Arabic music (not elsewhere classified)

But anyway, I just like it in a very immediate way. The organ sounds so cool to me. I like the spaciousness of it. It's got a feel almost like dub, but with very different rhythms and so forth. I just love the sound of doumbeks, in general, too. On a really microscopic level, there's the sound of a person's voice--I think from the audience--during the introduction, and it seems to occur at a perfect place. Some of these organ/synth sounds could either be heard as incredibly corny or as very trippy (not that I really see a contradiction there). Also, some of the melodic lines seemed very familiar to me practically the first time I heard it, and that seemed a little mysterious.

Nascente has a similar salsa compilation, but if anything there isn't enough junk on it. I mean, it's mostly very propper classic salsa. The newer examples seem to be from people who have some sort of agenda of maintaining the greatness of the past. I am sympathetic up to a point, but there is plenty of salsa aimed at mainstream commercial success (e.g., Grupo Niche or Gilberto Santa Rosa at their best) which is more vital than most of what I've heard from, say, Jimmy Bosch. Still, it's a good looking compilation.

01 Farid El Atrache - Hebeena Hebeena

(Somewhat cheesy Farid, but popular, and I like it, but still, there is harder edged stuff that might have more appeal.)

02 Nagat - Sa'al Feya

(Don't know this song by name.)

03 Talal El Madaah - Maza Aqool Wa Qad Himt

04 Talal El Madaah - Maza Aqool Wa Qad Himt

05 Sabah - Ala Eyni Talabatak

(Don't know track by name. Sabah is pretty much old-school in style, but not as classically oriented as Oum Kalthoum.)

06 Ahmad Fat'hi - Shaqek El Ward

07 Oum Kalthoum - Ala Balad El Mahboub

08 Abdallah Balkheir - Leilah

09 Fairuz - Inshallah Ma Bu Shi

(Don't know this song. It will probably either be very good or very bad, though her voice will be fine either way.)

10 Majida El Roumi - Ana Am Bihlam

(I am not into her, though she is pretty well regarded, espcially in her home, Lebanon, I think.)

11 George Wassouf - Tabib Garah

(This is not a bad song from George Wassouf's relatively recent output.)

12 Samira Tawfic - - Ballaa Tsoubou Hal Kahwa

(Samira Tewfic has recorded some fantastic songs. I have no idea which one this is.)

13 Amr Diab - Rajeen

(With Kazem el Saher, probably one of the two biggest Arab pop singers. Zzzzz.)

14 Ilham Al Madfai - Khuttar

(An Iraqi who does an odd mix of Arab and western jazz/rock whatever. I haven't heard much by him.)

15 Nawal El Zoughbi - El Layali

16 Aamer Muneeb - Hikayatak Eih

17 Dania - Afrahou Gannouh

18 Assi Al Hilani - Ater Al Mahabah

19 Yuri Mrakidi - Takoulin

20 Elissa - Hilm Al Ahlam

21 Hisham Abbas - Habibi Dah (Nari Narien)

22 Howayda - Aghrab

23 George Al Rassy - Min Ghadr El Hob

24 The 1001 Nights Project Feat Dania [Lebanon] (Transglobal Underground Mix

25 Kareem Al Iraqi - Al Ghurbeh

26 Hasna - Gibran's Wisdom

27 Guy Manoukian - Yasmina

28 Mai & Waheed - Laish Laish Ya Jara

29 Oryx - Awakenings

30 Rida Al Abdallah - Baghdad

31 Yasser Habeeb - Elama

32 Fayez El Saeed - Baleini

33 Ilham Al Madfai - El Tufah (original mix)

34 Jawed Al Ali - El Shoug

35 The R.E.G. Project - Harem

No. I was running behind in the afternoon, and then I wanted to eat something before I went, and then it was raining and I walked all over trying to hail a cab, dodging completely homicidal drivers in the process. I got sick of it all and decided to go home. I wish I had planned it better though, because I could have made it. The more I thought of it though, the more I didn't like the idea of his being given a limited time slot. (There was another artist on the program, and these programs definitely end at a certain time, whereas when I've seen him before, he's had the time to stretch out. Well, not in Moroccan terms, but comparatively.) Still I should have gone, but I bet nobody went into a trance; nobody ever goes into a trance at Philadelphia shows, except the occasional performer from Baluchistan.

re trances: when he played toronto this past summer, the reports I got were that were going into full trances and actually passing out!

