That dire end, all a waste
Withering
All unemployed
Hopeless
Ruined and rusted
Jinxed and accursed
Those dealers of Beirut
Oh the strutting
That fancy livin'
Excess of splurging
Exploded vanity
Smothering Beirut
Now, finally, the album (under the title Ya Nass) is being released in the US, on March 25, from the Crammed Discs label. Why the wait? Who knows? Why now? Maybe to coincide with the appearance of Yasmine in Jim Jarmusch's film Only Lovers Left Alive, which I posted about a couple weeks ago.
Here's some promo about the "new" album. In it we learn that the lyrics to "Beirut" were adapted from a poem written in the 1940s by poet Omar El Zenni. And there is new video, about which the promo tells us: "Yasmine
Hamdan and her director Nadim Asfar used footage from super 8 films
which were purchased in a Lebanese souk by one of Yasmine's friends, who
collects them. These films were shot in various eras (from the 40s to the 70s), and are bringing these bygone times back to life." Check it out. If you've lived in Beirut, like I have, you will really like that super 8 footage.
We also learn from the promo that the song "Hal" from the album which is not on the French/Lebanese version, and this is the song that Yasmine does in the Jarmusch film. You can check it out here.
The very sharp observer Hammer commented on my earlier post. He has seen the movie, he doesn't think much of Yasmine's singing (I don't agree but I understand why he is critical). Here's what he says about the song: "The whole gig is a way to ride a now-defunct wave of using qaraqeb
in pop music. [i.e. it incorporates Gnawa percussion]. Her song which she sang is not a song actually: It's a
medley of words taken from old, '40s songs that most Arabs still hum and
sing. The anachronistic twist is that, most Moroccans do not sing these
songs or maybe know of them, as their musical tastes veer off into the malhoun and the ever-present chaabi."
That is to say, the scene where she sings is set in Tangier, but she isn't singing Moroccan music. Unfortunately, you can't ever imagine that US directors like Jarmusch would ever care about such things. He heard Yasmine's music, he met her, she's an Arab...you know.
Here is the list of songs on the album, via iTunes. This is what the cover looks like:
And here's the cover of the 2012 album.
And here's more about Yasmine and the Lebanese album, from Kwaidan Records.
I can't find a tracklist online right now for the 2012 version, so here it is:
1. In Kan Fouadi 2. Beirut 3. Samar 4. Baaden 5. Ya Nass 6. Irss 7. Nediya 8. Nag 9. Shouei 10. La Mouch 11. Bala Tantanat
You can check out the song "Deny" here (not on album 1). Also "Khalas" (not on album 1) here. "Samar," on album one, and two, here. "In Kan Fouadi," on one and two here.
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.
In 2007 I asked here whether the video of Lebanon's Bendaly Family's "Do You Love Me?" (1978) was the best video clip of Arabic music ever.
Now Dub Snakker has done a re-fix of the song, which he calls "Do You Wubb Me," and which was recently broadcast on Quarter Tone Frequency Vol. 2. You can listen to it at 46:40. Thanks to Jackson Allers for playing it. The entire show, featuring independent music from the UAE, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon is well worth a listen, but I was particularly moved by this track.
You can download Dub Snakker's release Khat Thaleth, a 23 track compilation of politically conscious Arab hip-hop, here.
The Bendaly Family's official website is here. And check out Rene Bendaly's very wild 1982 release "Tanki Tanki" here.
And one more, also very wacky, Bendaly Family's "popcorn" version of the great Saudi singer Muhammad 'Abdu's "Ab'ad Kuntum wa-al la Aqrabiyin." Nuts. [addendum Nov. 16: thanks to Hammer for this translation of the title - 'Whether You Were Near or Far' -- see comments.]
Dangerous Minds has recently been reporting on US hysteria over Satanism (I guess it's a Halloween season theme)? One of them is on a 1970 film, in the pseudo-documentary/ethnographic Mondo Cane vein, called Witchcraft '70. The other is about an evangelical preacher, Dr. Jerry Johnston, and a video he is in that dates from the late 1980s.
In both cases it is all moral panic: Satanism and animal sacrifice, human sacrifice, ritualistic sex, drug use and abuse, desecration of Christian symbols, and so on. In Witchcraft '70, it's hippies who are the focus, and we see nude hippy Satanists doing hallucinogenic drugs and a ritual that involves the violation of nubile young women. In the Johnston vid it is heavy metal music that is associated with the evils of Satanism. In both instances, Satanism is presented as a danger that threatens young people, and urges more sober adults to be on the look-out for the warning signs.
I presented a paper at the American Anthropological Association meetings in 2000 on the 1997 crackdown on Satanic heavy-metal fans in Egypt. I've never published the paper, but you can read an account of it here.
Below is a photo of one of several popular exposés of Satanism that I found in Cairo in summer 2000. This one is entitled: Satan Worship: Rituals of Sex and Blood.
As I am considering reworking the paper for eventual publication, I find it interesting to what degree the 1997 panic over heavy metal Satanism in Egypt (and another, much less hysterical one in 2012), Morocco in 2003, Lebanon in 1996-98 and 2002, and 2012, among others, have their ideological origins in the various panics over Satanism (probably dating from the late sixties) in the US. The discourse, East and West, is remarkably similar, as are the themes and motifs.
The big difference, of course, is that in the case of the US, the danger is internal, whereas in the Arab World, the danger is presented as external: Satanism is an alien, Western, sometimes Zionist, threat.
(Some of these issues are also discussed, of course, in Mark Levine's Heavy Metal Islam.)
More, inshallah, later.
P.S. added 11/11/13: I just came across this source on Egypt's heavy metal, which I've not yet read (but I just ordered the book on Interlibrary Loan): Benjamin J. Harbert, "Noise and its Formless Shadows: Egypt's Extreme Metal as Avant-Garde Nafas Dawsha," in Thomas Burkhalter et al, eds., The Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity, Wesleyan University Press. (The book comes out this Wednesday!)
I remember how blown away I was by Sabreen's album Maz'ooj, released in 2002. I particularly liked the songs which featured actor Mohammad Bakri's deep-bass spoken vocals (he is pictured on the bottom right on the album cover). And I also liked how the group incorporated, on a number of songs, a kind of hip-hop vibe. Listen, for instance, to the song "Wala‘" (Set Alight).
I had always thought that the album was so completely unique, that there was nothing like it.
And then I was listening again to Ziad al Rahbani's 1985 album Houdou Nisbi (which I picked up in Beirut in March), and noticed that Ziad's vocals on the song "Yellah Keshou Barra" are spoken as well, and Ziad's very clever, disco-ish, arrangement, as well as his deep, spoken vocals...remind me of Bakri on Maz'ooj. Listen to it here.
Could Ziad have been an influence on Sabreen when they recorded Maz'ooj?
Sadat and Amr 7a7a made a "surprise" appearance at the Home Works 6 forum on May 15 in Beirut. "Unassailably cool," writes Jim Quilty in The Daily Star.
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.
