CSM
Hip-hop's Arabic-language kin
Lebanese rap artists take genre back to its socially conscious roots in a society deeply divided.
By Eamon Kircher-Allen | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
from the February 27, 2009 edition
[M&C note: see original for photos and audio file]
Beirut, lebanon - The unusual sound of a hip-hop beat and a funky bass line thudded out of a sandwich shop in a trendy Beirut neighborhood last summer. As one patron bobbed his head and a teenager with slicked-back hair flipped another piece of flatbread onto the sandwich shop's stove, a gravelly voice began rapping earnestly in Arabic.
"Who is that?" a passing foreigner asked. "What's he saying?"
"It's the rapper RGB," said the man in broken English. The song, he explained, was about the situation in Lebanon – the violence, the corruption, and the poverty.
RGB is one of several Beirut rappers whose discs are passed around among a visible segment of Lebanese youth. Unlike most of the flashy pop music that Lebanon exports to the rest of the Arab world – think singers like Haifa Wahabi and Nancy Ajram – these rappers' music usually comes with a social message. Their core fans in Beirut have adopted hip hop, from its music to its style of dress and graffiti, as their chosen mode of expression.
In Lebanon, foreign music is nothing new. The country's huge number of emigrants – far more people of Lebanese descent live outside the country than within – means that music from all over the world finds its way to Beirut, from salsa to samba, jazz, punk, and heavy metal.
But unlike much of Beirut's music scene that draws heavily on foreign influences, rappers like RGB are fiercely Lebanese in everything they do. They talk about personal experiences in which they see the same kinds of injustice, violence, and lack of forums for addressing social problems that were the impetus for early African-American rap groups with a political message, such as Public Enemy.
"It's black music, in my opinion," RGB said in an October interview posted to YouTube. "But I feel like it doesn't have to be specifically just for blacks.... It has messages, stories of using your smarts, and a people victimized. It has power."
"I take hip hop like it's a big school and I'm learning from it," he added.
Rayess Bek, who is something like the father of Arabic-language Lebanese rap, helped start the trend of hip hop as social commentary. "I lived the war.... I've been taken advantage of.... I'm speaking in silence," he sang a few years ago over a beat every bit as ominous as the shell-shocked landscapes of some Beirut quarters. A newer music video features him rapping against the backdrop of buildings destroyed by Israeli bombs in 2006.
"Most of the artists here are from the streets, they live in a very unfair system," music producer Zeid Hamdan says by phone. Mr. Hamdan produces and promotes several different acts, including Malikah, Lebanon's best-known female rapper. "They use hip hop more to express themselves than as a source of money," he adds. "[Lebanon] is a good ground for hip hop. The 'bling bling' hasn't arrived yet. The bling-bling scene is in the pop music."
Hip-hop beats, which are quite different from traditional Arabic rhythms, have not caught on with an older crowd. But there are strong connections between hip-hop lyricism and Arabic's heritage of poetry. For centuries, writers who mastered the art of self-expression in Arabic have been folk heroes. According to Joe Namy, a Lebanese-American music producer and a fine-arts graduate student at New York University, that heritage has converged with the current social dimensions in Lebanon.
"Hip hop is becoming more popular now because there's a lot more frustration," he said. "The music lends itself to this need to express yourself. It's a very visual form of expression."
Lebanese hip hop reaches across the sectarian divide as well – no small thing in a country that fought a 15-year civil war along sectarian lines and was rocked by factional violence as late as last May. RGB is Christian, Hamdan is Druze, and there are others in the hip hop collective 961 Underground – named after Lebanon's country code – who are Muslim.
A group that epitomizes that diversity is Katibe 5 (pronounced ka-TEE-bé KHAM-sé), whose members hail from Burj al-Barajneh, a rundown Palestinian refugee camp on the south side of Beirut. Burj al-Barajneh is a warren of ramshackle buildings draped with high-voltage wires, the sort of place that can make some poor American neighborhoods look luxurious.
Katibe 5 member OS Loop says by phone that hip hop in the camps had been born out of an appreciation for the struggles of poor African-Americans. "It's another culture, another style of music, and another people's mind," he says. "But the roots are the same as we have here: the same politics, the same black and white."
Many of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees residing in Lebanon suffer from discrimination.
"For sure, that's why the Palestinians choose rap, because they feel they are like the black Americans," OS Loop says. "They feel like the oppressed."
The group's first album, "Ahlan fikun bil Mukhayamat," ("Welcome to the Camps") was released last year. It tackles social issues head on – and aggressively.
"In the first album, we're talking about the condition of the Palestinian refugees," OS Loop says. "In one song, we are dissing the NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], because in Palestinian culture there are too many NGOs, and they are all thieves.... The same goes for some people who work in the Palestinian [political] parties."
OS Loop follows the American rap scene closely. His favorite artists are KRS-One, Wu Tang, and Paris. Pictures on Katibe 5's Facebook page show posters of rap icon Tupac Shakur.
But it would be a mistake to see Lebanon's rap scene as a form of Americanization.
OS Loop recalls a concert American superstar 50 Cent put on in Beirut in 2006, before the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon that killed more than 1,200 Lebanese. A native of Queens, New York, 50 Cent often raps about how he survived being shot nine times. But OS Loop isn't overly impressed with that – or the commercial turn that 50 Cent's music has taken.
"Now Snoop is coming, and Akon is coming [to Lebanon], but for me they are all commercial," he says. "I wish 50 Cent stayed in Lebanon for the war," he adds with a laugh. "I wanted to tell him what's the true meaning of gangsta."
Showing posts with label Levant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Levant. Show all posts
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Falafel Wars (Lebanon: Israel stole our falafel)
Ynetnews
Country's Industrialists Association says Jewish state trying to claim ownership of traditional Lebanese delicacies like tabouleh and hummus, plans international food-related suit
Roee Nahmias
Lebanon is planning on filing an international law suit against Israel for violating a food copyright, Fadi Abboud, president of the Lebanese Industrialists Association, told the al-Arabiya network.
The Lebanese claim is that Israel markets original Lebanese food like tabouleh, kubbeh, hummus, falafel and fattoush which the Lebanese considered their trademarks prior to the establishment of the Jewish state.
Abboud explained that the fact that Israel has been marketing Lebanese delicacies under the same names and ingredients around the world has caused great losses to Lebanon, and that while, “the full extent is unknown, it is estimated at tens of millions of dollars annually.”
Abboud, who prepared a memo on the subject, based his case on the, ”feta cheese precedent” that occurred six years ago.
At that time, France, Denmark and Germany asserted that Greece cannot have a monopoly over the production of this type of cheese. Greece managed to prove in international institutions that it is the cheese’s “originator” and won the case.
Until that point, the three prosecuting countries produced 12,000 tons of cheese a year.
The court ruled that from then on, other countries could not use the name “feta”, as this cheese is “largely associated with Greece’s history and has been produced under this name for 6,000 years.”
Thus, the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs decided to grant Greece the sole right to produce and market the cheese under that name.
The Lebanese official claims that not only does Israel use the names of Lebanese foods but it also markets them in ready-to-eat plastic boxes for European and US consumers as if these were traditional Israeli foods.
According to Abboud, while Lebanon never registered the names and ingredients of these delicacies, “it can refer to the Greece precedent since these foods are historically known as traditional Lebanese foods.”
He also said that the Lebanese Industrialists Association is working on registering all the foods and ingredients and submitting a report to the Lebanese government since only it can appeal to the international courts against Israel and “prevent it from stealing the foods that others produce."
Country's Industrialists Association says Jewish state trying to claim ownership of traditional Lebanese delicacies like tabouleh and hummus, plans international food-related suit
Roee Nahmias
Lebanon is planning on filing an international law suit against Israel for violating a food copyright, Fadi Abboud, president of the Lebanese Industrialists Association, told the al-Arabiya network.
The Lebanese claim is that Israel markets original Lebanese food like tabouleh, kubbeh, hummus, falafel and fattoush which the Lebanese considered their trademarks prior to the establishment of the Jewish state.
Abboud explained that the fact that Israel has been marketing Lebanese delicacies under the same names and ingredients around the world has caused great losses to Lebanon, and that while, “the full extent is unknown, it is estimated at tens of millions of dollars annually.”
Abboud, who prepared a memo on the subject, based his case on the, ”feta cheese precedent” that occurred six years ago.
At that time, France, Denmark and Germany asserted that Greece cannot have a monopoly over the production of this type of cheese. Greece managed to prove in international institutions that it is the cheese’s “originator” and won the case.
Until that point, the three prosecuting countries produced 12,000 tons of cheese a year.
The court ruled that from then on, other countries could not use the name “feta”, as this cheese is “largely associated with Greece’s history and has been produced under this name for 6,000 years.”
Thus, the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs decided to grant Greece the sole right to produce and market the cheese under that name.
The Lebanese official claims that not only does Israel use the names of Lebanese foods but it also markets them in ready-to-eat plastic boxes for European and US consumers as if these were traditional Israeli foods.
According to Abboud, while Lebanon never registered the names and ingredients of these delicacies, “it can refer to the Greece precedent since these foods are historically known as traditional Lebanese foods.”
He also said that the Lebanese Industrialists Association is working on registering all the foods and ingredients and submitting a report to the Lebanese government since only it can appeal to the international courts against Israel and “prevent it from stealing the foods that others produce."
