Leila Mourad | Voice of the Egyptian Revolution

Just reupped this game-changing 25-song Bodega Pop exclusive album here.

There was a time when it looked like Leila Mourad was on her way to become the most famous Egyptian singer of all time. She was, in fact, selected as the official singer of the Egyptian revolution in the early 50s--but rumors about her having visited Israel effectively put an end to her career. Born Jewish (Iraqi-Jewish father, Polish-Jewish mother), she converted to Islam and, though she was well-loved in Egypt, she simply slipped out of the limelight, never to sing publicly again, retiring at the age of 38.

She began her career when she was 15 years old, recording "The Day of Departure" for the film al-Dahaya (The Victims) in 1932, which was otherwise silent. 

I honestly don't recall where I found the three CDs that make up this album, although I assume it was most likely in Bay Ridge. I may be in the minority, but I love her voice--which is among the most expressive I've ever heard--even more than that of the far more famous Oum Kalsoum.

Here she is in all her glory:

Asmahan | Legend of the Druze Princess

Just reupped this revelatory 27-track collection here.

Asmahan (born Amal al-Atrash, 1917, reputedly on the Mediterranean en route from Izmir, Turkey, to Beirut, Lebanon) was, simply put, one of the 20th century's greatest singers and the only Middle Eastern diva generally considered to have given Egypt's Oum Kalsoum a serious run for her money.

Asmahan strikes an interesting contrast to Kalsoum. Whereas Kalsoum was one of the most powerful Egyptians in history, in great part due to her brilliant management of her own career and image, Asmahan's brief, stop-and-go trajectory, which ended in her death at age 26 by suspicious car accident, was shrouded in rumor and intrigue, despite her family's suffocating control of her life and, subsequently, her memory.




The song above, "Ya Habibi Ta 'al al-Haqni," was my first sonic experience of this legendary singer's small but significant body of work; it was, oddly enough, also Sherifa Zuhur's. Zuhur, who wrote Asmahan's Secrets: Woman, War, and Song, first heard the tune on a cassette in the early 1970s that she picked up in a small music store on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles -- Silwani's Imports.

Zuhur's description of the place sounds remarkably like the places frequented by the present narrator. "Cramped, lively and filled with audio cassettes, key chains and souvenirs," she writes, "men from the Arab-American community dropped in and drank tea and coffee with the owner. I used to visit and browse, adding to my small collection of Arabic records and tapes."

Zuhur didn't listen to the tape that Silwani's owner, Mustafa, had suggested to her until she was on a trip to Cairo, by way of Sweden. In the early morning she popped the tape into her recorder:

"Percussion instruments and violins plucked a la pizzicato began with a tango. The singer's clear tones descended and rose, emphasizing the rhythm. Suddenly, the Eastern character of the song became more pronounced, as she began her improvisation (the mawwal) and modulated to another musical mode (maqam). The singer's diction was precise, and she effortlessly executed the wider sliding, trills and tonal patters performed by Arab singers. The song was 'Ya Habibi Ta 'al al-Haqni,' composed by Madhat Assim. 'It sounds so ... so old-fashioned. A cartoon tango but sophisticated,' I told my friend." [The song, Zuhur notes later in the book, had been previously sung by the Egyptian cinema pioneer Mary Kwini.]

I made my own discovery of Asmahan a quarter century later, at Daff and Raff Books & Music ("A Gateway to Another Culture") in the heart of Cambridge, Mass. (52-B JFK Street, currently occupied by Raven Used Books.) I don't know how my friends and I stumbled on to this store -- my memory suggests it was a random accident -- but I do recall immediately plucking this 1988 Baidaphon Beirut CD from the shelf. My own response to "Ya Habibi Ta 'al al-Haqni," the first track on the album, was much less sophisticated than Zuhur's had been to the same song: I began to tear up, felt a dull ache in my chest and watched as the skin on my arms filled with goosebumps. 

