Najwa Karam | Rouh Rouhi

Reupped in 360kbps here.

[Originally posted in April 2010.] I've learned from more than a decade of scrounging through bodega racks for pop music CDs that there are basically two kinds of shop keeps. Those who are suspicious as to why you are looking through "their" music and those who are nothing short of thrilled to see someone other than their regular stream of customers actually show an interest in it.

My first experience, happily, was the latter. After moving to New York and a year of month-long sublets in three boroughs, I finally settled in an apartment on 13th Street and 6th Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in a fourth-floor apartment with the poet Chris Stroffolino. I lived there from mid-1998 to mid-1999.

While strolling a few blocks away on 5th Avenue, I noticed a corner bodega, which appeared to have a whole rack of CDs and tapes for sale. I popped in, said hello to the shop keep--a friendly looking middle-aged woman wearing a scarf over her hair--and began perusing.

"How much are these?" I asked, holding up the CD you see at top of this post.

"Five dollars," she said, "or twenty dollars for five." A brief pause, as my eyebrows arched. "You speak Arabic?" she asked.

"Oh. Not really. I just--"

"If you like Najwa Karam," she nearly blurted out, "you should try Asalah! She is from my home country: Syria. Beautiful voice!"

Thus began one of the most pleasant customer-shop keep relationships I have ever had in my life. I took the five CDs--including the Najwa Karam and something by Asalah she recommended (more on her in another post)--and headed home. My world, to put it mildly, had been rocked.

Najwa Karam was born in 1966 in Zahle, about an hour east of Beirut. At an early age she showed signs of a natural gift for singing and, in 1985, without getting her parents' permission, signed up to compete on "Layali Lubnan," a TV show that I gather might have been a classier sort of "American Idol," which she won.

She began recording in the late 80s and by the 90s was an international superstar. Her career, however, has not always been the smoothest. She hasn't shied away from controversial, often feminist material (in one song she tells her fictional cousin that, because she was forced to marry him, he can have her body, but never her soul). Perhaps because of this, she has sometimes run into trouble.

In 1999 a rumor was started that she had told an interviewer that she had named her pet dog after the prophet Muhammad, and was subsequently banned from entering into Egypt to perform. A former Jordanian prime minister reportedly issued a fatwa. The rumor was false, and after a concentrated PR effort, she overcame it.

More recently, in 2004, the Lebanese Surete Generale censored the video clip, "Why Are You Emigrating?" which focused on Lebanon's economic crisis and the problems of the young.


Najwa Karam singing a mawal

Over the years I managed to find all of Karam's CDs, but still return most often to "Rouh Rouhi," one of the most powerful, rockin' pop efforts I have ever heard. After I moved from Park Slope to Kensington I returned one day to the Syrian bodega on 5th Avenue, and was happy to find the shop keep still there. She still recognized me, made a few recommendations, and played a few things for me to see if I could guess who the singer was. (I could, but when she asked if I knew what each song was, I had to shrug. She seemed to like that.)

I haven't been back in nearly half a decade, though, and I was a bit saddened that I have been thus far unable to find it looking around the area via Google's "Street View" function.

Zeina | Delila

Reupped in 320 kick-ass kbps here.

Found several years ago at Princess Music in Bay Ridge. I miss Princess Music. I believe they finally closed their doors in 2009.

Without being hyperbolic, I can honestly say that Zeina, to my mind, is the single most awesome pop singer to come out of Lebanon since Najwa Karam. Forty seconds into the first track of this album, see if you agree. It's an opinion based on nothing more than the strength, and frankly the aggressiveness, of her voice. Where most other Lebanese pop stars exhibit a light sweetness, Zeina is gritty and tough. 

Here's rare live footage of her (warning! terrible sound):

BEST ALBUMS OF 2011 | REPOSTING

[I posted this a week or two ago but am reposting it, given that there's only two days left of the year. I'm going to start off 2012 by reposting albums from the first month or two of this blog, back before I was putting everything into a single zip file, making downloading infuriating-to-impossible. So, watch out for that.]

I've provided links to get this music, all for free, and all from others' uploads. (I was surprised to find each of these online somewhere; I didn't have to upload anything.) I encourage you in every case to seek out original CDs and actually buy them, whenever possible. Also, I can't guarantee that everything will still be there in month or so--or even in a week or two ...