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Watching ‘Friends’ in Gaza: A Culture Clash
NYT
September 7, 2008
Abroad
Watching ‘Friends’ in Gaza: A Culture Clash
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
GAZA — In a dingy storefront on a noisy block in the middle of Gaza City, metal shelves bulge with dusty audiotapes extolling Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad. Alongside them, a pouty Jennifer Lopez beckons from the cover of a CD. DVDs are also on offer, of not-yet-officially-released movies like “Wanted,” “Hancock” and “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” the Adam Sandler comedy about a Mossad agent turned hairdresser in a New York City salon run by a Palestinian woman.
Amer Kihail, 32, a slender man with an elastic, hangdog face, runs the store, called New Sound. Do Gazans living under Hamas buy much Western music or many Western movies? Mr. Kihail looked baffled, and maybe even a little annoyed, by the question.
“Of course,” he said.
Ruled by Hamas, penned in by Israel, grappling with daily shortages of food and supplies, Gazans need an escape. Culture turns out to be not just an afterthought but, many say, essential to surviving here. Especially for young Gazans, what’s on satellite television and the Internet, on tapes and compact discs, is a window to the world beyond the armored checkpoints, and a link to Arab society elsewhere and, crucially, to the West.
And in what is clearly an emerging struggle within Hamas between political pragmatists, trying to consolidate their new authority, and extremists who have begun pressing a more fundamentalist agenda, culture is a central battleground for control of Gaza. A release from confinement and hardship, even mundane television becomes freighted in this context.
As much as the Pakistan-Afghan frontier, this is a front line in the so-called global war on terror, in which anti-Western strains of Islam rub up against the social and cultural proclivities of many, perhaps most, Muslims.
How the West fares, improbable as it might seem, may depend as much on whether people in this forsaken strip of land and elsewhere in this part of the world are watching “Zohan” and Dr. Phil, as on skirmishes in the mountains south of Kabul. What’s happening in a humble Gazan music store, it turns out, has repercussions across the region and beyond.
Gaza isn’t what you might imagine, culturally speaking. Like the West Bank, it occupies a special place in the Middle East: Gazans may loathe Israel but have worked there or spent years in Israeli prisons, and while they haven’t taken up Jewish culture, they’ve experienced Western life as many other Arabs haven’t. This has encouraged a sensibility that, until lately anyway, had a moderating effect on religion and society.
Not far from New Sound, booksellers in this city’s ancient market hawk sex-instruction manuals alongside yellowing paperbacks from Egypt interpreting the Koran. Arabic translations of old Harlequin romances are laid out on folding tables cheek by jowl with joke books in which Muslim characters do borscht belt shtick. (Wife at a psychiatrist’s office: “My husband talks when he’s sleeping. What should I do?” Psychiatrist: “Can you give him a chance to talk when he’s awake?”)
A skinny boy with bad teeth, manning the book tables the other morning, grinned when a woman came by and thumbed through “What to Do if You Have Weaknesses in Sex.”
Pointing to the religious books, she asked, “Do many people buy those?”
“Sure,” the boy said.
“These, too?” she asked, gesturing toward a stack of flimsy softcovers with a picture of the young Cheryl Tiegs on the front.
“Oh yes!” he said.
That evening, in the garden of a family restaurant called Roots (“No Weapon Please,” a sign said on the front door), patrons munched salads and gazed at “Friends” on a big screen. Everybody was waiting for “Noor.”
As they do throughout much of the Arab world these days, the streets here clear each night when “Noor” comes on. A Turkish “Dallas,” centered around the title character and her rich Muslim family enduring the usual soap opera imbroglios, the show has become so wildly popular that imams in Saudi Arabia and Gaza have lately issued fatwas against anyone who watches it. Naturally, nobody pays attention.
Even Hamas tunes in. Imad Alifranji is helping to start up Alquds, a new Islamic television station, Gaza’s second after Al Aqsa, Hamas’s station, which recently devoted three full days of programming to stories about promising Gazan high school students. Mr. Alifranji is wrestling with what might attract just a few more viewers.
“There’s so much pressure here to find jobs, because of the Israeli siege, because of internal fighting, and with no places for young people to go out, that Gazans take comfort in a Turkish soap opera,” Mr. Alifranji said with a shrug. “It is true,” he said, “Hamas is upset with some scenes in ‘Noor,’ which it fears provide a bad example for Palestinian families, scenes of sex before marriage. My 15-year-old daughter is obsessed with ‘Noor.’ My son, Mosab, who’s 18, tries to stop her from watching. He disapproves.”
As if on cue, Mosab, who looked 12, walked into Mr. Alifranji’s office. The only time he visited a Gazan cafe, Mosab said, he left because “Noor” was on television. He used to listen to Arab pop stars like Elissa and Tamer Hosni, but now finds “they have no respect for religion.” He prefers Jackie Chan movies and rap. “ ‘Noor,’ ” he said, “doesn’t know the difference between what should be taboo and what is acceptable.” Suddenly, Mosab’s cellphone rang. He blushed.
