Isa TKM is a teenage telenovela from Nickelodeon Latin America, which has been broadcast in several latin American countries, and premiered last week on MTV Tr3s. (I was alerted to the music for the show by Jon Caramica in today's NYT--but for some reason I can't find the link.)
Check out the video for the song "Ven a Bailar," a delightful bit of bubblegum pop, which is just the thing for fans of The Archies and all their successors. (It's available on the show's soundtrack.) In it, Alex (Reinaldo Zavarce), the guitarist, can be seen bopping around, wearing one of those "kufiya print" t-shirts. (Otherwise known as trompe d'oeil.) The first season was filmed in Venezuela--was Hugo Chavez an influence in the style choices made in the vid?
1. Hich Kas, who is perhaps Iran's best known rapper, showed up recently on The Daily Show--in Jason Jones' three-part account of his recent trip to Iran. We get to witness Hich Kas' remarkable skills, and he proceeds to tell Jones that he raps about street issues, social issues, moral issues. What about the guns, hos, bitches? says Jones. Jones then "teaches" Hich Kas about rap by performing a hilariously shallow rap. Hich Kas laughs but says that Jones' "meter was not good."
Jason Jones' Iran series, btw, was the best work JJ has done ever.
For more Hich Kas music, go here. And search for him on youtube: lots of vids.
2. Alexander made a comment on my previous post, with regard to Mohsen Nimjoo:
...one thing to keep in mind about Namjoo is that unlike Bob Marley and Fela Kuti (who are pretty unanimously revered in their home countries, as far as I'm aware), he has not reached that level of popularity and is not uniformly loved. I was surprised to see Mousavi use a Namjoo song in his campaign advertising, mostly because a lot of the older generation (the ones who have heard of him, anyway) don't like Namjoo and feel that he butchers traditional Iranian music. I am sure that Mousavi wanted to reach out to the young, but he could have used a less divisive figure.
Thanks for that information, Alexander--I heavily depend on Iranian friends and informants, because I am no Iran expert. To clarify, the reason I prefer to compare Namjoo to Marley and Fela rather than to Bob Dylan is that the former all mix "Western" and "non-Western" forms of music in amazing ways. Namjoo, however, reall goes all over the place with his borrowing of Western genres. Check out "Jorah-Baz" from his Toranj album, for instance. It opens with the riff based on Muddy Waters' "I'm A Man," complete with blues harmonica and slide guitar. And then takes the song somewhere else.
Here is the clip made for Mousavi's campaign, Namjoo's remix of Mohamed Reza Shajarian's "Hamrah Sho Aziz." Namjoo was one of many Iranian artists who came out in support of Mousavi's campaign for president.
3. Now for MJ. And there are some Iran connections. As many have noted, Michael Jackson was truly a global star. Some of my Iranian friends recall that MJ provided their soundtrack during the early years of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). And here's some evidence, from Marhane Satrapi's acclaimed graphic novel, Persepolis. (Thanks to Hegar for providing this.)
4. MJ was popular in Iraq too. Among prisoners incarcerated by the US military, post-2003. Jonathan Pieslak, author of Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War, is featured in the latest New Yorker's Talk of the Town. He tells Lauren Collins that US "soldiers would use [heavy metal band Drowning Pool's song "Bodies"] both to get pumped up for battle and 'to induce irritation and frustration among detainees.' (The detainees, apparently, preferred ’N Sync and Michael Jackson.)"
And, if we can credit the film The Three Kings, Michael Jackson was also favored by Saddam's interrogators. Check out this unforgettable scene from the movie, where Iraqi interrogator Captain Said (played by Said Taghmaoui) educates Sgt. Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg) about why Michael Jackson disfigured his face. (Thanks, Elliott.)
5. Pakistan, too. Check out this scene from Pakistani comedy show "Fifty Fifty." (Thanks, Iftikhar and Nila.)
6. And then there are the rumors about Michael Jackson being a Muslim, which run rampant in the Muslim world. For some reason, such rumors spread about certain Westerners. Two I think of off-hand are Neil Armstrong and Jacques Cousteau (untrue in both cases). When it comes to Michael, of course, the rumors are fueled in part by the fact that (a) he took up residency in Bahrain in 2005 and (b) that his brother Jermaine did convert to Islam in 1989.
Ali Eteraz does a good rundown of the rumors, which he puts to rest, inshallah, here.
Whatever god(s) you did or didn't worship, Michael, RIP.