Over the last 15-16 years since I first heard Asmahan's voice, I've managed to find maybe half a dozen CDs of her music, mostly in Arabic media stores like long-since closed Princess Music in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn (the neighborhood where much of Saturday Night Fever took place). For this collection, I've excised all duplicate songs, as well as those featuring Asmahan's brother, Farid, rather than Asmahan herself. Not quite random, the order was determined largely by choosing my favorite five or six songs first and then following those with whatever seemed to best click. While most of these tracks run somewhere in the 5:00 - 10:00 minute range, there are two longer pieces, of nearly half an hour each. I placed one in the mid-section of the collection; the other I placed last. 

Kazim Al Saher | Early Live Album

Listen to "Jabar"

Grab the whole album here.

Kazim mad! Kazim riiiiiip paper! Yeah, uh, I'm not sure precisely what's going on in that fabulous cover, but whatever it is, the CD's publisher wanted to underscore its importance:

As you can see above, the image is repeated on the CD itself. Well, more than just repeated, actually; it's freaking hand drawn. I'm trying to imagine the marketing meeting for this one:

A: We must show Kazim as resolute--he is through with this %#*$@%! So, he rips the [unintelligible: love letter? lease?].

B: Sitting cross-legged on the floor, perhaps? Grounded. Close to the earth. Close to life.

A: Listen. Listen to what I am telling you. We will then hand draw this same image of Kazim ... on the CD.

B: On the CD ... ?

A: Yes, on the CD itself. Drawn ... by hand!

B: Wait, I have it ... I have it. In red. Blood red.

According to the meta-data, this album is titled Kazem Al Saher and is dated 2009; the former is unlikely (it's a live album and I think there's a title of some kind there on the cover) and the latter is impossible. That's a relatively young Al Saher on the cover and, more importantly, the instrumentation and sound quality suggest that we're listening to a performance from the 1980s or, at latest, the very early 90s.

I'm almost certain I found this gem at the Nile Deli on Steinway Street. In fact, I think it was relatively recently, within the last six months to a year.

As I said in my last post, I'm gong to be DJing for WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio in the next month or two, but in order to do that, I need to get a new computer, specifically a Mac of some kind, and Macs are not cheap. In order to help raise funds I'm going to start selling and/or auctioning off original artwork and rare books and CDs to help defray the cost. I have to finish a comic under deadline today, and if I get done with time to spare, I'll start posting things for sale as early as this evening. 

Stay tuned ...

Kazim al Saher | La Ya Sadiki

Grab this ridiculously fabulous example of early 1990s Arabic art song here.

Watch a two-minute excerpt from a rare live performance of the title song:

One of the best things about moving is unpacking. Because I've just moved from a relatively large apartment to a fairly small one, I'm having to (a) unpack slowly and (b) make a lot of tough decisions about what stays and what, soon, will have to go. This has been good for me because, if I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, there are a lot of CDs here that I haven't yet really listened to. Tonight's offering is one of them. Had I listened to it earlier, I would have posted it long ago.

I don't even know how to describe this album, which consists of two songs, the 47-minute-long "La Ya Sadiki" ("Babel") and the 4-minute "Ya Rayeh Lebnan." Kazim al Saher composes a lot -- perhaps all -- of his music, and it's entirely possible these two songs are his. If so, the man is a genius. Not that I didn't already think that about him. I did. But the title song of this 1993 album is as mind-blowingly intricate as it is expressive -- and if you know al Saher's music, you know you can pretty much always count on the latter.

I've got a bit of news to share with you all, but I'm going to save it for later. Right now, a dozen-plus boxes are calling me, waiting to be unpacked, their contents sorted, their fates decided upon.

Nagat | Eyoun El Qalb

Grab it here.

I have wanted to post this -- one of my favorite Arabic records of all time -- for years, but I was convinced I had lost the disc. The jewel case, which I fortunately held onto, was empty and it was not until last weekend while doing a massive spring cleaning that I found it, slipped in between a couple of other CDs.

I first found this album, a good decade + change ago, in cassette tape form, in one of the half-dozen Arabic music stores I used to frequent in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I was still on the fence about digital media, continuing to buy mostly Arabic, Turkish and South Asian music on cassette (and Bolly- and Lollywood films on VHS) well past 9/11.