Marshmallow Kisses
Ciao!Baby
Released January 25, 2011

This is one of my top two CDs of the year, and possibly the album I listened to most after discovering it online a couple of months ago while sleuthing around about Hong Kong underground music. While the MKs are somewhat late to the Hong Kong twee party, their first two albums (their first being I Wonder Why My Favorite Boy Leaves Me an EP) have delivered far beyond my own expectations for the genre ... and I'm a huge fan of HK twee pioneers My Little Airport, Ketchup and the Pancakes.

I have no idea what sort of legs this terrific ray of sunshine would have outside of the Special Administrative Region, but it seems criminal that not even Pitchfork seems to know about it. Get it here.

Listen to "Jazz for Lovers; Solitude for Me"

* * *

Deerhoof
Deerhoof vs. Evil
Released January 25, 2011
I'm just as shocked as you are to see a U.S. band among my top 10, but along with Ciao!Baby, this was my most listened to CD all year. (My two top faves of the year were both released on January 25.) In another 2011 top 10 I read online, someone else described the album as "utilitarian," noting the lukewarm response it received from critics, who generally like the album but complain about it being unfocused, or even ADD. That actually makes it the perfect record for the kind of listener I am: completely bored with the simplicity of most western popular music but not terribly thrilled by most jazz or classical, either. It's what's driven me to track down every Albanian, Bangladeshi, Brazilian, Burmese, etc., etc. bodega in NYC, where I can get music I can really respond to on a visceral level. (Most western critics write about pop as if they respond to it on a purely socio-semiotic level; reading music more than than listening to it.)

Personally, I think this is the best album Deerhoof has ever made: sonically rich, forward-looking, utterly brilliant pop that sounds like it couldn't possibly have been made in this country. Get it here.


Listen to "Qui Dorm, Només Somia"

* * *

Najwa Karam
Hal Leile ... Ma Fi Noum 
Released June 28, 2011
Holy crap, but I love Najwa Karam. I have--I'll admit it--zero objectivity when it comes to this woman; she could release an album sitting on the toilet reading Jewel poems translated into Arabic and I'm sure I'd buy it, listen to it and profess my undying love for it. That said, trust me when I tell you that this record totally and unimpeachably fucking rocks. Other than her voice getting consistently deeper and more powerful, little has changed since the Lebanese superstar began recording in the late 80s: nearly every record she puts out is either the dabke or the baladi equivalent of AC/DC, Rolling Stones or, closer to home, Hakim. And this one, quite honestly, is the most rockin' she's put out in a few years--it's like the Some Girls of her career.

Did I mention how hard she rocks? Or how hard this record rocks? If this wasn't such a recent purchase for me, it would probably be right up there with Deerhoof and Marshmallow Kisses in the "most-listened-to" category. I'm sure it'll earn that status soon enough. Get it here.


Listen to "Ya Baie"

* * *

Sōtaisei Riron
Correct Theory of Relativity
Released April 27, 2011
Sōtaisei Riron means "theory of relativity," so the title is kind of a play on the idea of a correct theory and the fact that most of this album is made up of remixes of the band's earlier work by Yoshihide Otomo, Spank Happy, Buffalo Daughter, Arto Lindsay, Cornelius and others. These aren't, however, remixes that sound like remixes--this album is completely unique, beautiful and totally perplexing. (Track three, for instance, is NOT a mistake; although it took me several tries before I was able to listen all the way through to the end and realize what, exactly, it is.) Perhaps appropriately, the first song, "Q/P," one of the two non-remixes on the album, opens with the words: "I. Don't know. Wha. Choowhachoo want ..."

The band has come a long way from its kind of Smiths-soundalike-with-female-lead-singer, and this album, though I bet it throws some fans off, is another great surge forward. Get it here.


Listen to "Q/P"

* * *

Pairs
Summer Sweat
Released September 30, 2011
I know next to nothing about this band, which I "discovered" via Music Has the Right to People a couple of weeks ago. From what I've been able to suss out, it's a male-female duo based in Shanghai; this is their second album; and this one was produced by Yanghai Song of Beijing punk superstars PK14. When my absolute favorite Chinese punk band, Subs, released the deeply disappointing Queen of Fucking Everything last year, followed this year by a less-than-thrilling Honeyed and Killed from the once fabulous Hedgehog, I just assumed that punk in China had shot its wad. Apparently, it's just moved south to Shanghai.