First up, a youtube video from Iranian rapper Salome, whom I learned about courtesy of Mark Levine's Heavy Metal Islam. And thank God I did, for she is a terrific rapper. I embedded the video in my earlier post about my Interzone Radio "All Iran" show, but I wanted to say more about it.
The song, "Dad Bezan Sedat Berese (Scream to Let Your Voice Be Heard)," was written in response to, and in criticism of, Israel's recent assault on Gaza (December '08-January '09). It provides evidence that the young people of Iran, who are the main social force sustaining the current political mobilization, are not simply Westernized elitists. There is no reason to expect that love for Israel will be unleashed if the forces represented by the Opposition movement comes to power.
It occurred to me a few days ago that supporters of Palestinian and Iranian rights should start wearing green kufiyas to express solidarity with both movements. I posted this random thought on Facebook, and guess what? My niece, who lives in New York City, posted me a few hours later that she was at an Iran rally (June 21), and had spotted a green kufiya. A bit later she posted on Facebook that she had seen another. Let's get this trend going!
More anecdotal information: A friend who recently returned from Iran wrote me this:
On Saturday (the day after the election), I was at a demonstration and when the riot police showed up on their motor bikes, someone in the crowd yelled "the Israelis are here, run!" Also, two different people mentioned to me that "they [the authorities] have turned Iran into Palestine."
2. Here's another music video, brand new, from the Iranian group Abjeez and Congo Man Crew (thanks, Negar).
The song, "Biyaa," features footage of the recent demonstrations in Iran. "A song dedicated to the courageous people of Iran, in support of freedom and Unity!", Abjeez writes on their Facebook page.
Abjeez ("sister" in Persian slang) are, surprise, two Iranian sisters, Safoura and Melody Safavi, based in Sweden. More info is available here. I've posted about them previously. Check out their other videos, on youtube and elsewhere, they are very clever and the music is terrific. Download the song here. I hope that an English translation is forthcoming.
3. For those looking for more Iranian music in a modern vein, I highly recommend Mohsen Namjoo's album Toranj, which is available from emusic. A good article about Namjoo is here. But I cringe at the Bob Dylan comparison--too easy--and think he should be more properly thought of as Iran's Bob Marley or Fela Kuti.
And you can even become a Namjoo 'fan on' Facebook, if you like.
4. Some short notes:
Four of Iran's soccer players have now been "retired" from the sport, after they wore green in their match last Wednesday with South Korea.
Renowned Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf recently released a statement on Iran. Watch it here (with an English translation).
We have found each other again. Even with all the violence happening in Iran, the Iranian people are more kind to each other now. For example, some put their motorcylces on fire, destroy their vehicles, so the fuels of their vehicles suppress the effects of the tear gas. They are defending each other. Around the world, we see that people have put their differences aside.
MERIP issued a news release yesterday protesting the arrests of writer and filmmaker Maziar Bahari and reformist intellectual Saeed Hajjarian. (It's not available online.)
Bahari is a veteran reporter who has covered Iran for the BBC and Newsweek. Hajjarian was formerly a top adviser to former President Mohammad Khatami. As he was shot by right-wing vigilantes in 2000 and has been physically disabled since then, MERIP is deeply concerned about his health while in detention.
"Bahari and Hajjarian would be the first to note that their arrests are only two among hundreds, if not more," commented Shiva Balaghi, an editor of Middle East Report, where the work of the two writers has appeared. There are several reliable reports of torture and other maltreatment in Iranian prisons.
Bahari's film "Football, Iranian Style" was reviewed by Shiva Balaghi in Middle East Report 229 (Winter 2003). The review is available online at: http://merip.org/mer/mer229/balaghi.html
Hajjarian was interviewed in 2000 about Iran's "reformist moment" by Kaveh Ehsani. The text of the interview is accessible online at: http://www.merip.org/mero/mero031300.html.
The Mother Jones blog published an article about kufiyas this week, by Sonja Sharp, and entitled "Your Intifada: Now Made in China!" For the most part, Sharp goes over material that hawgblawg has covered obsessively over the last year or so. (My first post on the demise of Palestinian-manufactured kufiyas is here.) But here is the key argument:
That's because the one you're wearing (and, increasingly, the ones Palestinians are wearing) are now made in China.
Here's how it happened: Back in '87, during the first intifada, intifadniks couldn't get enough of Palestinian-made $25 scarves. Looser export restrictions meant that Israelis could rep them too, and slowly but surely the scarf and its emblematic pattern began appearing in the West. By the time the second intifada happened in 2000, hardcore activists and the super cool already had them. Then the keffiyeh trend reached its tipping point, and hipsters' insatiable lust for the scarf lured Chinese manufactures into the gig. Fast forward a decade, and Chinese keffiyehs are the norm.