The ringtone was the theme from “Noor.”
Hip-Hop and Soap Operas
Gaza has not had any movie house since the last one burned two decades ago during the first intifada. The Palestinian territories are bitterly split, with the more moderate Fatah ruling the West Bank, and Gaza under the control of Hamas, which won the Palestinian popular election two years ago and fought back an attempted coup by Fatah last year. Now Gaza has become isolated. The French Cultural Center is virtually the only institution that organizes a modest art exhibition or music recital once in a while.
But that doesn’t mean Gazans don’t consume and make culture themselves. One broiling afternoon, a dozen young married friends sat around a picnic table at a swim club, near the beach in Gaza City, talking about “Oprah,” “24” and “Prison Break.”
The club, a private retreat amid garbage and ruins, was a whitewashed oasis of bougainvillea and tattered canvas awnings on rusty blue poles, a kind of faded Polaroid of Coney Island around 1965, but with female swimmers in soggy pants and T-shirts, not bikinis, and shirtless teenage boys kicking around a soccer ball.
“We do as we like in private,” explained Rajah Abujasser, 20, wearing a green head scarf and long sleeves despite the heat.
Across town, Mothafar Alassar was taping a new track at Mashareq, a recording studio. He’s 20, a baby-faced rapper with a shaved head. A few years ago he formed the band S.B.R. with a friend.
“Through TV and the Internet I fell in love with rap, with Tupac and 50 Cent, Keny Arkana from Marseille,” he said. “People laughed at first. Rap was new in Gaza. The French Cultural Center, they gave me money to make an album. Now, when we had a concert recently, 700 people came.”
Hamas then arrested Mr. Alassar, saying he had no license to perform, but released him after he gave a live sample of his hip-hop to a bemused, bearded official. “Hamas is not against art,” Mr. Alassar said. “They just don’t understand it.”
Rima Morgan, a 28-year-old business student turned singer in a white head scarf and black leotard, was also at Mashareq, recording a jingle for a West Bank radio station. “My family, which is traditional, didn’t want me to sing, because it meant late nights, at parties, with men and women together,” she said. “But for me singing is the only way to keep going.” She said she listens to Indian music, to Céline Dion and Julio Iglesias, and to Arab pop stars like Elissa. On television, she watches “Friends.”
And “Noor,” of course.
“We can’t travel, so it’s our exposure to another Islamic society,” she said.
Ramy Okasha, a fellow singer, who was also there, shook his head. “The man is not a man,” he complained about Noor’s husband, Mohannad, the soap opera’s blue-eyed answer to Fabio; his face, like that of Noor’s, hangs on the bedroom walls of countless Gazan teenage girls. “She’s too stubborn,” Mr. Okasha grumbled.
What does he watch instead?
“ ‘The Bold and the Beautiful,’ ” he answered.
Cartoons Cutting Too Closely
Hamas produces its own version of culture. The cartoonist Omayya Joha’s caricatures appear in many Arab magazines and newspapers. She’s the widow of a Hamas fighter killed by Israelis. She married another fighter after he died.
“I have a quill in one hand and a gun in the other,” she likes to say. At a Hamas office not long ago, sitting reservedly in hijab and black gloves before a conference table and tray of candy and fruit juice, she said coolly: “Israel thinks of me as a radical anti-Semite, but I’m not. I simply do not think that we can ever have peace. No way. Never.”
She studies Western cartoons. “The exposure is very important,” she explained, brightening at the prospect of talking shop, not politics. Lately, the Fatah-linked newspaper in the West Bank rejected some of her work and that saddened her.
“You start to think about self-censorship,” she frowned, “anticipating what Fatah will not like.”
This is exactly what many Gazans say Hamas has lately caused them to do.
She stiffened at that remark. “There is a price to pay for your affiliations,” she said. Eyad Sarraj shook his head when this was repeated to him. “Hamas has not yet officially imposed its cultural program, but it’s in place,” he said. He is a Gazan psychiatrist. “After the election last year, we were assured Hamas would not infringe on our personal freedom, but now they are trying hard to prove us wrong. They are coming into our homes.”
He was alluding to an episode last month when hooded Hamas policemen broke into the rooftop apartment of a businessman and his wife, who were quietly drinking with guests. The police officers beat up the men and confiscated the liquor.
Ayman Taha, a Hamas leader, claimed that was a mistake. “Those were wrongdoings by some individuals in Hamas who don’t reflect the movement’s position,” he said.