This record is stripped down, extremely raw and in some ways every bit as surprising as Wire's Pink Flag (songs range in length from the 52 second "Christmas" to the nearly five-minute long "My body is not a wonderland"). I suspect it'll convince at least a few of the more cynical of you out there that, in fact, "punk's not dead." Get it here.


Listen to "Cloud Nine"

* * *

Zee Avi
Ghostbird
Released August 23, 2011
This is the only record (other than the Deerhoof) that actually, so far as I know, has legs here in the U.S. In fact, you're more likely to know more about her than I do, as I only recently stumbled onto this record, wholly by accident, while scrolling through the music blog Chinese Music Collection. (Yes, I know she's Malaysian; thanks.) I don't know what her record was doing on that blog, but there it was, and I'm rather happy to have it, although I have no idea if I'll still be listening to it in another week or two; it's already starting to feel ickily like any number of earnest American or British neo-folkers whose work I have strenuously attempted to avoid for the last several years.

That said, I do love "Siboh Kitak Nangis" and "The Book of Morris Johnson," neither of which I can imagine getting tired of any time soon. Get it here.


Listen to "The Book of Morris Johnson"

* * *

Guitar Wolf
Spacebattleshiplove
Released, golly ... sometime in 2011
This is a self-released album, recorded in Tokyo in 2010 and intended to be sold during Guitar Wolf's 2011 Hoochie Coochie Space Men North American tour. It is so ear-shreddingly raw, so super em effin' rockin', words simply can't describe how much I love it. How is it that, while 80s Japan rockers Shonen Knife have gotten increasingly self-consciously cute, Guitar Wolf has just gotten more fucked-up and awesome? Don't get me wrong; I love both bands. But GW has no right to be this full of energy, this rockin', this far into their career. For one thing, it isn't fair to everyone else. For another, it's just confusing. 

Get it here.


Listen to "Hoochie Coochie Spaceman"

* * *

Da Bang
Bone Hug

Released October 1, 2011

I'm seriously running out of steam here, so don't expect a lot of vivid description at this point. And, honestly, we're starting to get into "uneven" territory now. But the "end of year" convention demands 10 albums so, so help me god, that's what I'll deliver. I don't love everything on this record, but I love the stuff that sounds like super-jacked up 80s synth pop, especially "No-Hero-Days," which is as good as anything Big Sea Queen Shark has recorded, and "冰心" (which I'm assuming is about the famous Chinese writer of the same name).

Definitely worth a listen. Get it here.


Listen to "No-Hero-Days"

* * *

Juusho Futei Mushoku
JAKAJAAAAAN!!!!!
Released sometime in 2011
I love this band so much it hurts. That said, their follow-up to their 2010 debut isn't quite as mind-blowing, though it certainly has its moments. I really, really, really, really, really, really wish I could find the video they shot for "One Two Three"; it was insane. Alas, it appears to longer be on YouTube, perhaps owing to the fact that it wasn't, to be perfectly honest, exactly P.C. Or maybe I just lack the skills to find it again. (If you find it, for god's sake, please let me know.)

Get it here.

* * *

10cm
1.0
Released February 10, 2011
In truth? I don't love this album, but I think this band, which I'm pretty sure is a duo, from Korea, has potential. They can either go one of two ways: Slicker and less interesting, or more Jonathan Richman/Crowd Lu-like and awesome. Time, I suppose, will tell. I wouldn't have included it here except that (a) it does seem promising and (b) fairly different from most K-pop.

Get it here.


Listen to "King Star"

* * *

So, what do you think? And, more to the point, what are your own favorite albums of 2011? Post your list in the comments below, or, better yet, include a URL to your own blog, if you have one. (But, seriously, if your list includes Wilco or PJ Harvey, don't bother.)

10 Best Albums of 2011

I've provided links to get most this music, all for free, and all from others' uploads. I encourage you in every case to seek out original CDs and actually buy them, whenever possible.

Marshmallow Kisses
Ciao!Baby
Released January 25, 2011

This is one of my top two CDs of the year, and possibly the album I listened to most after discovering it online a couple of months ago while sleuthing around about Hong Kong underground music. While the MKs are somewhat late to the Hong Kong twee party, their first two albums (their first being I Wonder Why My Favorite Boy Leaves Me an EP) have delivered far beyond my own expectations for the genre ... and I'm a huge fan of HK twee pioneers My Little Airport, Ketchup and the Pancakes.