New releases

Very interesting new instrumental album from Marcel Khalife. He's mixing jazz elements with Arab music, not an original idea I realize, but I like what he's doing here more than I like just about any other combination of Arab music with jazz that I've heard. I'm glad he is getting away from the big orchestral works which all sounded the same to me, and which I didn't like to begin with. The personnel includes his sons (I assume): Rami and Bachar Khalife, Peter Herbert (who typically plays with jazz musicians) on bass, and a cameo appearance by violinist Omar Guey (soloing). The first three or four tracks flow together quite nicely, but the fifth--what is this--this thing? I heard something very similar in a song on an older Khalife album. It's like an extended Chopinesque version of "Happy Birthday To You!" Unbelievably sacharine. I have no idea what he is trying to do here. Nothing else on the CD is like that one track, although I'm not crazy about his son Rami's piano playing in some cases. A little too influenced by Romantic era classical piano. (Both his sons are trained in European classical music.) Overall, I like it quite a bit. The use of vibraphones (played by Bachar) adds an unexpected color, which works extremely well with Arab rhythms. The second track has an odd disjunctive sort of rhythm that seems to borrow from free jazz. (It's not Arab, I'm sure, and it's not a straightahead jazz rhythm.) Also, the audio quality is very high. I hope this Khalife CD gets some press. (I hope the label is sending out review copies, and not just to "world music" magazines, but to other places where it might have a chance of being covered.)

Jaz Coleman & Anne Dudley's Songs from the Victorious City.

I'm finally getting around to listening to this again (after not hearing it for a long time). I don't really understand why they import non-Arab rhythms into this. The rhythmic resources in Arabic music are very rich.

I'm amazed Natacha Atlas hasn't been mentioned in this thread. Highlights are Disapora, Gedida, and parts of Ayeshteni. Despite being largely Belgian/Moroccan/British, her artistic leanings are toward Egypt, and it really shows.

In the interest of variety, Mezdeke's a good example of Turkish rhythms, and exemplifies just how broad Arabic music can be. The CDs can be hard to pick up though; you'd do well to try your local Lebanese bakery.

Amr Diab? Meh. Doesn't do anything for me. Habibi's the obvious number [everyone's heard it at least once].

http://www.shweir.com/Images%207/P1010009.JPG

x-post

I don't like it (the Dudley/Coleman thing). It starts off okay, but a lot of what they do rhythmically on that recording is kind of weak compared to what is possible using Arab rhythms (to repeat myself). Also, they draw excessively on the biggest cliches of the big Egyptian string section sound. I like the way the album starts off, but by the time it hits the "It could just go on forever" segment, the best part of it is over.

Atlas is interesting in spots, but I'm not into her.

What did Coleman contribute? It just all sounds like Dudley's work to me.

RAHIM ALHAJ
Iraqi Music in a Time of War
(Voxlox)

Last February, mild-mannered Iraqi matinee idol Kazem al-Sahir played a sparsely populated Beacon. His 17-piece orchestra was exotically anodyne to me, painfully nostalgic to the attendant Iraqis. But either way it was steeped in denial. Recorded April 5 at Manhattan's Sufi Books, with Baghdad under attack, this solo oud recital is the opposite. The conservatory-trained AlHaj is a Saddam torture victim who escaped in 1991. Yet he is appalled by the destruction of his homeland. And yet again he betrays no rage: however uninspired as "concepts," the "compassion, love, and peace" he preaches are courageous as music. With little knowledge of oud or taste for classical guitar, I'm struck by how unexotic he seems—how his sound, melodicism, and note values bridge East and West while remaining Iraqi. I'm impressed by how modest virtuosity can be in a classical tradition that honors simplicity. And I'm drawn in by the historical context, which implicates me in that tradition. B PLUS

The audio quality is poor, but it's good enough for me. I like the sound of the instrumentalists accompanying him. This music avoids some of the excesses of the old Egyptian popular music arrangments. I like the fact that there is practically always a guttering ney playing along the lines he is singing. (As I typed that, the ney and just about everything else dropped away to make room for a kanun solo. I like that too.)