Ironically, global support for Palestinian-statehood-as-fashion-accessory has put yet another nail in the coffin of the Occupied Territories' beleaguered economy. What's next?
So, hipsters are to blame for the decline of Palestinian industry? Ah, they are so easy to blame, aren't they?
But as more responsible reporting suggests, it probably makes more sense to blame the "peace process," which caused the West Bank to open up to "free trade" but created no viable national authority that could impose imports. But maybe criticizing the "peace process" would be too radical a step for Sharp.
One thing that Sharp could have done is to promote the purchase of Palestinian kufiyas by providing a link to the The Kufiyeh Project. (Note to The Kufiyeh Project: get the Hirbawi factory to make green kufiyas, so that we can show our solidarity with both Palestine and Iran. If you need a green kufiya, try the Arab American National Museum.)
And a footnote to earlier kufiyaspotting posts. Here's another photo I found of Colin Farrell (man, he has been photographed a lot in kufiya!--see here and here.)
And here's a photo of a kufiya from designer Isabel Marant, from her Fall/Winter 2008 Runway Show (courtesy Mick Margo, writing in the Fashion Journal):
Here's the playlist from my Interzone Radio show, broadcast tonight on KXUA 88.3 FM, from 6-8 PM. Interzone Radio is a world music show, and tonight, it was all Iranian music, in solidarity with the Iranian opposition movement. I played a wide variety of Iranian music, from traditional to hip-hop. I'm no expert, but I did my best.
1. "Raks dance," Raks, Waking up Scheherazade(rock from the 1960s) 2. "Dil Dasa Per Mesha," Kouroush, Waking up Scheherazade (rock from the 1960s) 3. "Kalagha," Manouchehr Sakhaee, The Best Of Manouchehr (pop) 4. "Dastgah-e Mahur: Tasnif 'Mahd-e Honar'," Alireza Eftekhari, Music Of Iran I (traditional) 5. "Foroud," Kayhan Kalhor & Ali Akbar Moradi, In The Mirror Of The Sky (traditional) 6. "Mahour," A. Ebadi, Setar Solo : Master Performers of Persian Traditional Music (traditional) 7. title unknown, Hich Kas feat. Reveal, download here (rap) 8. "Testament cover," SDS, courtesy youtube (death metal from Tehran) 9. "Sani," ZAMAN 8 & Hafez Modir, Suryaghati EP 1, Six Degrees (world/jazz) 10. "Neyriz," Jalal Zolfonun And Soheil Zolfonun, Mystic Journey: String Music Of Iran 11. "Bahooneh," Iraj, 48 Golden Hits of Iraj (traditional) 12. "Saz va Avaz," Mohammad Reza Shajarian, Bidad (traditional) 13. "Vaghti Mebanamet," Parva, Shah Mahiha (pop) 14. "Shekayat," Googoosh, 40 Golden Hits Of Googoosh: The Best of 1970-1979 (pop) 15. "Yadesh Beh Kher Tow Tehran," Faezeh, Yadesh Be Kher Tow Tehran (pop) 16. "Djooni Djooni," Minoo Javan, Persian Folk Songs (traditional) 17. "Magham Allahwaisy And Hejrani," Ali Akbar Moradi, Fire Of Passion (Kurdish Tanbur Music Of Iran) (traditional) ُ18. "Sepideh(Avaz e Hejaz)," Shahram Nazri, Atashi dar Neyestan (traditional) 19. "Demokrasi," Abjeez, Hameh (rock) 20. "Ghame Del," O-Hum, Aloodeh (rock) 21. "Auricle," Kahtmayan, Exir (heavy metal) 22. "Dad Bezan Sedat Berese," Salome, courtesy youtube (rap) This song is in solidarity with the people of Gaza, assaulted by the Israeli Defense Forces in Dec. '08-Jan.'09.
I'm pretty excited to see this photo of director Kathryn Bigelow, kufiya clad, in the New York Times, June 21. It's from a great article by Manohla Dargis, on the occasion of the release of Bigelow's latest film, The Hurt Locker. I can't wait to see it. I'm a huge fan of Bigelow's Near Dark, Blue Steel, Point Break and Strange Days. It's wonderful to read a review that treats Bigelow with the respect she deserves, and that calls her a "great filmmaker." (Plus, the review mentions the fact that Bigelow appears in the film, Born in Flames, the subject of a previous kufiyaspotting.)