Speaking of which, right before 9/11 -- and I swear on all that is holy that I am not making this up -- I remember seeing, in South Asian media stores on Coney Island Avenue, references to "Terrorist Rap," which I assumed might be the bhangra equivalent of "Gangsta Rap." They disappeared shortly after the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, although it was around that time that I found a copy of what became one of my most treasured cassettes: DJ Aps's Got the World in Fear. 

I just assumed that the album was a response to 9/11, and quite possibly an example of this "terrorist rap" I saw here and there, though I'm guessing this is a (fortunate or unfortunate) coincidence. According to this page (where you can also listen to each track), GTWIF was released in 2010, but that's obviously wrong, as I picked up my copy in late September/early October 2001. Alas, I no longer have any of my cassettes, not even this one. (That image above is from the Internet.)

But, back to Eyoun El Qalb. From the moment I loaded Nagat's 1980 Soutelphan-published cassette and crunched the PLAY button into gear, I was in love. The first song, "Bahlan Maak," was sweet and wispy, but with a slight almost ironic edge -- think Velvet Underground & Nico's "Sunday Morning" -- at least that's how I felt after hearing the next two songs on the tape. 



"Fakra" and "Ana Bashak El Bahr" are unlike any Arabic music I had ever heard -- then, or since. At the time, I remember getting a whiff of Their Satanic Majesty's Request off of the two bass-heavy psychedelic plodders; but Nagat's breathy voice gave them an even more dangerous-feeling edge. 

Years later, after I had finally upgraded to digital media (and perhaps there ought to be scare quotes around that word "upgraded"), I brought Nagat's cassette into Rashid Music Sales at its last incarnation on Court Street and asked the woman behind the counter (who I just assumed was the wife of one of the Rashid brothers) if she could help me find this music on CD.

Not only did she find a copy, but when I explained that I was mostly getting it for the three aforementioned tracks (which appeared first on the cassette, but last on the CD),  her eyes lit up. It turns out that the composer of "Fakra" and "Ana Bashak El Bahr" was unlike any other in Egypt at the time -- Hani Shanouda founded two of the first pop-music bands in Egypt, including Les Petits Chats, with Omar Khorshid, Omar Khayrat, and Sobhi Bedeir, and, in 1977, Al Masriyyin (The Egyptians), which reunited briefly in 2010.

The other two songs on this album are fabulous live recordings of more traditional Arabic classical pop, although -- and I don't mean to disparage these other two tracks -- it almost feels like two distinct albums. 

"Hani Shanouda is unique in Arabic music," the woman told me. "But unfortunately, this is all that I know of in print by him now. I am so happy this is going to someone who will really appreciate it," she said, smiling at me.

Karem Mahmoud | Karem Mahmoud

Get it here.

Found in the Nile Deli on Steinway Street today after very long, satisfying bike ride.

You've gotta love an Egyptian classical pop superstar whose last words, to his surgeon, were "Guard my vocal cords." Mahmoud was just shy of 73 years old at the time. He didn't make it through surgery, alas, though his voice, if not the physical presence of breath through the twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across his larynx, "lives on," as they say.

Their having said that, the truth is, today was the first time I'd ever seen the name Karem Mahmoud; I had no prior knowledge of his existence and thus not the slightest inkling of what the man could do simply by vibrating certain of his mucous membranes. Fortunately, the Nile Deli occasionally still orders CDs, even things as old as this one, which was burned into polycarbonate plastic by Digital Press Hellas in 1989. (Nile Deli also ordered just about every single Amr Diab CD from the 1980s-1990s and, yes, I snatched all 11 of them up -- sit tight, my pretties, all in good time.)

According to his English-language Wikipedia page, Mahmoud was known as the "Melodious Knight," which frankly, in English, has a vaguely unseemly ring to it, at least to these ears, perhaps because it's so close to the "Malodorous Knight." But, then, I'm the one who brought up mucous membranes, so, you know -- grain of salt, or whatever.

