George Wassouf, the gateway drug. (Now the truth can be told, via youtube.)

Garahoona! Yeah! scott seward, you have to listen to this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68DfwYKdXn0

That chorus is so stern.

This is an Oum Kalthoum cover. (I heard his cover first, actually, which was true of several songs by Oum Kalthoum and Warda and maybe Abdel Halim Hafez.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AHzRMz2o1U

(That's kind of what I meant by the gateway drug bit.)

How much more can George Wassouf's voice deteriorate? Is there no limit?

http://www.arabymusic.com/search_result.asp?Category=George+Wassouf

I think I might have rented a video of this GW performance back in the early 90s, because I remember that weird brutalist sort of back-drop. And this is one of my favorite songs his. I can't remember if I've ever found any performances of this before but this song is incredible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKVa9FR5q30

There's one song from this concert (if it's the same one I'm thinking of it) which, in this performance, starts with a sample in English that goes: "Psych-socialism. . . Now you see it, now you don't." Very WTF.

Some of the best fucking rhythms ever.

If this doesn't make you want to be a belly dancer, you are insensate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3NhNZEyFAM

This is totally the same video (not the one immediately above, but the other). I'm sorry, but this is pretty mind-blowing to me. I borrowed this from a middle eastern grocery store in like 1993 or 1994, and I'm seeing it again for the first time on youtube.

Oh wait yeah that is the same concert. Sorry, I'm kind of a mess as I somehow always am on my Arabic music video threads.

Also, I have a bunch of this concert on cassette, on the Blue Cassette, I think. Funny because I don't think I recognized it at the time I rented the video, yet I'm pretty sure I had that cassette by that point. Maybe not.

I strongly suspect 1991/92 was his peak. I love how there are always people coming up onto the stage, or in this particular clip flowers being delivered from audience members. Always some crazy stuff going on. When I saw him, they showered him with money, and I he drank out of a glass (of champagne, I would guess) piled on top of other glasses, with the drink spilling into all the other glasses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79bT7MbP8qs

Kind of awesome young GW clip. Do I like singers who are bad actors or something? He does seem like a bad actor a lot of the time, and yet somehow very forgivably so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBfzci0gobg

Psychedelic surf intro., or something like that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIhXhn7UGl4

Another one I have on one or two of those cheap live cassettes I used to by. May all that music surface onto youtube!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InKVyXiJifE

I'll say it again. The rhythms in the first embedded youtube video on this thread are like a direct hit on my pleasure center.

Also the second song (or second big section of one song?) on that clip seems like sleigh-ride music to me, of all things.

I'm going to keep posting this one until somebody "likes" it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKVa9FR5q30

Okay here it is. If you turn the volume up loud at the beginning of this you will hear people speaking in English, including what sounds like "psycho-socialism" (which I mentioned up-thread, though I also thought they said "now you see it now you don't," but maybe that got cut off). Sad there are so many dropouts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yFaXsv5dhc

You posers with your Omar Souleyman.

(Just kidding. Wenu Wenu is cool.)