Rubaiyat Salah Jahin | Salah Jahin, Ali al-Haggar, Sayed Makawy (1988, Egypt, FLAC rip)

This cassette is not listed on Discogs, but there does exist a poor-quality YouTube video that I'll leave it to you to find if you really want to.

This is a remarkable recording, from 1988, of a collaboration between long-time friends composer Sayed Makawy and poet and cartoonist Salah Jahin (or a tribute by the composer to his then recently deceased friend). It is not the first time Makawy had scored Jahin's poetry; Discogs lists this cassette, with the same title (which I think translates as The Poetry of Salah Jahin). 

However, the main difference between that one (pictured directly above) and the cassette I'm sharing today (pictured at the top of this post) is that the latter features the singing voice of Ali al Haggar in addition to whomever is reciting Salah Jahin's poetry (perhaps Jahin himself, although the poet died in 1986, two years before this release).

Al Haggar is an interesting choice. His voice has a smooth, mid- to high-range huskiness that, to my ear, at least, is more than a little reminiscent of Abdel Halim Hafez--the one famous singer that composer Sayed Makawy famously never worked with.

I've never heard an album quite like this. Clearly Egyptian in orchestration and composition, there are distinct touches that make it unique. Plus, more obviously, it toggles rather aggressively back and forth between passages of recited and sung poetry--something I've only ever heard before in recordings of Persian poetry, and even there, there was only one vocalist. This is clearly two, one for each mode.

Link to FLAC files in comments.

A Trip to Nouri Brothers

Discs plucked from the shelves of Paterson, New Jersey's greatest self-proclaimed"shopping center": Nouri Brothers, where new stock butts heads with decades-old, dust-covered gems we didn't even know were available on this continent.

This three-hour tribute features Morocco's Grande Voix d'el Aita, Syria's King of the Oud, some long out-of-print Oum Kalsoum, mid-period Nass El Gihwane and Jil Jilala, nascent raï, jaw-droppingly rare Fayza Ahmed, and much, much more.

Listen to the show in the archives

Bad Boys

Provocation, poor taste, questionable ethics, incompetence, regrettable decisions, and egregious criminal acts, featuring:

Russia's "unsurpassed master of profanity." 

The Cairene laundry presser whose ode to bin Laden was yanked from the Egyptian airwaves. 

The troubled Jamaican genius who spent the last years of his short life in prison for murder. 

Japan's greatest unpop star. 

The Beirut underground star whose fuck you to Lebanon's military leaders nearly ended his career. 

The creepy American hustler whose death unleashed a torrent of horrifying not-so-secret secrets.

Listen to this show in the archives

Ali Salhien | تلاعبنى الاعبك

The bodega has reopened for business! 

Those of you who have been following us know that, a year or so after we joined WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio, our posting of new music here slowed down until we ceased offering new rips at all. I'm not going to bore you with the reasoning; it doesn't matter. What matters is that we're back, and -- inspired by fellow travelers Tim Abdellah Fuson and Peter Doolan -- we're going to kick off our reboot with a series of newly discovered cassettes.

First up, a live recording on cassette by Ali Salhien (على صالحين), with thanks to the aforementioned Tim for translation, transliteration, and most of the context below. 

According to a posthumously created Facebook memorial page, Ali Salhien (also transliterated Aly Salheen) was considered The Star of Mawwals and Star of Maghagha, an Upper Egyptian city about 120 miles south of Cairo. The page was created on March 13, 2011, presumably not long after the singer's untimely death. We've not been able to determine his birth date. 

This is the sole live video of the performer I was able to find -- fair warning that the sound quality leaves much to be desired. That said, it gives you a great sense of Salhien's energy and magnetism; near the end of the video you'll see a succession of audience members, all male, leaping onto the stage to dance together.

The cassette retains all of that energy, but with superior sound quality -- considering that it's a live performance, most likely in Salhien's hometown. I've ripped it at 320kbps and separated out distinct mawwals into individual tracks. It sounds something like a grungier, less electronic version of Islam Chipsy.

I found this cassette at Nourdine Bahri's Nassem Halal Meat & Mediterranean Grocery in Astoria, Queens. 

I've been visiting this particular bodega for at least 15 years. Long before I moved to the neighborhood, I made frequent trips up here from Brooklyn, visiting Nassem, the Nile Deli across the street, and a no longer extant Lebanese market run by a poet who seemed to have a story about at least one song on every single CD that I bought. 