UPDATE: I should have thanked Therese for alerting me to this on Saturday evening. Otherwise I wouldn't have known about it until Sunday morning, when my Times arrives.
1. I've tracked down the context in which renowned Iranian singer Mohammad Reza Shajarian asked the Iranian state radio to stop broadcasting his songs. I quote some excerpts from an article in The Guardian on Thursday:
When it was uttered it was meant as a biting put-down to the thousands who dared to question his re-election as president of Iran.
"The nation's huge river would not leave any opportunity for the expression of dirt and dust," said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a rather elliptical reference to the surging protests on the streets of Tehran...
But, just as street protests the world over seize upon a poignant image to convey their message, so Ahmadinejad's contemptuous phrase "dirt and dust" has entered folklore and provided a focus for the rage of the protesters.
So far it has inspired pithy slogans, blog headlines, posters and a litany of insults throwing the president's words back in his face. "Dirt and dust is you, it is you who are the enemy of Iran," one chant goes. Another frequently-heard slogan has been: "We are not dirt and dust, we are Iran's nation."
The phrase (khas o khashak in Farsi) has become a badge of pride. Etemad-e Melli, a reformist newspaper, carried a huge picture on yesterday's front page showing marchers carrying a banner bearing the slogan, Epic of Dirt and Dust. The offending words were written in green, the colour adopted by Mousavi's campaign.
It has also prompted a high-profile protest from one of Iran's most famous singers, Mohammad Reza Shajarian, who asked the state broadcaster IRIB – controlled by Ahmadinejad supporters – to stop playing his songs because he believed the insulting reference included him.
"I emphatically ask IRIB not to broadcast my voice because this is the voice of dirt and dust and will always remain so," he told BBC Persian.
My friend Shiva tells me that Shajarian has been participating in the protest marches in Tehran this week as well. I've seen him perform in New York, with Hossein Alizadeh and Kayhan Kalhor (with Shiva), and I highly recommend buying any of his recordings, because it is great music, and you get to show support for a progressive artist.
2. Iranian film director and Mousavi spokesperson Mohsen Makhmalbaf issued a statement on behalf of Mousavi yesterday, published in The Guardian. In it, he refers to Mousavi's relation to the arts scene in Iran--as mentioned in my previous post:
Before the revolution, Mousavi was a religious intellectual and an artist, who supported radical change but did not support the mullahs. After the revolution, when all religious intellectuals and even leftists backed Khomeini, he served as prime minister for eight years. The economy was stable, and he did not order the killings of opponents, or become corrupt.
In order to neu[t]ralise his power, the position of prime minister was eliminated from the constitution and he was pushed out of politics. So Mousavi returned to the world of artists because in a country where there are no real political parties, artists can act as a party. The artists supported Khatami and now they support Mousavi.
Previously, he was revolutionary, because everyone inside the system was a revolutionary. But now he's a reformer.
3. Mark Levine, author of Heavy Metal Islam, is blogging about hip hop and heavy metal artists in Iran and their thoughts about the current protests. He's constantly updating the post, so keep checking back. Mark also links to the galleys of his chapter on Iran in Heavy Metal Islam, if you are interested in more background.
Mark also observes the following:
one of the main complaints i'm getting from friends in iran is that they are getting hardly any support from the arab world. ahmadinejad is very popular there bc of his 'standing up' to israel and the US (in my mind, it's more like professional wrestling--the iron sheikh vs sargeant slaughter) and no one caring what it actually means to live under the current system. i'm working on a piece now on how hosni mubarak must be viewing what's happening here. it's hard to imagine the egyptian people putting up with another sham election in their country after the courage displayed by iranians. but it is true from what i can tell that support for the iranian people from the arab ngo/activist sector has been relatively weak. if anyone has good examples to the opposite, please send them my way.
I too would be interested in comment on that subject. What is opinion in the Arab world?
4. Finally, when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered his speech yesterday calling on supporters of the opposition to end their protests, and asserting that there was no vote rigging or cheating in the elections, he wore a robe trimmed with the pattern of the black-and-white kufiya. Reasserting, then, that he and Ahmadinejad are the Iranian representatives of the sacred cause of Palestine. As noted previously, some of the protesters are contesting this. Just as they are contesting the ownership of the slogan of the Iranian Revolution, "allah-o akbar."
I'm passing on the 'new media,' since every single news media outlet has now published an article on the so-called twitter revolution, and so many have already said (and I even wrote it on Facebook): the revolution will be tweeted, facebooked and youtubed. (And flickred.)