I have no idea what sort of legs this terrific ray of sunshine would have outside of the Special Administrative Region, but it seems criminal that not even Pitchfork seems to know about it. Get it here.

Listen to "Jazz for Lovers; Solitude for Me"

* * *

Deerhoof
Deerhoof vs. Evil
Released January 25, 2011
I'm just as shocked as you are to see a U.S. band among my top 10, but along with Ciao!Baby, this was my most listened to CD all year. (My two top faves of the year were both released on January 25.) In another 2011 top 10 I read online, someone else described the album as "utilitarian," noting the lukewarm response it received from critics, who generally like the album but complain about it being unfocused, or even ADD. That actually makes it the perfect record for the kind of listener I am: completely bored with the simplicity of most western popular music but not terribly thrilled by most jazz or classical, either. It's what's driven me to track down every Albanian, Bangladeshi, Brazilian, Burmese, etc., etc. bodega in NYC, where I can get music I can really respond to on a visceral level. (Most western critics write about pop as if they respond to it on a purely socio-semiotic level; reading music more than than listening to it.)

Personally, I think this is the best album Deerhoof has ever made: sonically rich, forward-looking, utterly brilliant pop that sounds like it couldn't possibly have been made in this country. (File removed from link; sorry.)


Listen to "Qui Dorm, Només Somia"

* * *

Najwa Karam
Hal Leile ... Ma Fi Noum 
Released June 28, 2011
Holy crap, but I love Najwa Karam. I have--I'll admit it--zero objectivity when it comes to this woman; she could release an album sitting on the toilet reading Jewel poems translated into Arabic and I'm sure I'd buy it, listen to it and profess my undying love for it. That said, trust me when I tell you that this record totally and unimpeachably fucking rocks. Other than her voice getting consistently deeper and more powerful, little has changed since the Lebanese superstar began recording in the late 80s: nearly every record she puts out is either the dabke or the baladi equivalent of AC/DC, Rolling Stones or, closer to home, Hakim. And this one, quite honestly, is the most rockin' she's put out in a few years--it's like the Some Girls of her career.

Did I mention how hard she rocks? Or how hard this record rocks? If this wasn't such a recent purchase for me, it would probably be right up there with Deerhoof and Marshmallow Kisses in the "most-listened-to" category. I'm sure it'll earn that status soon enough. Get it here.


Listen to "Ya Baie"

* * *

Sōtaisei Riron
Correct Theory of Relativity
Released April 27, 2011
Sōtaisei Riron means "theory of relativity," so the title is kind of a play on the idea of a correct theory and the fact that most of this album is made up of remixes of the band's earlier work by Yoshihide Otomo, Spank Happy, Buffalo Daughter, Arto Lindsay, Cornelius and others. These aren't, however, remixes that sound like remixes--this album is completely unique, beautiful and totally perplexing. (Track three, for instance, is NOT a mistake; although it took me several tries before I was able to listen all the way through to the end and realize what, exactly, it is.) Perhaps appropriately, the first song, "Q/P," one of the two non-remixes on the album, opens with the words: "I. Don't know. Wha. Choowhachoo want ..."

The band has come a long way from its kind of Smiths-soundalike-with-female-lead-singer, and this album, though I bet it throws some fans off, is another great surge forward. Get it here.


Listen to "Q/P"

* * *

Pairs
Summer Sweat
Released September 30, 2011
I know next to nothing about this band, which I "discovered" via Music Has the Right to People a couple of weeks ago. From what I've been able to suss out, it's a male-female duo based in Shanghai; this is their second album; and this one was produced by Yanghai Song of Beijing punk superstars PK14. When my absolute favorite Chinese punk band, Subs, released the deeply disappointing Queen of Fucking Everything last year, followed this year by a less-than-thrilling Honeyed and Killed from the once fabulous Hedgehog, I just assumed that punk in China had shot its wad. Apparently, it's just moved south to Shanghai.

This record is stripped down, extremely raw and in some ways every bit as surprising as Wire's Pink Flag (songs range in length from the 52 second "Christmas" to the nearly five-minute long "My body is not a wonderland"). I suspect it'll convince at least a few of the more cynical of you out there that, in fact, "punk's not dead." Get it here.