My uncalled for and no doubt inappropriate bias aside, this nearly forgotten gem is a quiet (one might even say quite a quiet) revelation. Well worth a listen. 

Mohammad Abdul Muttaleb | Best of 1 & 2

Listen to "Ma Bes Alsh Alayya" from Vol. 1


Listen to "Is 'Al Mujarreb" from Vol. 2

Grab Vol. 1 here and make off with Vol. 2 here.

Yet another find at the Nile Deli (2512 Steinway Street, Astoria); I believe I picked these two up back in April.

I think of the shop keep, who is always behind the counter and who may well be the owner, as The Sphinx--which, yes, I realize is a potentially offensive bit of culturalizing, if we can make that a word. Nevertheless, I do think of him this way as, nothing I ever say or ask him ever seems to register. He's unreadable, and I worry sometimes that my combing through his CD racks for no less than an hour ("Can you see!? They are the same CDs that were there last time you were here!") secretly, profoundly irritates him.

No, of course he's never said anything remotely like the quoted bits in parentheses above. He's never said--to me, at least--anything. Not even the day after Warda's death, when I made a special trip to find albums by the late great Algerian panarabist singer. I remember handing a couple of items to him that day, including the one Warda CD I didn't already own, and noting, to my amazement, that he didn't even seem to register to himself who it was--Warda! and she had just died! OMG!--that he was mechanically stuffing into the black plastic bag with my other, equally unremarkable, purchases.

It isn't, mind you, that he's mean. Nor have I ever picked on up any anger, repulsion, hatred, loathing, hostility, enmity nor even minor annoyance vibes. He is, quite simply, the definition of sphinx-like.

In addition to knowing nothing whatsoever about the Nile Deli's shop keep, I know equally little about Mohammad Abdul Muttaleb, other than that he was an Egyptian singer. I don't even know if he composed his own songs, though I like to imagine so. The fact that I don't know anything about him is a testament not just to my own ignorance--which is as vast and as dry as the Sahara--but to the egregious deficit of 411 in English about expressive culture outside of our own sinking corner of the world.

I do know this, though: on a scale of "no mental or emotional response to stimuli" to "pleasure center overheating and in danger of shutting down," these two volumes are "extremely download worthy."

Asmahan | Yalli Hawak

Listen to " Emta Ha Ta'raf"


Get it all here.


I will not open the Lester Bangs book to a random page and build another entire post on a creative misreading of one of his sentences. I will not open the Lester Bangs book to a random page and build another entire post on a creative misreading of one of his sentences. I will not--


Oh, hey; how you doing? I didn't hear you come in. Heh. Happy Bastille Day! Sit, sit. Have some tea and help yourself to a bit of the baklava; I'll be right with you ...

So! While you were away, I received a couple of very sweet, appreciative emails from folks who recently wandered into the Bodega. In addition to making me feel warm and fuzzy, they also reminded me of why I started this blog in the first place: the fact that there has been, historically, so little attention paid in our culture to music from around the world. If, by "attention" we mean "reviews, essays and books," then this is still very much the case, although music blogs like the dozens of examples I've linked to in the right-hand aisle are one medium or platform or whatever where music from all over the world is finally getting some of the international exposure that so much of it deserves.

The great Druze superstar and pop innovator Asmahan was one of the first non-western voices your Bodega proprietor ever heard; it was back in the 1990s when I discovered this CD in the stacks of the since-closed Daff and Raff Arabic Bookstore in Boston. I remember it as though it was just yesterday ... but worry not, I shan't bore you with that particular memory. Suffice to say that it was a purely random find and that, along with a handful of other random finds, also in the 1990s, completely changed my musical horizons forever.

The present CD--would you like some more tea?--was a more recent find, mid-2000s maybe, most likely at (the since-closed) Princess Music on Fifth Avenue in Bay Ridge. I had, by that time, read Sherifa Zuhur's Asmahan's Secrets: Woman, War, and Song, one of the few (like, three? four?) books on Arabic music in English, so I had some context for her, or at least knew something about her life and influence as well as about her mysterious death, on this very day in 1944, an event that has given rise to a thousand conspiracy theories--everything from Asmahan being a Nazi spy to Oum Kalsoum having her rubbed out so she, Oum, could take over as the First Lady of Arabic Song.