Astoria is home to more than 75,000 residents; the population of this single neighborhood dwarfs that of the approximately 15,000 Algerian Americans spread across Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and New York City. Yet, there are somehow enough in the area to support Nassem, which up until 2010 sold hundreds of original CDs and cassettes. (Most of my Algerian CDs -- my entire Cheb Hasni collection, for instance -- were bought at Nassem in the aughts.)

The few CDs that remain are pirated copies with paper labels that you risk destroying your player or DVD drive playing, let alone taking the time to rip. Last year, when Peter Doolan came to visit, we took a tour of the neighborhood, stopping by the bodega, where each of us picked up a couple of cassettes. 

I went back last week and, after talking briefly with the Latino guy who has managed the butchery there since 1996, convinced him to pull out all of the remaining tapes for me. There were about 40 titles left. Spoiler alert: I bought them all. 

As I make my way through these Algerian, Egyptian, Lebanese, Moroccan, and Syrian rarities -- some of which have been sitting on Nassem's shelves since the late 1980s -- I'll be posting those of special sonic interest here. Expect a new one once a week or so for the foreseeable future. If you know anything about the music (or at the very least, the language) I strongly encourage you to share your insights in the comments or by email.

This Wednesday's Bodega Pop Live show, by the way, will be focused on cassettes from around the world.

Link to Ali Salhien's تلاعبنى الاعبك in the comments.

Aleppo to Benghazi

On Wednesday, October 5, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio will take a three-hour road-trip from Syria to Libya, with stops in Aleppo, Damascus, Amman, Cairo, and Benghazi. On the way we'll hear some of the region's most gripping avant-garde, black metal, collage, hip-hop, punk, synth-pop, and more. 

Bookmark the page and see you Wednesday night!

Revolution Rap: Arabic Hip-Hop | Bodega Pop 12

 
Listen to "Ramallah Underground" 

 
Listen to "Beit" 

 
Listen to "I'm Not Your Prisoner"

 
Listen to "As Salam 3alikum"

 
Listen to "Talakat" 

Just reupped the 24-track album here.

Hyperbolic as it may sound, Arabic rap and hip-hop has had a significant place in the series of uprisings that have swept across North Africa and the Middle East since December 2010. Considering that what we in the west sometimes like to call the "Arab Spring" is predominantly a youth movement, it makes sense. 

Despite the not-coincidentally alliterative title of this mix, not every track I've chosen to include has a relationship to the "revolution," as it were. (Lebanese rapper Rayess Bek's "3al 2anoune 3al2anine," for instance, was recorded a decade ago.) But all of the tracks are, in some way, shape or form "revolutionary" -- for their content, their sound, their innovation. Nearly half of the tracks feature a female artist. 

Here's the moment where I'm tempted to make reference to my country's seemingly inexorable movement toward war in Syria, relating that to this music (and, by association, the people who made it) ... but there really is no real relationship and, frankly, I don't know, exactly, what to say. We tend -- as a culture, a country, a political player on the world's stage -- to speak too often for others. We need to learn how to listen.

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. 

Various Artists | Best Egyptian Pop

Throw yourself into Mahmoud el Hasani's "Sagara Bouny"

Grab all 19 mind-blowing tracks here.

As a super-outgoing Leo with a massive, unrestrained ego, it's very rare that I am short on words.

This is one of those occasions. 

I picked this album up at the Nile Deli on Steinway Street yesterday along with a few other CDs that I'd been meaning to bring home for a while. I hadn't, for reasons that are unclear to me now, ever seen this gem before. How was this possible? The thing was grime-encrusted and must have been sitting in the store for years. A store that I frequent at least once a month, drooling, cash in hand, prowling for sonic treasure.

I instantly fell in love with the cover. I assumed that this wasn't going to be like any of the other Egyptian CDs I'd picked up from this place. I was right.

Is this chaabi? It isn't so-called "electro-chaabi," I know that. There's no autotune, for one thing. It may, in fact, predate autotune. But it has all of the other elements. Insane use of sound effects. KickThrillAss rhythms. Vocals that will put hair on your back. 

Whatever it is, whatever it's called, whenever it was recorded, you're not ever going to forget it.