Listen to "Cloud Nine"

* * *

Zee Avi
Ghostbird
Released August 23, 2011
This is the only record (other than the Deerhoof) that actually, so far as I know, has legs here in the U.S. In fact, you're more likely to know more about her than I do, as I only recently stumbled onto this record, wholly by accident, while scrolling through the music blog Chinese Music Collection. (Yes, I know she's Malaysian; thanks.) I don't know what her record was doing on that blog, but there it was, and I'm rather happy to have it, although I have no idea if I'll still be listening to it in another week or two; it's already starting to feel ickily like any number of earnest American or British neo-folkers whose work I have strenuously attempted to avoid for the last several years.

That said, I do love "Siboh Kitak Nangis" and "The Book of Morris Johnson," neither of which I can imagine getting tired of any time soon. Get it here.


Listen to "The Book of Morris Johnson"

* * *

Guitar Wolf
Spacebattleshiplove
Released, golly ... sometime in 2011
This is a self-released album, recorded in Tokyo in 2010 and intended to be sold during Guitar Wolf's 2011 Hoochie Coochie Space Men North American tour. It is so ear-shreddingly raw, so super em effin' rockin', words simply can't describe how much I love it. How is it that, while 80s Japan rockers Shonen Knife have gotten increasingly self-consciously cute, Guitar Wolf has just gotten more fucked-up and awesome? Don't get me wrong; I love both bands. But GW has no right to be this full of energy, this rockin', this far into their career. For one thing, it isn't fair to everyone else. For another, it's just confusing. 

Get it here.


Listen to "Hoochie Coochie Spaceman"

* * *

Da Bang
Bone Hug

Released October 1, 2011

I'm seriously running out of steam here, so don't expect a lot of vivid description at this point. And, honestly, we're starting to get into "uneven" territory now. But the "end of year" convention demands 10 albums so, so help me god, that's what I'll deliver. I don't love everything on this record, but I love the stuff that sounds like super-jacked up 80s synth pop, especially "No-Hero-Days," which is as good as anything Big Sea Queen Shark has recorded, and "冰心" (which I'm assuming is about the famous Chinese writer of the same name).

Definitely worth a listen. Get it here.


Listen to "No-Hero-Days"

* * *

Juusho Futei Mushoku
JAKAJAAAAAN!!!!!
Released sometime in 2011
I love this band so much it hurts. That said, their follow-up to their 2010 debut isn't quite as mind-blowing, though it certainly has its moments. I really, really, really, really, really, really wish I could find the video they shot for "One Two Three"; it was insane. Alas, it appears to longer be on YouTube, perhaps owing to the fact that it wasn't, to be perfectly honest, exactly P.C. Or maybe I just lack the skills to find it again. (If you find it, for god's sake, please let me know.)

Get it here.

* * *

10cm
1.0
Released February 10, 2011
In truth? I don't love this album, but I think this band, which I'm pretty sure is a duo, from Korea, has potential. They can either go one of two ways: Slicker and less interesting, or more Jonathan Richman/Crowd Lu-like and awesome. Time, I suppose, will tell. I wouldn't have included it here except that (a) it does seem promising and (b) fairly different from most K-pop.

Get it here.


Listen to "King Star"

* * *

So, what do you think? And, more to the point, what are your own favorite albums of 2011? Post your list in the comments below, or, better yet, include a URL to your own blog, if you have one. (But, seriously, if your list includes Wilco or PJ Harvey, don't bother.)

NANCY AJRAM | 7

Get it here.

This jaw-droppingly great CD was released on September 6, 2010, the day I moved into my new digs here in Astoria, and I'm almost certain I picked it up on Steinway Street that month, or possibly that October. It's without question the most forward-looking Arabic pop album of the last decade or so and manages to be so without resorting to gimmicky crap like the digi-voice thing that every other Arabic pop star seemed to rely on over the last several years. 7 received a Murex D'or Award, the Lebanese equivalent to the Grammies, for Best Album in 2011.The video for "Fi Hagat," the 7th song on 7, has been viewed more than 22 million times, which gives you some idea of her popularity in the middle east. (Watch it here.) It's my least favorite song on the CD (I much prefer the song you can listen to below), but I'm obviously in the minority on that one.

Listen to "Lessa Gayya A'ollo"