Before you leave with your precious download, I should say that--and I'm being completely honest here, I swear--I had no idea that Asmahan died on July 14 when I pulled her CD down off the shelf tonight to post it and, yes, when I glanced at the Wikipedia page I linked to above and saw that date, I got a body-wide case of goosebumps. So, I don't care what your religion is, things do happen for a reason and, despite my use of the word a paragraph or two above, there is probably no such thing as "random." 

Fairuz | Bi Layl We Chiti

I would be very surprised if many of the regular visitors to the ol' Bodega had never heard of Fairuz. She is, after all, the single most famous Arabic singer alive. This CD, released in 1989, is one of the oldest in my collection and is relatively late in the singer's career, which began in the 1950s.

Born as Nouhad Wadi Haddad in 1935 in Jabal al Arz, Lebanon, Fairuz is nothing short of a legend. And this, for reasons that will be clear when you take a listen, is considered one of her greatest albums.

I picked this up a year ago or so on Steinway Street in Astoria (Queens) at the Nile Deli. Speaking of which: I plan on spending at least one of the three days of the upcoming holiday weekend walking over to Steinway; if you want to come along, feel free to write to me.

Listen to the first track of this 4-song CD

Get it all here.

Kazem Al Saher | Fi Madrsat Al Hob

I'm not sure how many pop artists I could in good conscience call a "musical genius," but if I had to pick just one artist working today, it'd be Iraqi superstar, Kazem Al Saher. Unlike most middle-eastern Arabic singers, he composes everything himself; his work is wide-ranging, from western-influenced to Arabic classical. If you've already plucked Aghsilly Bilbard from Bodega Pop's shelves, you're already hip to the soulfulness of this man's voice and the musical magic he makes. If you haven't, you're in for an incredible treat.

I found Fi Madrsat Al Hob this weekend at the Nile Deli on Steinway Street, one of the last remaining places to find Arabic music in the five boroughs. It is, without question, one of his absolute finest recordings. Don't believe me? That's between you and the limits of my descriptive language and your imagination. Meanwhile, take a chance and give this gem a listen.

Listen to "Sallami" from this CD

Get it all here.

Read more about him here.

Majida El Roumi | Live Recording 1982

I had it in my head to post a Faiza Ahmed CD this weekend that I've been wanting to share with y'all for a while; then, as luck would have it, I had a sudden hankering today for an almond-paste croissant & Americano at this relatively new "French" (actually Lebanese or Egyptian) cafe on Steinway Street, about 15-20 minutes on foot from my apartment. It would of course be pointless to walk all the way down to Steinway when it's this cold just for coffee and a croissant; but less pointless if one were to ad in a quick stop at the Nile Grocery more-or-less across the street from the cafe.

For me, a "quick stop" anywhere that they are selling CDs is no less than half an hour; and that's about what I spent, combing their music racks, until I'd scoped out every inch of product and my hands were sticky with grime. Some of these CDs have been there a while, including tonight's freshly plucked featured offering: Majida El Roumi's second CD, recorded when she was 26 (her first--Wadaa--had been released five years earlier, when she was merely 21).

For some weird reason, at some point last week I had a long, sort of meandering conversation with a co-worker at my day job about the origin of CDs. She was convinced that they hadn't really come into existence until the early 90s; I knew this wasn't the case, as I remember a guy at the SF State University dorms who had a CD player, and I lived in the dorms in the early 80s. It is true, though, that CDs didn't really begin to replace records and cassettes until the 90s--I personally didn't have a CD player until at least 1995 or later, and I don't think I bought any CDs until 1996. (The player was a combination CD and cassette player.)