Stone-faced, built like a weight lifter, he was sitting on a patio overlooking the sea, staring undazed into the sun. Below, teenage boys played paddle ball in the surf and women in head scarves, and also some without, sat under makeshift tents. Rifles across their laps, black-clad policemen, who are everywhere in Gaza, perched on a ruined embankment beside the patio, watching. “Hamas has not implemented any restrictions regarding cultural life,” Mr. Taha said.
Aside from slowing Internet access, ostensibly to deter Gazans from looking at pornography, that’s technically true, but there is also no law here against alcohol and you won’t find a bar in Gaza. Mr. Taha chalked up the attack on the businessman, along with a rising number of similar events, to rogue elements in Hamas, former soldiers who are now unseasoned policemen who, he stressed, do not disrupt basic party unity. “If some people are restricting their own freedoms as a reaction, out of fear, that is their decision,” he went on in a deadpan voice. “Do you hear that music?” A restaurant was piping Steely Dan across the patio.
“Do I use my power to stop this?” he said. “No. People are entitled to their behavior — so long as they do not harm this culture.” And there’s the rub. Gallery Mina, a Ministry of Culture art space that for years hosted poetry readings, films and Western-style art exhibitions, was among hundreds of organizations recently raided by Hamas, with the excuse of flushing out Fatah links; now Mina has been turned into a home for Hamas-approved events.
The Culture and Free Thought Association, a nonprofit organization in Khan Yunis, a town in southern Gaza, with a theater, a summer camp and a variety of arts programs, was looted not long ago by Hamas security forces who held the woman in charge at gunpoint and later went to her home. Leaders of Hamas in Khan Yunis apologized afterward, claiming, like Mr. Taha, that the raiders were renegades.
It’s noteworthy that the places raided by Hamas aren’t book stalls selling sex manuals or cafes showing sitcoms, but cultural centers promoting art that aspires to be more than an opiate for the people, implying an organized attack.
“Hamas wants to create an impression in Gaza that they are not controlling individual life or suppressing cultural freedom, and they want that message to reach outside,” said Jamal Al Rozzi, director of the Palestinian Theater Association in Gaza, whose office was also attacked. “But at the same time, everything is under its control. Hamas doesn’t officially tell us that we can’t do anything, but you can be taken away to prison and beaten for 30 days and no one will even know where the hell you are.”
Security at a Price
Khan Yunis is, even by Gazan standards, a bastion of religious tradition, a sun-baked puzzle of tumbledown buildings and dirt streets, the Wild West compared to the cosmopolitan Gaza City. It’s also a Hamas stronghold, although before Hamas took over, a local shop was bombed by Islamic extremists for selling pop music.
“After the explosion, we lost so much that we could only afford to rent half our former space,” said Mazin Abdeen, 35, the store’s owner. He was leaning against the front door of his new place one recent afternoon, chatting with an ice cream salesman next door over the roar of a generator. As usual, the electricity was out. The air was ripe with the stench of reused cooking oil, which, because Israel provides little gasoline, Gazans have turned to for fuel.
On a glass counter in Mr. Abdeen’s shop, stocked with watches and women’s underwear, were tapes by Elissa and Nancy, the pop singers. “Now that Hamas is the government, there is no problem,” he said. “They protect us.”
That is the paradox. Hamas has provided the formerly lawless Gaza with security, which won the party the election over Fatah. But Hamas now makes many Gazans feel insecure. Majeda Alsaqqa is the woman running the Culture and Free Thought Association, the one held at gunpoint. For the moment, she’s back in business. But Hamas not long ago took over the local library, and it stages plays about the lives of Palestinian soldiers killed by Israel, which are sometimes performed in the street just outside Ms. Alsaqqa’s garden.
“They use real explosives!” she said, laughing. “It used to be different here. I used to ride around on a bicycle wearing a dress. The raid on us was about imposing a different culture — about not liking our kind of theater, where men and woman mix. These were brainwashed kids who came with the Kalashnikovs, who are taught not to like foreigners or summer camps, where we teach children not to take anything for granted. For the first time, I’m scared.”
She’s not alone. Even so, Gazans can be stubborn. These days, playing songs extolling Fatah in public is a direct provocation against Hamas. The other night, a Fatah anthem sounded through the streets. It turned out to be a bachelor party. A rented bandstand with flashing lights had been erected in a square.
The men, heads skyward, danced with a mad intensity, escaping into the deafening music. The inky sea was up the street, silent and shimmering. There was no traffic, no movement on the sidewalks otherwise, but at the end of the block, several young, armed Hamas soldiers lingered in the shadows.
“You never know,” said Mr. Kihail, back at New Sound. “No direct threat has come, but you cannot joke with Hamas.” Next to the cash register — beside tapes bearing an image of the long-faced, white-bearded Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin — he nonetheless still stocks Fatah tapes with pictures of Samih Madhoun, the fighter whom Hamas last year elaborately executed. When asked to play a selection from the tape, Mr. Kihail kept an eye on the door.