10 Best Albums of 2013

Merry Christmas, everyone. With a mere week to go until the ball drops in Times Square, listeners all over the globe have been compiling their Best Of lists for the year. For the Bodega, 2013 was a complex but often exciting time to be paying attention to international music. In early March our superfriend Carol hipped us to a program at BAM that would change our lives: Mic Check: Hip-Hop from North Africa and the Middle East. Later in the month, the Bodega returned the favor, taking her to see pioneering Palestinian rap group DAM at Drom on New York’s lower east side.

As more of our regular CD-findin’ haunts in the city dried up, new doors were opened, including two previously undiscovered stores selling Czech and Latin music, allowing us to exponentially grow our stock of both, literally overnight. For more recent music, there’s the endless rabbit hole that is Bandcamp. In fact, most of our 2013 faves came from this revolutionary end-run around the terminally ill Music-Industry-As-Such.

Above all, our fellow music bloggers kept their little rooms on the Internet warm even when the sun wasn’t shining anywhere else. Special Big Love to stalwarts Awesome Tapes from Africa, Jenny Is in a Bad Mood (Japan), Jewish Morocco, Jugo Rock Forever (former Yugoslavia), Madrotter Treasure Hunt (Indonesia), Monrakplengthai (Thailand), Moroccan Tape Stash, Music from the Third Floor (India), My Passion for Ethiopian Music, and Turkish Psychedelic Music 2, to say nothing of fellow eclecticists Flash Strap, Ghost Capital, Global Groove, Inconstant Sol, Kadao Ton Kao, Music for Maniacs, Snap Crackle & Pop, and Terminal Escape — to name but a few of the dozens whose offerings fill our hours and ears.

Two great but seemingly dead blogs got new life this year: Brain Goreng (Indonesia) and Voodoo Vault (Japan), though whether either will keep up the good fight into 2014 is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, Interstellar Medium | Foreign Lavish Sounds stormed onto the scene to raise the bar unconscionably high and show us just how awesome a music blog can really be. We’re humbled, shamed even, but genuinely grateful for their existence.

2013 was a year of personal triumph for the Bodega: We not only published some of our least egregious nonfiction to date (in Burning Ambulance, Indiewire, LA Review of Books and Roads & Kingdoms), we received the ultimate worldly acknowledgement of our humble efforts in poetry: Inclusion in a Norton anthology. 

But there were setbacks. In April, our then-host, Divshare, kicked us out of the file-sharing playground, citing multiple complaints about our *cough* copyright infringement *cough*. Tail between our legs, we hooked up with ADrive and began to restock the shelves, offering customers a new feature: The Bodega Pop Comp (see “hot comps” in the sidebar to the right).  

Then, in May, Super DJ, creator and director of WFMU’s Give the Drummer Radio stream, and music blog supporter extraordinaire, Doug Schulkind asked if we’d like to bring the bodega to WFMU in the form of a weekly broadcast. Our ego said yes, yes, oh god let us, yes. Our ego has never been the brightest bulb in the tulip patch, but he tends to get away with pretty much whatever he wants.

So, every Wednesday evening from 7-10pm ET, starting on January 15, we’ll be hosting Bodega Pop Live on the aforementioned stream. Shout outs are due to several fabulous people—in addition to Doug, of course—who helped make this happen: Brandon Downing, Andrew Maxwell, Andrei Molotiu, Sianne Ngai, Mel Nichols, and above all, Carol “Craftypants” McMahon, who donated a Macbook we desperately needed to do the actual streaming. 

Still awake? Hello? Awrighty, let’s move on to the sole reason you’re even here tonight: Bodega Pop’s Top 10 Albums of 2013 …

DAM
Dabke on the Moon ($8.99)
December 15, 2012
As we intimated earlier, middle eastern and north African hip-hop reigned supreme in our ears this year, including this album, technically released last year, but for all intents and purposes not readily available until 2013. It wasn’t the first album we’d heard by the pioneering Palestinian rappers, but it was easily the best of their work to date. The album blasts off with the unlikely-sounding rocker “Street Poetry” and doesn’t let up, kicking out jam after jam all the way through the anthemic “I Fell in Love with a Jew” and final deep groove of “Handcuff Them War Criminals.” If I was Christgau (“Christmas with Christgau” has a nice ring to it, eh?) I know three very talented young men who’d be getting a big ol’ A+ in their stocking.