Yousra Dhahbi: Rhapsody for Lute [Female oudist--and there aren't many around, or at least not many who make it onto a CD--from Tunisia.]
Ensemble Al-Umayri: The Sawt of Kuwait
Ensemble Muhammad Faris: The Sawt of Bahrain
Various: Treasures of Algerian Music [2 CDs worth of older, archival, material.]

Mohamed Ali Ensemble: Al Hawanem also looks good.

(These are listed on the new releases section at www.rashid.com.)

I think it's interesting that while falsetto is traditionally frowned upon in Egyptian, and I think Lebanese and Syrian music, it seems pretty common in music from the Gulf states. At the very least, I think I've heard a couple Kuwaiti stars sing in falsetto.

It might not even be really good. There's some pretty cheesy stuff going on, but there's still something really great about it.

At the very least, they seem to be more about a musique concrete/cut-up approach than simply a presentation of recordings of Arabic music (as though they are simply using Arabic music as raw material).

But then again, maybe I will like them. Maybe they really are making a statement about the aural world that exists in the Arab world. (Call to prayer, Qur'anic recitation, clash of everything else music?)

The CD itself is a totally unprofessional piece of work, with two or three more songs than there are tracks (and I mean songs that are completely unrelated to what came before on the same track). Plus, sometimes there will be a pause after one song and then another one will begin, then the track will end, then that song will resume with the next track. It's made in Houston, TX.

Accompanied Nazem al-Gazali in Iraq. That's about as prestigious as you can get for that time and place.

Some people like Partisan Girl make a case against using "Arab" to apply to most of the people it's even applied to but there's still more reason to apply it where it is applied than to apply it to Iran just because of Arab conquest a long time ago (that didn't defeat a distinct sense of Persian identity). I think I may start trying to use "Levantine" more, but I have trouble remembering what's included and what isn't.

Big parts of Iraq are way closer to Persian culture, in and language as well. Was hoping there'd be a Kurdish category tbh. Still good stuff.

I don't think Iranian music is all that popular with Arabs though, in general. I agree though that Iraq is a pretty big outlier in certain ways, culturally. I don't really know too much about that though.

I still like this Diamanda Galas interview excerpt I've posted before:

DIAMANDA: Interestingly enough, since 9/11, a lot of people coming from the Middle East are saying there would be no blues if there were no muezzin singing, and I said, “Well, you know, the reason I won’t argue with that is that music comes from Byzantium, from the mixture of all these cultures in the Middle East, including Anatolia, Turkey, Greece.” Where did the music of Islam come from? Well, it came from the Arabs, originally. Who did the Arabs get it from? The Arabs took it from the Greeks. They all changed music together in that melting pot of the Black Sea and Egypt and Turkey; in all those Arab countries, there was this exchange of music. So you have this bending of the tones, and you don’t just have a five-note scale—what is that? All these taqsims and the makams, all these scales.

And that is what I hear when I listen to most interesting blues music, which I feel is from Somalia and Ethiopia right now, because they have to get up there and be really good qaraami singers—the improvised music of that whole part of the world—and then they have to be pop singers and blues singers, too. So they get up and they start the solo with the qaraami, then they go into the song, and they go back into the qaraami. The qaraami is sung by church singers also. But these are real singers—I hear it and I think about where the blues is, what the Americans have done to it since then, which is just: repeat.

ARTHUR: Though they seem to specialize in it, that overly reverent regard for musical genres’ classic forms—stylizing them till they petrify hard enough to put them up on museum shelves—is not an exclusively American problem.

DIAMANDA: But when people try to get into this ethnic purity thing, like with Wynton Marsalis or Stanley Crouch, it’s the same thing that people do when they think about Armenian music—“Well, this scale or sound here is probably Turkish.” And I say, “How do you know if it’s Turkish or not?”

ARTHUR: A lot of musical idioms and techniques do get called Turkish; Western music critics use “Turkish music” as a big umbrella term.

DIAMANDA: That’s what Turkish imperialism is. They are a very rich country—in between what they get from America and what they get from Israel, they do real good. They can afford to have plundered the Assyrians, the Kurdish, the Greeks, the Armenians and many Arabic cultures and call it Turkish. They have borrowed from everyone, and other cultures as well have taken from them. But there is no such thing as a united Turkish music. That is just a bunch of shit.