“Arafat, you left,” the singer wailed, “but you left behind an earthquake that is Samih Madhoun.”
Just then, a middle-aged woman in a head scarf wandered in, and fondled a CD by Mustafa Amar, an Egyptian singer in a dashing white scarf, standing before the Pyramids. “It’s an escape,” she said, making clear she meant the music, not the album cover.
Mr. Kihail asked her if she was also a fan of Abdel Halim, the Egyptian crooner, who died in 1977 and who remains universally beloved here. He cued up a Halim song, one about a man abandoned by his lover, with a baleful melody. She nodded. Briefly, Mr. Kihail teared up.
“I blame him,” the woman said, about Halim, “for being so romantic. Life is not like that.”
“No,” Mr. Kihail said, “it isn’t.”
September 7, 2008
Abroad
Watching ‘Friends’ in Gaza: A Culture Clash
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
GAZA — In a dingy storefront on a noisy block in the middle of Gaza City, metal shelves bulge with dusty audiotapes extolling Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad. Alongside them, a pouty Jennifer Lopez beckons from the cover of a CD. DVDs are also on offer, of not-yet-officially-released movies like “Wanted,” “Hancock” and “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” the Adam Sandler comedy about a Mossad agent turned hairdresser in a New York City salon run by a Palestinian woman.
Amer Kihail, 32, a slender man with an elastic, hangdog face, runs the store, called New Sound. Do Gazans living under Hamas buy much Western music or many Western movies? Mr. Kihail looked baffled, and maybe even a little annoyed, by the question.
“Of course,” he said.
Ruled by Hamas, penned in by Israel, grappling with daily shortages of food and supplies, Gazans need an escape. Culture turns out to be not just an afterthought but, many say, essential to surviving here. Especially for young Gazans, what’s on satellite television and the Internet, on tapes and compact discs, is a window to the world beyond the armored checkpoints, and a link to Arab society elsewhere and, crucially, to the West.
And in what is clearly an emerging struggle within Hamas between political pragmatists, trying to consolidate their new authority, and extremists who have begun pressing a more fundamentalist agenda, culture is a central battleground for control of Gaza. A release from confinement and hardship, even mundane television becomes freighted in this context.
As much as the Pakistan-Afghan frontier, this is a front line in the so-called global war on terror, in which anti-Western strains of Islam rub up against the social and cultural proclivities of many, perhaps most, Muslims.
How the West fares, improbable as it might seem, may depend as much on whether people in this forsaken strip of land and elsewhere in this part of the world are watching “Zohan” and Dr. Phil, as on skirmishes in the mountains south of Kabul. What’s happening in a humble Gazan music store, it turns out, has repercussions across the region and beyond.
Gaza isn’t what you might imagine, culturally speaking. Like the West Bank, it occupies a special place in the Middle East: Gazans may loathe Israel but have worked there or spent years in Israeli prisons, and while they haven’t taken up Jewish culture, they’ve experienced Western life as many other Arabs haven’t. This has encouraged a sensibility that, until lately anyway, had a moderating effect on religion and society.
Not far from New Sound, booksellers in this city’s ancient market hawk sex-instruction manuals alongside yellowing paperbacks from Egypt interpreting the Koran. Arabic translations of old Harlequin romances are laid out on folding tables cheek by jowl with joke books in which Muslim characters do borscht belt shtick. (Wife at a psychiatrist’s office: “My husband talks when he’s sleeping. What should I do?” Psychiatrist: “Can you give him a chance to talk when he’s awake?”)
A skinny boy with bad teeth, manning the book tables the other morning, grinned when a woman came by and thumbed through “What to Do if You Have Weaknesses in Sex.”
Pointing to the religious books, she asked, “Do many people buy those?”
“Sure,” the boy said.
“These, too?” she asked, gesturing toward a stack of flimsy softcovers with a picture of the young Cheryl Tiegs on the front.
“Oh yes!” he said.
That evening, in the garden of a family restaurant called Roots (“No Weapon Please,” a sign said on the front door), patrons munched salads and gazed at “Friends” on a big screen. Everybody was waiting for “Noor.”
As they do throughout much of the Arab world these days, the streets here clear each night when “Noor” comes on. A Turkish “Dallas,” centered around the title character and her rich Muslim family enduring the usual soap opera imbroglios, the show has become so wildly popular that imams in Saudi Arabia and Gaza have lately issued fatwas against anyone who watches it. Naturally, nobody pays attention.
Even Hamas tunes in. Imad Alifranji is helping to start up Alquds, a new Islamic television station, Gaza’s second after Al Aqsa, Hamas’s station, which recently devoted three full days of programming to stories about promising Gazan high school students. Mr. Alifranji is wrestling with what might attract just a few more viewers.
“There’s so much pressure here to find jobs, because of the Israeli siege, because of internal fighting, and with no places for young people to go out, that Gazans take comfort in a Turkish soap opera,” Mr. Alifranji said with a shrug. “It is true,” he said, “Hamas is upset with some scenes in ‘Noor,’ which it fears provide a bad example for Palestinian families, scenes of sex before marriage. My 15-year-old daughter is obsessed with ‘Noor.’ My son, Mosab, who’s 18, tries to stop her from watching. He disapproves.”
As if on cue, Mosab, who looked 12, walked into Mr. Alifranji’s office. The only time he visited a Gazan cafe, Mosab said, he left because “Noor” was on television. He used to listen to Arab pop stars like Elissa and Tamer Hosni, but now finds “they have no respect for religion.” He prefers Jackie Chan movies and rap. “ ‘Noor,’ ” he said, “doesn’t know the difference between what should be taboo and what is acceptable.” Suddenly, Mosab’s cellphone rang. He blushed.
The ringtone was the theme from “Noor.”
Hip-Hop and Soap Operas
Gaza has not had any movie house since the last one burned two decades ago during the first intifada. The Palestinian territories are bitterly split, with the more moderate Fatah ruling the West Bank, and Gaza under the control of Hamas, which won the Palestinian popular election two years ago and fought back an attempted coup by Fatah last year. Now Gaza has become isolated. The French Cultural Center is virtually the only institution that organizes a modest art exhibition or music recital once in a while.
But that doesn’t mean Gazans don’t consume and make culture themselves. One broiling afternoon, a dozen young married friends sat around a picnic table at a swim club, near the beach in Gaza City, talking about “Oprah,” “24” and “Prison Break.”
The club, a private retreat amid garbage and ruins, was a whitewashed oasis of bougainvillea and tattered canvas awnings on rusty blue poles, a kind of faded Polaroid of Coney Island around 1965, but with female swimmers in soggy pants and T-shirts, not bikinis, and shirtless teenage boys kicking around a soccer ball.
“We do as we like in private,” explained Rajah Abujasser, 20, wearing a green head scarf and long sleeves despite the heat.
Across town, Mothafar Alassar was taping a new track at Mashareq, a recording studio. He’s 20, a baby-faced rapper with a shaved head. A few years ago he formed the band S.B.R. with a friend.
“Through TV and the Internet I fell in love with rap, with Tupac and 50 Cent, Keny Arkana from Marseille,” he said. “People laughed at first. Rap was new in Gaza. The French Cultural Center, they gave me money to make an album. Now, when we had a concert recently, 700 people came.”
Hamas then arrested Mr. Alassar, saying he had no license to perform, but released him after he gave a live sample of his hip-hop to a bemused, bearded official. “Hamas is not against art,” Mr. Alassar said. “They just don’t understand it.”
Rima Morgan, a 28-year-old business student turned singer in a white head scarf and black leotard, was also at Mashareq, recording a jingle for a West Bank radio station. “My family, which is traditional, didn’t want me to sing, because it meant late nights, at parties, with men and women together,” she said. “But for me singing is the only way to keep going.” She said she listens to Indian music, to Céline Dion and Julio Iglesias, and to Arab pop stars like Elissa. On television, she watches “Friends.”
And “Noor,” of course.
“We can’t travel, so it’s our exposure to another Islamic society,” she said.
Ramy Okasha, a fellow singer, who was also there, shook his head. “The man is not a man,” he complained about Noor’s husband, Mohannad, the soap opera’s blue-eyed answer to Fabio; his face, like that of Noor’s, hangs on the bedroom walls of countless Gazan teenage girls. “She’s too stubborn,” Mr. Okasha grumbled.
What does he watch instead?
“ ‘The Bold and the Beautiful,’ ” he answered.
Cartoons Cutting Too Closely
Hamas produces its own version of culture. The cartoonist Omayya Joha’s caricatures appear in many Arab magazines and newspapers. She’s the widow of a Hamas fighter killed by Israelis. She married another fighter after he died.
“I have a quill in one hand and a gun in the other,” she likes to say. At a Hamas office not long ago, sitting reservedly in hijab and black gloves before a conference table and tray of candy and fruit juice, she said coolly: “Israel thinks of me as a radical anti-Semite, but I’m not. I simply do not think that we can ever have peace. No way. Never.”
She studies Western cartoons. “The exposure is very important,” she explained, brightening at the prospect of talking shop, not politics. Lately, the Fatah-linked newspaper in the West Bank rejected some of her work and that saddened her.
“You start to think about self-censorship,” she frowned, “anticipating what Fatah will not like.”
This is exactly what many Gazans say Hamas has lately caused them to do.