Why am I telling you this? I mean, other than the fact that I'm obsessed with anything having to do with music burned into discs of polycarbonate plastic. Well, part of it is that tonight's CD, recorded in 1982, but published (in CD form, anyway) in 1989, is one of the physically oldest CDs that I own. Probably I have a few Bollywood CDs from a bit earlier--say, 87 or 88--but there isn't much I've got that pre-dates the 90s. That's not terribly remarkable, except for the very real possibility that we may not be seeing CDs much after this year or next ... at least a couple of friends of mine are convinced that they're on their way out, as early (according to one friend) as 2013.

Though I never intended it as such when I launched it in early 2010, this blog has kind of become a weird or random sort of record of vanishing New York. Almost when I began the blog, the bodegas I had been frequenting since moving here in 1997 began, one by one, to disappear. For instance, though I feel it in my bones that there must be other Arabic music places out there, the Nile Grocery is the only remaining place in the five boroughs that I personally know of that still sells Arabic CDs. The half dozen or so bodegas and media shops in Brooklyn I used to frequent--most in Bay Ridge--closed three or more years ago.

Will the Internet wind up being the only place in the next two or three years where you'll be able to get any of this music? Unfortunately, it's looking very much like that will indeed be the case.

Until then, I'll continue to haunt the few bodegas and mom & pop run media stores here and elsewhere I find, so long as they're still around ... and, of course, I'll share the best of my booty with you. (That sounds like a phenomenally bad line from a disco song; forgive me.)

Majida El Roumi was born to Melkite Greek Catholic parents in Kfarshima, Lebanon. She is credited as being one of the first singers to combine western and Arabic classical music. This rather wonderful live CD was her second album.

Listen to the second track from this CD.

Get it all here.

Angham | Bethib Meen

I found this CD many years ago, in the late 90s or early 00s, at a Syrian grocery store on 5th Avenue and 15th Street in Park Slope Brooklyn. Until I left Park Slope in late 2001 it was my favorite go-to place for Arabic pop--their selection was decent, if not exactly exhaustive, and the CDs were cheap: $5 a piece, or 5 for $20. Plus, the woman who ran the store was incredibly nice and, every time I stopped by, she'd make recommendations and quiz me on whatever she happened to be playing:

"You know who this is, right?"

"Umm, yeah ... Oum Kalsoum?"

"Very good! But, which song is it?"

She had a teenage daughter who hung out with her and, whenever I asked about this or that CD, if she didn't know the music herself, she'd ask her daughter if it was any good. I remember her daughter nodding emphatically if she liked this particular CD, Bethib Meen, by Egyptian superstar Angham.

Born into a creative family, Angham started her singing career under the wing of her father, who was a violin player and music producer. Bethib Meen, which came out in 1997, was the last CD she recorded with any help from her father. After 2001, her music became increasingly westernized.

Egyptian pop--or more specifically what I like to call, in this instance, Egyptian art pop--is some of the strangest music in the world. It has solid roots in classical Arabic music, but with tinges of western and other influence. In this CD, for instance, I swear to god, you'll hear ELO. (Yes, I mean the Electric Light Orchestra. Listen to the clip below if you don't believe me.)

Angham's voice is exquisite; there's a reason she is the most popular Egyptian female singer to have begun a career in the 80s. It had been, I admit, years since I'd listened to Bethib Meen, but when I was combing my shelves for something to post tonight after work, I pulled it down, gave it a listen, and was surprised at how terrific--and odd--it is. If you're new to Angham, or if you only know her work after 2001, I highly recommend giving this album a listen.

Listen to "Sallam Alay"

Get it here.

Kazim Al Saher | Aghsilly Bilbard

Listen to the the whole thing

Get the whole CD here.

[Another of my "house-cleaning" reposts; the first time I posted this it was at 128kbps and you had to download each song individually. Here it is now in 192 & a single zip file. It's one of the most sonically rich albums I've posted to date and I can't recommend it highly enough. I think it's Al Saher's all-time greatest album.]

I found this CD many, many years ago at Princess Music on Fifth Avenue in Bay Ridge. The last time I stopped by Princess Music their doors were closed. I've since called the number on the awning a number of times and always get nothing. They were the last of some half a dozen Arabic music places in the area that I used to haunt; now, it looks like they're gone with the others.