I'm talking about more traditional forms of culture.
Some of Iran’s leading intellectuals and cultural figures have been actively campaigning for [Mir-Hossein] Mousavi. They attended a May rally in Azadi Stadium, marking the anniversary of the 1997 election of President Khatami. The Oscar-nominated director Majid Majidi made Mousavi’s official campaign video. Over 800 filmmakers and actors signed a public letter published in Iranian newspapers supporting Mousavi’s candidacy. Leading directors like Dariush Mehrjui, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Manijeh Hekmat, and Masoud Kimiai appeared in a ten-minute video, “Green Stars,” distributed on YouTube, calling on Iranians to vote -- and to vote for Mousavi...An architect and an artist himself, Mousavi has garnered increasing support amongst Iran’s culture workers who have faced growing pressures in Ahmadinejad’s regime.
Renowned filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, in fact, serves as a Mousavi spokesperson abroad. Second--and again, my source is Shiva--the renowned Iranian singer Mohammed-Reza Shajarian, who is probably the greatest performer of Persian classical music, has protested that Iranian state television used his music in their pro-Ahmadinejad broadcasts.
Check him out, performing with Kayhan Kalhor (kamancheh) and Hossein Alizadeh (tar).
Finally (and again, thanks to Shiva for alerting me to this):
Five Iranian soccer players, including captain Ali Karimi, wore green wristbands in an apparent sign of support for Mousavi at a World Cup Asian qualifying match in South Korea. State television showed the players wearing them for the entire first half, but the bands were gone by the time the second half started. (from MSNBC)
Just in case anyone had any illusions that the mass demonstrations that took place in Tehran earlier today represent a pro-Western movement that might somehow be sympathetic with US pro-Israel foreign policy: just check out this photo of one of the demonstrators. This image was screened three times tonight on the Rachel Maddow show. No doubt it is circulating widely.
And then there's this: Kamran Rastegar reported this on facebook today:
Students chanting seen on BBC Persian TV: "mardom chera neshestin, iran shodeh felestin." (people why are you still sitting, Iran's become Palestine).
Later in the day, Kamran posted: Love to our Palestinian, Lebanese and other Arab supporters in the struggle in Iran... Kullina Ghazzeh, Kullina Tehran! [we are all Gaza, we are all Tehran].
Indeed. On the youtube videos I watched of the Tehran demos yesterday and today, I heard demonstrators chanting, "marg bar diktator," or, "death to the dictator," i.e., Ahmadinejad. The slogan of the Iranian revolution was "marg bar shah": "death to the shah." About time that the symbol of Palestine solidarity was taken out of the hands of the cynical holocaust denier.
Check out the blog Ramallah Syndrome, and its very informative discussions of Ramallah, Palestine's de facto 'capital.'
From Jamil:
Once you are outside Ramallah you immediately face Israeli checkpoints, so you have to see it through this system of controlled urbanization where the Palestinian Authority has some sort of symbols of sovereignty, but in fact it's all very deceptive. There is not much power, this is it. If you go to the restaurants and if you go to the fashion shops you can maybe choose fashion from Italy and maybe suits from France whatever, you think that you have entered this bubble - but it is a bubble, it can be punctured. Like what happened in 2002 when the Israelis invaded Ramallah. Which within one hour the Israelis took complete control, Arafat was besieged in one room, with smelly toilets and it was difficult to get him food. It shows you the real power - still with the occupation, when they want to use it they use it.
I wish I could have attended the Ramallah Syndrome Sound System Performance on June 6, put on by Aswatt (Basel Abbas) of Ramallah Underground and Ruanne Aburahme at the Venice Bienniale.
Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif published an informative piece on the Palestinian artists exhibiting at Venice, Palestine c/o Venice, as well as on the Palestinian festival of literature, held earlier in the West Bank.
I'd particularly like to see this, especially after meeting the Palestinian hip-hop group G-Town in the Shu'fat camp last summer. (See my photos of G-Town and Shu'afat here.)
Jawad al-Malhi's House No 197 concentrates on the "project" where he grew up, Shufhat refugee camp in Jerusalem, where buildings - although built in concrete - are "never conceived as a whole from foundation to rooftop, but rather are built in piecemeal fashion for temporary use as their occupants wait to leave". The work, which also examines community and its durability under stress, is eerie in its crowdedness, emptiness, the occasional splash of colour.