The Girl
UR Sensation ($8.99)
January 9, 2013 (planned December 19, 2012)
I almost can’t breathe when I think about the awesomeness that is Aiha Higurashi. Her first band, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, was easily the best rock group of the Aughts, and with every subsequent project Aiha has shown us a new or at least slightly different side of herself.  The Girl, who released their second album this year, brings it back home to the stripped-down, noirish rock Aiha first explored with SSKHKH—but the sound is grittier, more disconcerting. Our sole complaint? Try setting up a Google alert for “The Girl.” 

Various Artists
Spanish New Wave, The Golden Age (6 Vols.) (Free)
January 20, 2013
See, I told you music bloggers were awesome this year. Compiled by Sebi and Jose Kortozirkuito for free download on Boozetunes, this six-volume set of post-punk music from Spain is everything the bodega dreams of: A vast, and vastly entertaining panorama of pop from a faraway time and place, lovingly introduced with a smart and relevant preface. 

Various Artists
Khat Thaleth (Free)
January 22, 2013
Goodness gracious: The year really started out with a bang, didn’t it? This late-January Arabic hip-hop compilation, released two days after the awesome comp above, is pretty much the coolest international rap collection we can think of since 1988’s Brazilian overview Hip Hop Cultura de Rua. And the download is gratis on Bandcamp. Yep, you heard us: Free.

Satanicpornocultshop
Picaresque ($10)
February 2013
The Japanese sound-collage trio put out seven albums and EPs in 2013, which makes them among the most prolific groups of … dare-we-say all time? A perennial favorite here, the shop’s funked-up February release had the bodega rawkin out on the 7 train as we rode it in to work every morning. 

Various Artists
Harafin So - Bollywood Inspired Film Music from Hausa Nigeria ($5)
April 23, 2013
Holy crap, but Christopher Kirkley’s label is amazing. 2013 was a stellar year for Sahelsounds, beginning with a January release of the second volume of Music from Saharan Cell Phones. This Bollywood-inspired, auto-tuned Nigerian pop was a real revelation to us, having had no prior idea that such a thing even existed. 

Nisennenmondai
N (iTunes store, $9.99)
July 2, 2013
OMG I love these women, who put out what was easily my favorite music video of the year. (Don't stop watching before the 3:20 mark, seriously.) A must-have for all fans of the N-group and for any lover of the industrial / instrumental / experimental wing of J-rock. 

MWR
Because I’m an Arab (Free, if link works)
August 14, 2013
A publicist for this Palestinian rap trio sent me word of this album—a retrospective of the band’s brief but thrilling career-to-date. Hailing from Gaza, these guys are as sonically rich as they are politics-forward. I’m not sure if the Dropbox link I’ve provided is going to work for you — but I have no earthly idea how else to get a hold of this album, let alone pay for it. (If you know, send the info/link our way.)

P.K.14
1984 ($8)
September 13, 2013
The fifth album by one of Beijing’s oldest post-punk bands, formed all the way back in 2001. (It must be liberating having such a short music history.) Though they’ve mellowed slightly with age, they’re still awesome—in fact, even more so this decade than last. You can listen to the whole album on Bandcamp for free … so go listen to it, not to me.

Various Artists
Sounds and Colors: Brazil ($11.43)
November 25, 2013
I have heard the future, and it sounds an awful lot like the República Federativa do Brasil. Seriously, this record is fabuloso. Also, this label looks like it’s gearing up to give Sahelsounds a run for its money. Blaspheme? No, blashphe-you. Get over to their Bandcamp page and start digging around — and don’t miss out on their earlier “name your price” collections. You won’t be disappointed.

Mohamad Fawzi | Ah Men Esetat

Grab it here.

Found today in the Nile Deli on Steinway Street while out on a long walk in the neighborhood. 

A composer, singer and actor, Fawzi was born in 1918 in Tanta, the fifth most populous city in Egypt, about an hour and a half north by car from Cairo. By the age of 12 he was already making a name for himself as a wedding singer, but his father disapproved; he more or less ran away to Cairo to make it in the music industry. He landed a gig with Egyptian Radio and then launched his acting career in 1944. His most famous composition might be the Algerian national anthem (the lyrics were written by Mufdi Zakariah while imprisoned by the French). 

