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. 

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 ...

Asala Yousef | 2008 CD

Listen to the mind-blowing last track

Reupped by reader request in 320 HFS-level KBPS, here.

[Originally posted in May 2010.] On July 4 of 2009, my [now ex-]wife and I spent the day wandering around Atlantic Avenue and Flatbush in Brooklyn, a tad southish of downtown, an area we almost never get to in the normal course of our daily lives.

At one point, we stopped in at an Arabic-run phone card and doo-dad store on Court Street, a couple of doors down from Rashid Music, which is perhaps the oldest, and certainly one of the greatest Arabic music stores in the country. I'm pretty sure that this especially unflattering photograph of me:



was taken in this very phone card and doo-dad shop. Note the hookahs to my right. But, far more importantly, note all of the CDs in glass cases and cassettes against the wall. You're seeing less than 1/3rd of the bounty this place held. Rashid may have the reputation--and the staying power--but the doo-dad place sure did have an impressive heap o' steamin' mess o' music on your choice of polyester film with magnetic coating or polycarbonate plastic.

As I've claimed a number of times on this blog, there are really two kinds of store keeps: (a) those who are puzzled but absolutely thrilled to see people beyond their usual customers interested in "their" music; and (b) those who view such intruders as though they were Vikings, there to do what Vikings are generally known, and not terribly much adored, for doing.

The woman in the back of the phone card and doo-dad place was, happily, one of the friendliest shop keeps I've ever met. She wanted to know what we were doing for Independence Day--not, mind you, July 4, but the next day, July 5, Algerian Independence Day. She, as an Algerian immigrant, had a number of ideas of how we might want to spend AI Day in America, all of them involving cutting out coupons for discounted "whole lamb" from the Arabic newspaper she brought forth and proceeded to spread out on the glass casing housing the CDs. She thought it was nothing short of crucial for us to buy a lamb--"they are so cheap for you if you buy the whole thing at one time"--and invite all of our friends out to whatever park we, as White People, clearly lived within walking distance of. (Prospect Park, duh.) Where, presumably, we'd find a grill big enough to accommodate a whole, dead, skinned lamb.

Our conversation, like a fat summer fly, hovered around lambs and elaborate Independence Day picnics for a solid fifteen minutes, and then I started getting--I'll just fess up to it--a bit impatient, frankly. I mean, we were lying, Nada and I; we were not actually going to celebrate Algerian Independence Day, just as we had not actually celebrated U.S. Independence Day. And, even if we were, it was pretty to super doubtful that we would do so in a way that might involve the purchase of a whole, mid-sized mammal--however cheap.

I tried to steer the conversation over into the realm of music. We had just seen a film starring Abdel Halim Hafez, and one scene in particular, with Hafez in a boat on the Nile with some friends, singing to the object of Hafez's romantic obsession, had been much on our mind. The song was terrific and haunting. We could almost hum it for her. Did she know this movie or song and whether or not the song might be on CD somewhere in the shop?

No, she was Algerian, she reminded us, BUT she had a friend who was Egyptian who knew everything about the movies. Everything! She called her. Within 6 minutes she had our film and song titles (both of which I've since forgotten) and, after flipping through a series of CDs, determined they didn't have the song anywhere in the store.

Did we want the coupon for the lamb?

I asked her to recommend a more-or-less recent CD that she really, really, really loved. She stared at me blankly for a few moments, then suddenly smiled. "Aha!" she said, disappearing beneath the horizon line of the CD case for a bit, then reappearing with the CD you see above.

"Have you heard Asala Yousef?" she asked. I flitted through my memory banks. Asalah Nasri, yes. Yousef? No. "Who is she?" I asked.

And here, things get a bit hazy. I'm almost positive that she said that Asala Yousef was from her home country, Algeria. Like, 89% so. But I'm probably totally wrong about that, as I've found nothing online to suggest this is the case.

There's almost nothing about Asala Yousef online--just links to MP3s and YouTube videos. In one list of famous Druze singers, she's included as a Syrian. In the comments of several YouTube videos, people are claiming she's either Palestinian or Israeli--mostly Israeli. There is at least one YouTube video of her where the person who uploaded it is writing in Hebrew as opposed to Arabic. And, really, that's extremely rare. So it's possible she is Israeli--though she's obviously singing in Arabic. Which is less rare, but still not super common.


Asala Yousef vid, uploaded by Hebrew speaker


Asala Yousef vid, uploaded by Arabic speaker

So, I'm at a loss. Who is Asala Yousef and where does she come from? The music sounds Lebanese to me. Anyone out there know? [Update: Someone out there did know and left the answer in the comments.]

Meanwhile, she's got an incredibly powerful voice and you really should be downloading this shit, since it's free & all and double-since the phone card and doo-dad place where I bought this?

Not there anymore.

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.

Fairuz | Eh Fi Amal

Listen to "Al Ayel"


Listen to "El Bent El Shalabiah"

Pick it up here.

Released in 2012, Eh Fi Amal (Yes There Is Hope) marked the legendary Christian Lebanese diva's return to the studio after years of live albums. It was--according to Wikipedia (so, grain of salt)--her 99th album, recorded when she was 74 years old (she's now 77) and was a huge hit all over the middle east.

I picked up the album just a couple of weeks ago at the Nile Deli while biking down Steinway with my poet friend Brandon Downing to see Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers. Fairuz was the clear winner that day.

This is a bizarre album, not quite like anything I've heard before: part Arabic art pop, part cheesy lite pop, but one hundred and ten percent Fairuz. I've got a number of her other albums I'll be posting over the weekend--it's unconscionable that we've ignored her here for so long.

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.

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.

Archives de la Musique Arab - Vol. 1

Here's something for all of you Excavated Shellac fans: The first CD in the Ocora / Institut du Monde Arabe's Archives de la Musique Arabe series, including recordings from the middle east from ca. 1908-1920, with most of them hovering around 1910. 

Listen to brief samples of the songs here.

Get the whole thing here.

I've imported this CD--which itself dates back to 1987, nearly 25 years ago, which seems like the Jurassic Period for music burned into polycarbonate plastic--at a whopping 320 kbps (my usual is 192), given how much surface noise there is from the original 78RPM-to-digital transfer.

Does that mean anything? Are you happier? Honestly, while I can tell a difference between things I've downloaded at 128 versus 192, I'm not sure I'm hearing any real diff above 192. Am I wrong? Should I be uploading at 320 as a general rule? You do know it takes forever to upload at 320, yeah? I mean, I'm happy to blog less but at higher bit-rate if that's going to make you extremely happy.

I feel like I need to do a survey or something to find out what ya'll expect/want/desire/need. How am I blogging? What could be better. Should the CD cover be bigger? Do you need track lists? Am I a terrible excuse for a music blogger for withholding track lists?

In the absence of any real context for any particular CD, are you okay with me just rambling about talking with the bodega owner who sold it to me? Should I just shut up? Would you like more description of the music? More samples? Do you like videos if they're available, or could you care less?


Seriously, I'd love to know what you think.

I found this CD, by the way, at Rashid on Court Street in Brooklyn, a legendary Arabic music shop and former music publisher that closed a year or so ago.

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"

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"

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: