Middle East - Anthony Ham [71]
Although not as high profile as the Nubians, other notable Arab folk music comes from the Bedouin. Whether produced by the Bedouin of Egypt, Jordan or Syria, the music is raw and traditional with little or no use of electronic instruments. The sound is dominated by the mismar, a twin-pipe clarinet, and the rabab, a twin-stringed prototype cello.
POP
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Your could buy your music from Amazon.com, but Maqam (www.maqam.com) claims to be the world’s largest distributor and online retailer of Arab music, with a sideline in cinema and musical instruments.
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Seemingly a world away from classical Arabic music, and characterised by a clattering, hand-clapping rhythm overlaid with synthesised twirlings and a catchy, repetitive vocal, the first true Arabic pop came out of Cairo in the 1970s. As Arab nations experienced a population boom and the mean age decreased, a gap in popular culture had developed that the memory of the greats couldn’t fill. Enter Arabic pop. The blueprint for the new youth sound (which became known as al-jeel, from the word for generation) was set by Egyptian Ahmed Adawiyya, the Arab world’s first ‘pop star’.
During the 1990s there was a calculated attempt to create a more upmarket sound, with many musicians mimicking Western dance music. Tacky electronics were replaced with moody pianos, Spanish guitars and thunderous drums. Check out the Egyptian singer Amr Diab, whose heavily produced songs have made him the best-selling artist ever in the Arab world (achieved with his 1996 album Nour al-Ain).
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Musicians for peace
It’s not every American musician who can claim to have learned to play the oud (Middle Eastern lute) like an Iraqi, mastered the complexity of the maqam scale system and played love songs on a Baghdad street in the dangerous aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq. But then Cameron Powers is not your ordinary musician.
Together with his wife, singer Kristina Sophia, Powers was seriously disillusioned with his country’s response to the terrorist attack on 11 September 2001. When we caught up with them in Lattakia, Syria, in May 2008 on their fifth visit to the region, Powers and Sophia spoke of how they performed with a Palestinian musician in Boulder, Colorado two weeks after the attacks, a concert that only went ahead when the word ‘Palestinian’ was removed from the promotional material. Experiences such as these prompted the couple to make their first trip to the Middle East in November 2002, hoping to build bridges between Western and Arab cultures through what they call ‘the warmth, beauty and sensuality of Arab music’.
The welcome they received from ordinary Arabs convinced them to return. In spring 2003, impromptu performances for the Iraqi visa-issuing authorities and border officials saw Powers and Sophia granted permission to enter Iraq – ‘music is an instant passport’ is his explanation. Unable to find any functioning concert venues in post-invasion Baghdad, they simply began performing on the streets. ‘The fact that we were on the streets of Baghdad singing Iraqi love songs showed the Iraqi people that Americans could also invade with music,’ Powers told us. He later wrote a book, Singing in Baghdad (available from www.gldesignpub.com), about the experience. A performance before 60,000 people in Cairo followed the same year.
Struck by the warmth of the welcome they received in the Middle East, the couple realised that American audiences needed to hear an alternative vision of the Middle East as much as ordinary Arabs needed to feel their solidarity. Since then, the couple has covered more than 60,000km and performed at over 200 presentations in universities, schools and churches across the US. Nonetheless, they still find themselves confronted with the suspicions of post-9/11 America: ‘We encounter fear first and