Here's a poster of Obama that a right-wing Israeli group is circulating to protest Barack Hussein's supposed ostensible Jew-hating, courtesy the blog, Improvisation: Arab Woman Progressive Voice. (Thanks, Tahereh.) The claim, of course, is way over the top, but it's symptomatic of real nervousness in Israel about Obama.
The practice of photoshopping the kufiya over the head of any political opponent is routine representational practice on the Israeli far right. I'm reproducing below an image I posted previously. It's a poster plastered around Israel in the run-up to George W. Bush's visit to the country in 2008. I mean, if the far-right could label Bush (not to mention Olmert and Peres) as an 'accomplice to terror,' of course, Obama must be an anti-Semite. Right?
Many observers have noted that Obama's speech in Cairo today was, while critical of Israeli expansion of settlements, quite soft on Israel's oppressive policies towards the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, reaction to Obama's Middle East visit was quite positive in Egypt, as indicated by this tourist item for sale in Cairo's Khan El-Khalili (from fridayinla, on flickr--thanks, Robin). Much of this enthusiasm, no doubt, has to do with Egyptian nationalism--the fact that Obama gave his speech in Egypt, as opposed to another Muslim or Middle Eastern country.
For the positive feelings to translate into anything meaningful, however, will require that the US really pressure Israel to not only stop settlement expansion but also dismantle the settlements and leave all of the West Bank, for good. And to negotiate with Hamas and abandon the imprisoning and ruinous blockade of Gaza. Not to mention getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Nice words, but more action needed!
The Walmart shareholders are congregating, as they do every year about this time. But it seems that organized protests against the Wal are not happening this year. I guess we are turning into sheep.
Meanwhile, Roger Waters is still agitating against that other (apartheid)wall, according to this AP report, via Salon.com (and thanks to Alannah for the heads up).
Ex-Pink Floyd rocker wants Israeli wall down
Jun 2nd, 2009 | AIDA REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank -- The legendary rocker and co-founder of Pink Floyd says he would give a concert in a flash if Israel's West Bank wall is torn down.
Roger Waters made the promise Tuesday during a visit to a Palestinian refugee camp that is hemmed in by the separation barrier's tall slabs of cement.
The 65-year-old co-wrote Pink Floyd's iconic "The Wall" album and performed music from it in 1990 at the site where the Berlin Wall once stood.
Waters had harsh words for the West Bank barrier, which Israel says was built as a defense against Palestinian militants.
The musician says the wall amounts to an oppressive grab of Palestinian land and that he hopes that "this thing, this awful thing, is destroyed soon."
Go here for previous posts on Roger Waters, who has been been involved in the campaign against the Wall for several years.
I ran across this article on Lebanese rap from the Christian Science Monitor only recently. It gives the great Rayess Bek his props as the godfather of Lebanese hip-hop. (If you click on the link, you can listen to some of his terrific new tracks.) It also discusses other artists, some of whom I knew little about: RGB, Malikah, and Katibe 5, who are from the Palestinian refugee camp Burj al-Barajneh. (And about whom I've posted previously, on my mepop blog.)
OS Loop [of Katibe 5] 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."
And check this out, from Jon Lee Anderson's recent New Yorker article, "Letter from Tehran," which focuses on Ahmadinejad.
When President Khatami took office, in 1997, he removed [Ahmadinejad] from the governorship [of Ardabil], and Ahmadinejad returned to his old university [Iran University of Science and Technology] to teach. He received a Ph.D., in traffic management, that year.
“At the university, Ahmadinejad was very active in the Basij organization, and when the reformists came to power in 1997, with Khatami, he used to make problems for the professors and come to class with a kaffiyeh, to show his solidarity with the Palestinian cause,” [Nasser] Hadian [professor of political science at Tehran University and childhood friend of Ahmadinejad] said.
Let's tease this out a bit: the holocaust denier, using his kufiya as a sign of solidarity with Palestinians, as well showing that (a) he's down with the paramilitary Basij, who function among other things as a kind of morals police, and (b) is politically opposed to the Khatami-led reformist movement. Palestinians really need friends like this...
Overall, Anderson's article was informative, but given that Dennis Ross is Secretary of State Clinton’s special adviser on Iran, I'm rather more nervous about the prospects for US-Iran diplomacy than Anderson. (Ross, as is well-known, tilts too close to the Israeli position on Iran.)
1. Jace Clayton has penned a nice piece on Autotune for Frieze. I have noticed of late that all contemporary rai vocals coming out of Algeria seems to be 'autotuned.' It drove me crazy, but more recently, and thanks largely to Clayton, I now see the virtue of its uses. Clayton discusses Autotune as a global phenom, and discusses its ubiquity in North African pop. Here are some excerpts--but I urge you read the entire article.