Brooklyn Bodega, Syrian Soul

Roads and Kingdoms commissioned me to write a piece for them. I focused on the Syrian bodega on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn where I first began to seriously collect this music, with tangents on Syrians in New York, a bodega-related conceptual art project, and more. (Read it here.) Bonus ten-track "Best of" playlist, here.

Asala Nasri | A Night at the Opera

Listen to Asala's thrilling performance of "Khalleek Hena" 

Stay for the whole concert.

This blog just passed the half-a-million page views threshold. In gratitude, here is one of the most incredible recent live recordings I have on CD, by Syrian superstar Asala Nasri. I just wrote a whole piece about the little Syrian bodega on Fifth Avenue in South Slope Brooklyn where I first discovered her music--I'll let you know when it posts. (It was commissioned by another site.)

Meanwhile, thanks again, everyone; and, really, don't miss this album.

Hanan | Bahebak

Get it here.

According to this biography, 1980s-90s Egyptian Al Jeel superstar Hanan has released "over six albums." That's, what? Like ... seven albums? 

"Hanan is simply a veteran artist that has a great experience," the bio continues, unperturbed by our western sarcasm. "All her albums are labeled « Slam’s » or hits by the releasing house and that is due to her great voice and unique celebratory style." Mm, yes, indeed -- you can see the word "SLAM!" in glorious teal, right there at the bottom of the CD cover. 

So, wait; let's back up a moment. What is "Al Jeel," anyway? Well, according to Bahebak's liner notes:

"Frustrated youngsters, without their own kind of music, had to wait until the eighties to satisfy their appetites for their own music culture. 

"In Cairo, the centre of major political, economic and cultural trends in the Middle-East, a new sound was born. Mohamed Mounir opened the way with his warm Nubian songs without altering their oriental authenticity."

(God knows one wants one's warm Nubian songs authentically oriental.)

"Soon Hamid el Shairi, the composer, music arranger and singer, began to dominate the scene in Summer 1986, alongside Hanan and Ala abdel Kahalek. Hamid's sense of humour and dedication to his work combined with a gift for melodies and rhythms inherited from the Bedouin and Saidi environment lead 'Al Jeel' music to the top.

"Today more than 100 million young people from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf listen to the voices of Hanan, Ihab Tawfic, Moustafa Amar and Hakim and dance to the rhythm of the Jeel music."

So, there you have it. Questions?

I found this sublimely trashy CD at the Nile Deli on Steinway Street maybe a year ago. Listening to it last night after work, I realized that you simply had to have it. Trust me, you do. You really, really, really do.

So, there. You have it.

Oum Kalthoum | El Atlaal

Reupped in 320 glorious VBR here.

"El Atlaal," or "Traces" "The Ruins," with music composed in 1966 by Riyad al-Sunbati and lyrics derived from two poems by Ibrahim Naji ("El Atlaal" and "El Widaa," or "The Farewell"), would prove to be one of Kalthoum's most popular songs. Virginia Danielson devotes several pages of The Voice of Egypt to this song, describing how Kalthoum mashed up Naji's two poems, turning the quatrains of the first into triplets. She also describes some of the song's  specific resonances:

Several of the climactic lines took on political meaning: "Give me my freedom, set free my hands! I have given freely, I held back nothing. Ah, how your chains have made my wrists bleed. ..." In 1966, these lines were perceived by some as addressed to the repressive measures of 'Abd al-Nasir's government. After the Egyptian defeat of 1967, they took on a wider meaning, suggestive of the bondage in which many Egyptians felt the entire Arab world to be held. The lines were repeated 'everywhere,' as listeners assigned them new meanings. Over time, Umm Kulthum and her listeners moved the poetic meaning between romantic and political themes.

This toggling of meaning between the romantic and the political in popular music is not unique to Kalthoum and her audience. Cui Jian still maintains that "Nothing to My Name," which served as an anthem for the Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989. (Ironically, Cui Jian was one of them, despite his own protest that the song had no intrinsic political meaning.)

This CD, which I've had for some time, was likely found at Rashid Music at its last location, on Court Street in Brooklyn, though it could have also come from Princess Music in Bay Ridge. Given it's status of one of the diva's most beloved of songs, I thought I'd top off the evening with it. I've more of her recordings and, perhaps tomorrow I'll up a few more--or may save them for another day.

Here's one performance of several available on YouTube:

 

And here she is singing the song in Paris in 1967:

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.