Kazim Al Saher, born in 1957 in Iraq, is perhaps the Arabic world's biggest living superstar. I have maybe a dozen of his CDs, most of which are heavily Western influenced. "Aghsilly Bilbard" is an exception.

Unlike many Arabic singers, Kazim Al Saher composes most of his own music. I don't think there is any question that the man is a genius. But more importantly, every time I listen to "Waneen," the first track (of only three) on this CD, I get terribly misty-eyed. I think it's one of the most moving pop songs--if it can actually be called a "pop" song--ever recorded.

While you're waiting for this thing to download, read this interview.

Farid & Asmahan | Asmahan & Farid

Listen to "Ya Habibi Ta'al Ilhaqni"

Get it all here.

[Originally posted in 2010, before I was linking to complete CDs. For the month of January, I'll be reposting a number of those early posts, this time with links to zip files of full albums. Enjoy!]

In the spring of 1997, the year I would leave St. Paul, Minn., for New York City, I went out east to visit friends in Boston, Mass. It was an eventful trip in many ways, but perhaps the most fortuitous was our stumbling upon Daff and Raff Books & Music ("A Gateway to Another Culture," was their ambitious motto), an Arabic book and CD store in the heart of Cambridge (52-B JFK Street).

It was a small, somewhat cramped store, with the CDs lining one wall. I'm almost certain that the photo above is the building, though it is obviously now a different store. (I remember trying to find Daff and Raff on a later trip to Boston, ca. 2000-2001, and it had disappeared. Google only returns relevant pages from 1997 and 98.)

I knew literally nothing about Arabic music, and picked up several CDs randomly, mostly gravitating toward covers that looked "promising." (Whatever that means.) For reasons that are obscure to me now, something about Farid & Asmahan's simple red and yellow layout (to say nothing of the extra-groovy lettering) drew my attention.

My attention was greatly rewarded. Asmahan was, of course, one of the most celebrated Arabic singers of all time, credited with bringing a "western" influence to her singing style. Born in 1918 to Druze parents in either Syria or Lebanon (I've read conflicting reports), she moved with her brother, Farid al-Atrash, to Egypt, where both went on to become wildly popular film and music stars:

She died in 1944 when a car she was in with another woman passenger crashed into the Nile. The driver escaped; Asmahan and her companion drowned. Conspiracy theories regarding her death--by British intelligence or the Gestapo, take your pick--abound.

She is one of a mere handful of artists I've posted music by on this blog who has actually had a book written in English about her life and work: Sherifa Zuhur's Asmahan's Secrets. Highly recommended.

Shadia | Best of, vols. 1 & 2

Egyptian actress/singer Shadia, born Fatima Ahmad Kamal, acted and sang for more than 100 films before retiring in 1985. Though I've known of her for a long time, I've only ever managed to find a couple of later CDs, neither of which was (to my ears) particularly compelling. That is, until last week, when I found this two-volume set at the Nile Deli on Steinway Street in Astoria, Queens, about a 15-minute walk from my apartment.

The range included in these two volumes is impressive, beginning with the rather western-inflected "Khamsah Fe Setah" (listen to sample below), to more-or-less traditional sounding Arabic pop and classical. Though she has been recommended to me more than once by various bodega owners in Queens and Brooklyn, there is very little written about her in English, either online or in the two books on Egyptian cinema that I have, which seems odd, considering how long her career lasted--well into the 1980s. (She's still alive and living in Egypt and is, depending on which of the given birthdates I've found is correct, either 80 or 82 years old.)

Get both CDs in a single zip file here.

Listen to "Khamsah Fe Setah"

Asala Nasri | Al Mushtaka

Listen to "Al Mushtaka"

Get it all here.

Born in Damascus to the famous Syrian composer Mostafa Nasri in 1969, Asala began her recording career in 1991 at the age of 21. She moved to Egypt, where she subsequently became a superstar all over the Arabic world. In my opinion, only Najwa Karam's voice rivals Asala's.

It's likely that I found this at Rashid's in Brooklyn.

Watch Asala sing live: