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

ROGUE STATES | Bodega Pop on WFMU

This Wednesday, March 19

Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio 
presents:

Rogue States

Music from Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria + Zimbabwe

Pop, funk, folk, rap, disco and "Dear God, what was that?!?" from the Axis of Evil, Beyond the Axis of Evil and the Outposts of Tyranny.

Bookmark the show now!

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.

Kazim al Saher | Fi Madrasat al Hob

Listen to "Sallami"

Get it all here.

After a bike ride this afternoon from Astoria to Woodside and back, I switched on the news, not having seen it in a couple of days. The footage was sobering, to say the least. Miles and miles of destroyed beaches, property, downed trees, flooding--and image after image of someone surveying their former house or neighborhood and sobbing. The destruction and cost, including loss of life, of Hurricane Sandy is enormous and really almost unimaginable. 

But then I got to thinking. This is the sort of destruction, on a much grander scale, that this country inflicted on Iraq from 2003 through the end of last year. In fact, the cost of that invasion and occupation, in terms of dollars and, especially, in terms of human life and property, utterly dwarfs what we're living through and/or watching on the news right now. 

Kazem al Saher, born in Mosul, Iraq, in the late 1950s, is one of the greatest composers in Arabic music history, even if not everything he does will appeal to everyone. Not just because his work embodies the idea of art in the era of globalization, but because so much of what he does is both innovative and devastatingly expressive. Take, for example, the sample track above. 

Currently living in Cairo, Egypt, al Saher left Iraq for Jordan in 1991 during the first Gulf War. From there he moved to Lebanon before finally settling in the City of a Thousand Minarets. Released in 1997, Fi Madrasat al Hob ("In the School of Love") was his 10th album. (Read more about al Saher and get his 9th album here.)

Soumeya Abdelaziz | Chante Nazem Al Ghazali

 
Listen to "Tihi ala Araji al Wouroud" 

Get it all here. 

Half of me believes I found this CD at Princess Music on Fifth Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn; the other half is convinced I plucked it from a CD stall in the Jamaa el Fna in Marrakech. Where I found it changes not one iota the hair-raisingly gorgeous voice of this Moroccan singer, born in 1957 in Salé, the oldest extant city on the Atlantic. This album was recorded in 2005, when the singer was, what--48? 

Feeling lucky, punk? Ask yourself: How badly do you want your ass kicked? Do you want, like Ernest Hemingway, to spend the next few nights writing your brilliant but pared-down short-stories standing up? Then, you go right ahead and download this CD, champ. Because you aren't going to be comfortably sitting down any time soon after you listen to it.

Nazem Al Ghazali, whose songs Abdelaziz updates here for the 21st century, was a Baghdad-born Iraqi singer who lived from 1921 to 1963 and who is considered to have been one of the most popular singers to have ever come out of Iraq. 

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.

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.