This whole thing about insults to Turkish people, in Turkey they put people in jail for it. If you say you’re Assyrian, that means you’re insulting Turkish people; if you speak Greek, that’s an insult to Turkishness. And still, those two cultures melted into music that is now called Turkish music. Anatolia was a huge area that was inhabited by many cultures, and now they call it Turkey. And they say it’s “The Land of the Turks”—only because they killed everybody else off that lived there before.

ARTHUR: Of course, modern Greek musicians frequently refuse to sing certain songs because they think the song’s roots are in Islam. But in reality, they don’t know where that song came from.

DIAMANDA: There are a lot of people who refuse to perform certain music because they think they’re performing music by the enemy tribe. And they’re not. It’s part of their own music. The Turks employed Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and Jews to compose music for the sultans. Then they called it “Turkish music.”

https://arthurmag.com/2009/01/25/vengeance-is-hers-a-conversation-with-diamanda-galas-by-john-payne-from-arthur-no-28march-2008/

I've read that some years ago. Diamanda otm obv.

Old-school Iranian singers still come to the Washington DC area on tour (there's a large Iranian population in the Virginia suburbs of DC). Ebi was just here and Googoosh is coming back.

To repeat more or less the same point I was trying to make, in my limited experience, an awful lot of Arabs don't even necessarily listen to that broad a sampling of Arab music. Khaleeji music goes in and out of favor, but a lot of people in core Levantine countries don't really bother with it. So Iranian music is even further removed. And people in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan aren't necessarily listening to a lot of North African music. So it's really unsurprising to find no Iranian music on an Arab music blog (especially if it's run by an Arab).

And the Kurds aren't particularly well-loved in much of the Levant either. Politics always plays into these things. Khaleeji music was becoming more popular outside the Gulf states before the first Gulf War, but that dropped off a lot in response to the Gulf War--or so I have been told. No data to back that up!

There used to be a forum called Arian World or something like that, that I downloaded lots of Iranian music from, but it doesn't appear to be around any more.

I did glance at my bookmarks last night to see if I had anything helpful to offer, but I found lots of dead links.

That Nadah El Shazly album is absolutely incredible. I'm loving the encounter of Arabic classical vocals, free jazz and 'experimental' music (shitty descriptor, etc.). What else should I check out?

Hear classic film music from the golden age of Arab cinema, the 1930s to the 1960s. Top composer-performers from Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria created music for the most popular films and theater in the Arab world. Simon Shaheen performs on the ‘ud (Arab lute) and violin, joined by the Syrian vocalist Nadia Raies and an ensemble with ney (Arab flute), qanun (Arab zither), cello, and percussion.

Saw this show for free tonight. Always pleasant, but it sounded even more than that on the 3 songs where Syrian vocalist (and current Berklee school of music student0 Nadia Raies sing with Shaheen on oud, the 3 violinists, the flute player, cello, percussionist and great young qanun player. Shaheen talked about the songs in between (they did some classic old film ones and some of his compositions that are inspired by old stuff)

With Rudiph gone (after his invective-filled meltdown) this thread has gotten much quieter

Habibi Funk Records, in Germany, was mentioned in other threads after they brought out this compilation of 1970s-1980s Arabic funk and jazz:

- https://habibifunkrecords.bandcamp.com/album/habibi-funk-007-an-eclectic-selection-of-music-from-the-arab-world

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2216664489_7.jpg

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They released a radio session comp of Kamal Keila from Sudan (see Rolling Reissues 2018 ), and the latest one is a full album reissue, Jazz, Jazz, Jazz by the Sudanese band The Scorpions & Saif Abu Bakr, with bandleader Amir Sax:

- https://habibifunkrecords.bandcamp.com/album/habibi-funk-009-jazz-jazz-jazz

"He told us stories about him meeting Jimmy Cliff and [Louis] Armstrong when they visited Sudan and how he and his band mates from The Scorpions played extensively in Kuwait, both in club residencies as well as for television. Amir brought tons of incredible photos illustrating not only the bands history but the vivid cultural live in the many music clubs in Khartoum of the 1970s. During this decade up until 1983 the capital was home to a huge number of clubs and concert halls. This scene started to perish after Nimeiry's turn towards the implementation of Sharia law in 1983. During the first decade of his rule he had actively supported various artists of the Jazz scene and was even taking artist like Kamal Keila along with him to trips throughout Africa. The 1989 coup of Bashir and his generals then caused the final blow to a once thriving scene." – (Jannis Stuerz, Habibi Funk)

will try to check that out

Just be wary of the "jazz" title –

"To Western ears, the title Jazz, Jazz, Jazz will seem something of a red herring. This is music more pop-structured than typical jazz with the nine blood-raw recordings powered by an engine of funky organ work and upbeat guitar lines. Leading most arrangements by the hand are the powerful and striking brass sections." – (Dean Van Nguyen)

Also this past year, the Gisma Group from northern Sudan appeared on a collaborative album in New Zealand, Haja.

The group play traditional wedding music in the style aghani al-banat, "girls' music", which is also associated with Alsarah from Alsarah & the Nubatones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSF7QrzoiD0

On the album, the Gisma Group are centre-stage on the tracks "Haja" and "Like the Moon". More of Gisma's songs are remixed into the other tracks featuring NZ musicians, in a kind of fusion. I like how it's turned out, though something about the remixing seems a bit 'off', not sure what...

- https://nzmusician.co.nz/lessons/x-factory-in-praise-of-the-adults-haja/
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btw there's almost certainly an aghani al-banat rabbithole to go down. The group's leader, Gisma, studied under Hawa al-Tagtaga, who had a role in Sudanese history via her music.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qWzoTh1nv2o/mqdefault.jpg

"Born around 1924 in northern Kordofan, Hawa moved to the capital at the tender age of 14 years to begin the career of a popular performer and entertainer. Over the years, she became an icon of Sudanese womanhood and popular culture. Hawa made the Sudanese happy. She immortalized the key figures of the Sudanese anti-colonial movement in the simple ‘open access’ lyrics and tunes of the nas (common people), and earned a living from the dual function of dance instructor and singer at the weddings of the effendiya and the merchant class."
- http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article44931 (Archived)

But I can't find any of her early music online (only songs on low-budget TV shows)

In Sudan, filmed before the overthrow of the government there - a film about the community music program "Yalla Khartoum":

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

The 2019 uprising that removed al-Bashir was not the first such protest movement in Sudan, and music has often played an important role in these historic events.

Mohamed A Satti writes about a few famous songs, including Mohammed Wardi's “October Al Akhdar” (Green October) in 1964:

Songs of freedom: the soundtracks of political change in Sudan
- https://theconversation.com/songs-of-freedom-the-soundtracks-of-political-change-in-sudan-115383

A 2019 song by Alsarah:

Alsarah & The Nubatones - "Men Ana" (Live on KEXP)
- https://youtu.be/fBAc8LNCrJs

'"Men Ana / من انا" or "Who Am I" is a new track by Alsarah & the Nubatones.
Alsarah says: "The revolution in Sudan has inspired a revolution inside of me. From my heart in the diaspora to all my people on the ground sitting in for weeks now outside the military headquarters in Khartoum and all around the rest of Sudan - I love you."'

That opening mournful flute is really touching in the beginning of first video clip

"Please stop comparing Nadeh El Shazly female singers to Bjork."
― Doran, Sunday, December 24, 2017 2:23 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

How about Leila Arab, then?
I know I'm late to the party, but Ahwar is a knockout.

How one song got an entire music genre banned in Egypt
- https://www.aljazeera.com/podcasts/thetake/2020/03/song-entire-music-genre-banned-egypt-200327190236398.html

Sadly, it wasn't "Shape of You":

"Egypt's low-tech, high-energy mahraganat music blasted out of the shantytowns to top the global charts on SoundCloud and rack up hundreds of millions of views on YouTube. But one slip-up at a massive concert in Cairo threw the entire genre's future into question.

"In this episode, we hear from Mina Girgis, an Egyptian ethnomusicologist based in the United States."
– (Al Jazeera, 28 Mar 2020)

As mentioned in that podcast

WARNING: may contain references to the illegal and delicious hashish

Hassan Shakosh feat. Omar Kamal - "Bent El Geran" (The neighbour's girl)
مهرجان بنت الجيران " بهوايا انتي قاعده معايا " حسن شاكوش و عمر كمال - توزيع اسلام ساسو
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHBaHQau8b4

I need to listen to that podcast. Thanks for posting