The most important piece of musical equipment of the last 10 years is not an instrument or a physical object. It’s called Auto-Tune and is used on roughly 90 per cent of all pop songs...Auto-Tune bends off-key notes into pitch perfection...
After joking about vocalists who ask him to ‘make their voice robotic’, Moroccan producer Wary says: ‘Sometimes you have great singers who don’t know how to use Auto-Tune and it sounds really bad.’ Traditional singing chops aren’t so useful in Auto-Tune’s world. It’s neither a fight with technology nor love of it; it’s more like glossy coexistence, a strange new dance of give-and-take.
T-Pain’s R&B isn’t the only example highlighting the ‘impassioned melismas’ that Rosen says ‘powered black popular singing’ before Auto-Tune messed everything up. Melisma is equally if not more prevalent in Maghrebi music. This explains the plug-in’s mind-boggling success across North Africa. Contemporary raï and Berber music embrace Auto-Tune so heartily precisely because glissandos are a central part of vocal performance (you can’t be a good singer unless your voice can flutter around those notes): sliding pitches sound startling through it. A weird electronic warble embeds itself in rich, throaty glissandos. The struggle of human nuance versus digital correction is made audible, dramatized. Quite literally this is the sound of voice and machine intermodulating...
At his home studio in the Parisian suburbs, Wary explained that Auto-Tune hit the Arab world with a single in 2000 by Algerian Chaba Djenet (below). Since the start of this decade, it’s been hard to find an album of North African Berber pop where the Tamazight dialect vocals don’t have full synthy Auto-Tune (it’s surprising how much a female voice can sound like a violin on these recordings)...
From the US to Mexico, Jamaica, Africa, and beyond – Auto-Tune usage has splintered, with different approaches from scene to scene and artist to artist. (It remains the most sonically extreme in Berber Morocco.)...Rather than novelty or some warped mimetic response to computers, Auto-Tune is a contemporary strategy for intimacy with the digital. As such, it becomes quite humanizing. The Chaba Djenet youtube video for "Gwit Galbi Wahdi" is a must-see, because it features the music of Chaba Djenet over a video of Lebanese "pop tart" sensation Haifa Wehbe singing. Hilarious!
2. Courtesy Time magazine, an interesting piece on the latest iteration of graffiti on the apartheid wall. (Thanks, Daniel)
Thanks to a group of Dutch and Palestinian activists, people can now immortalize their words on the wall without a passport or a can of Krylon. For $40, you can compose a message at www.sendamessage.nl, and a trio of Palestinian graffiti artists will spray your words on the wall and e-mail you a photo as proof. The only restriction: no messages of hate or anti-Semitism...
So far, the group has written 850 messages, ranging from the quirky (a falafel recipe) to the anarcho-romantic (JOIN THE RESISTANCE: FALL IN LOVE) to the sardonic (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS NO MATCH FOR NATURAL STUPIDITY). But most are mushy love notes (M.L. LOVES HER FUNKY D). So one of the organizers, Dutch theater director Justus van Oel, decided to up the ante. He commissioned Farid Esack, a South African religious scholar and former antiapartheid activist, to write a 1,998-word letter, in English, to Palestinians urging nonviolent resistance to the Israelis. The work is now being painted in 2-ft.-high letters along a 1.6-mile stretch of wall near Ramallah. The writing will consume more than 400 cans of spray paint and has been paid for by private donations. The South African was chosen, says Van Oel, because "Esack gets beyond the anger. He is a reconciler." The letter, in part, reads: "Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? In your land, we are seeing something far more brutal, relentless and inhuman than what we have ever seen under apartheid."
3. Check out Syrian-American vocalist Gaida on her myspace page.
"Gaida’s forthcoming CD, Levantine Indulgence, a song sequence of alluring beauty, is steeped in the traditional music of her Syrian heritage, but also shows the eclectic worldview of a New York singer-songwriter," writes David R. Adler, in Timeout New York. I have to say I prefer the "traditional" songs to the more updated material--but check it out for yourself.
4. Finally, the new Narcisyst CD, P.H.A.T.W.A. is now available.
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.
Over the past three weekends I've traveled to NYC, DC, and Oslo. And I finished up the paper and exam grading for the semester. Now I'm deep into summer school teaching, which I started the day after I returned from Oslo. I think I'm still recovering from the jet lag. So there hasn't been much energy for blogging...
I just read this quite useful and illuminating post about the, I guess we should say, so-called taqwacore band, The Kominas, on the YellowBuzz blog. Here are some good excerpts:
The song [on the album, Wild Nights in Guantanamo] that brings out the best of the Kominas’ mixed influences, I would say, is “Par Desi.” It begins with a Bhangra-inspired, chromatic surf guitar riff. Basim sings about living in a social limbo between Pakistan and the U.S. “How'd I get here, from a land with long monsoons? / In Lahore it's raining water, in Boston it rains boots.” Following the second chorus is an 8-second analog sample of a live Bhangra percussion recording. This segment features fast striking on dhols, a two-headed drum used in Punjab, a region in the northern part of South Asian subcontinent. The syncopated bass accents in the sample suspend one’s attention on the 4/4 meter in the first part of the song and enables the transition a series of triplets interspersed by noise guitar. The sample, in short, seamlessly bridges the first and second part of the song, each with a disparate rhythmic articulation. I give these guys props for their compositional sophistication...
In the interview, the Kominas criticized how media pigeonholes them. Shahjehan explained, “Taqwacore is no more than just a few kids that talk online every now and then. People think it’s like we all hang out, we all live in a house. It’s not.” Apparently six of the taqwacore-associated bands have disbanded since the 2007 tour. Shahjehan continued, “Another thing that gets lost in the media angle of taqwacore within the book is that there are different people that have different relationships to Islam. Now within this band, there are different people with different relationships to Islam, or none at all.”
Adding to the commentary, Arjun explicated how the press has blown up and distorted the story of the Kominas by presuming their liberal, diversified “Muslim punk” identity as an alternative to Islam as imagined by mainstream media in the U.S. and Europe...
I highly recommend following the Yellowbuzz, the asian-american music blog, btw. (Which links to me, I just discovered. Thanks, comrades.)
More Kominas/Taqwacore/MM Knight miscellanea: To keep up with the happenings of the taqwa, please follow the Taqwacore Webzine, which only recently started up.
And please check out this episode of Playlist, a great series on music from Al Jazeera English, which deals with taqwacore. Check out the whole series, there's much more of interest, including coverage of Palestinian rap.
Meanwhile, and still on the Asian-American music tip, DJ Rekha, the esteemed organizer of Basement Bhangra, a monthly, movable dance event in New York City, going strong since 1997, will be performing at Wakarusa. Started in 2004, this music festival was held in Kansas until this year, when it will convene in Ozark, Arkansas, June 4-7. I'm pretty excited that DJ Rekha will be performing, and I plan to go.
I highly recommend her album, Basement Bhangra. (If you want to buy it, don't get it from iTunes, which only has it available as a continuous mix. Amazon, and maybe other outlets as well, sell it as discrete songs.)
My comrade Dave just sent me these photos, which he took on his iPhone. They are from Kate Moss's new store, Topshop, located on Broome and Broadway. 20 bucks. The only description on the tag, says Dave, is the color.
It's worth recalling that back in 2007, Kate Moss was involved in some charity kissing to raise money for Palestinian children, in an event sponsored by the Hoping Foundation. At the time, Topshop's Kate Moss line also featured kufiyas, marketed as "Tablecloth Scarves."
(But in the interview, which you also should not miss, Shaaban admits that he loves dogs, and owns two.)
"So what if some pigs die?...It's better for people to be healthy, to hell with the pigs."
The first question from the interviewer, who treats Shaaban in a bemused fashion, is about his lime-green suit, which is truly remarkable. As Chris remarked to me, it's pretty clear that Shaaban is being used. A sha'bi ('popular') singer who expresses his support for the regime and its decision to slaughter all of Egypt's pigs. To the great dismay of poor Christians in the suburbs of Cairo who collect the city's garbage, sort it, and feed the edible materials to their pigs.
In case you missed it: (Thanks a mill to Waleed, who alerted me to this.)
Here's the caption for this photo, which I found courtesy of the Charlotte Observer:
In this photo made available Saturday, May 9, 2009, by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Pope Benedict XVI wears a traditional Jordanian "Kaffiyeh" during his visit to the Lady of Peace Church in Amman, Jordan Friday, May 8, 2009. Pope Benedict XVI expressed deep respect for Islam Friday and said he hopes the Catholic Church can play a role in Mideast peace as he began his first trip to the region, where he hopes to improve frayed ties with Muslims.
Note: a red kufiya in this context signifies Jordanian identity, and not Palestinian, not Hamas, not PFLP, not Communist.
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.
.jpg)