She stiffened at that remark. “There is a price to pay for your affiliations,” she said. Eyad Sarraj shook his head when this was repeated to him. “Hamas has not yet officially imposed its cultural program, but it’s in place,” he said. He is a Gazan psychiatrist. “After the election last year, we were assured Hamas would not infringe on our personal freedom, but now they are trying hard to prove us wrong. They are coming into our homes.”
He was alluding to an episode last month when hooded Hamas policemen broke into the rooftop apartment of a businessman and his wife, who were quietly drinking with guests. The police officers beat up the men and confiscated the liquor.
Ayman Taha, a Hamas leader, claimed that was a mistake. “Those were wrongdoings by some individuals in Hamas who don’t reflect the movement’s position,” he said.
Stone-faced, built like a weight lifter, he was sitting on a patio overlooking the sea, staring undazed into the sun. Below, teenage boys played paddle ball in the surf and women in head scarves, and also some without, sat under makeshift tents. Rifles across their laps, black-clad policemen, who are everywhere in Gaza, perched on a ruined embankment beside the patio, watching. “Hamas has not implemented any restrictions regarding cultural life,” Mr. Taha said.
Aside from slowing Internet access, ostensibly to deter Gazans from looking at pornography, that’s technically true, but there is also no law here against alcohol and you won’t find a bar in Gaza. Mr. Taha chalked up the attack on the businessman, along with a rising number of similar events, to rogue elements in Hamas, former soldiers who are now unseasoned policemen who, he stressed, do not disrupt basic party unity. “If some people are restricting their own freedoms as a reaction, out of fear, that is their decision,” he went on in a deadpan voice. “Do you hear that music?” A restaurant was piping Steely Dan across the patio.
“Do I use my power to stop this?” he said. “No. People are entitled to their behavior — so long as they do not harm this culture.” And there’s the rub. Gallery Mina, a Ministry of Culture art space that for years hosted poetry readings, films and Western-style art exhibitions, was among hundreds of organizations recently raided by Hamas, with the excuse of flushing out Fatah links; now Mina has been turned into a home for Hamas-approved events.
The Culture and Free Thought Association, a nonprofit organization in Khan Yunis, a town in southern Gaza, with a theater, a summer camp and a variety of arts programs, was looted not long ago by Hamas security forces who held the woman in charge at gunpoint and later went to her home. Leaders of Hamas in Khan Yunis apologized afterward, claiming, like Mr. Taha, that the raiders were renegades.
It’s noteworthy that the places raided by Hamas aren’t book stalls selling sex manuals or cafes showing sitcoms, but cultural centers promoting art that aspires to be more than an opiate for the people, implying an organized attack.
“Hamas wants to create an impression in Gaza that they are not controlling individual life or suppressing cultural freedom, and they want that message to reach outside,” said Jamal Al Rozzi, director of the Palestinian Theater Association in Gaza, whose office was also attacked. “But at the same time, everything is under its control. Hamas doesn’t officially tell us that we can’t do anything, but you can be taken away to prison and beaten for 30 days and no one will even know where the hell you are.”
Security at a Price
Khan Yunis is, even by Gazan standards, a bastion of religious tradition, a sun-baked puzzle of tumbledown buildings and dirt streets, the Wild West compared to the cosmopolitan Gaza City. It’s also a Hamas stronghold, although before Hamas took over, a local shop was bombed by Islamic extremists for selling pop music.
“After the explosion, we lost so much that we could only afford to rent half our former space,” said Mazin Abdeen, 35, the store’s owner. He was leaning against the front door of his new place one recent afternoon, chatting with an ice cream salesman next door over the roar of a generator. As usual, the electricity was out. The air was ripe with the stench of reused cooking oil, which, because Israel provides little gasoline, Gazans have turned to for fuel.
On a glass counter in Mr. Abdeen’s shop, stocked with watches and women’s underwear, were tapes by Elissa and Nancy, the pop singers. “Now that Hamas is the government, there is no problem,” he said. “They protect us.”
That is the paradox. Hamas has provided the formerly lawless Gaza with security, which won the party the election over Fatah. But Hamas now makes many Gazans feel insecure. Majeda Alsaqqa is the woman running the Culture and Free Thought Association, the one held at gunpoint. For the moment, she’s back in business. But Hamas not long ago took over the local library, and it stages plays about the lives of Palestinian soldiers killed by Israel, which are sometimes performed in the street just outside Ms. Alsaqqa’s garden.
“They use real explosives!” she said, laughing. “It used to be different here. I used to ride around on a bicycle wearing a dress. The raid on us was about imposing a different culture — about not liking our kind of theater, where men and woman mix. These were brainwashed kids who came with the Kalashnikovs, who are taught not to like foreigners or summer camps, where we teach children not to take anything for granted. For the first time, I’m scared.”
She’s not alone. Even so, Gazans can be stubborn. These days, playing songs extolling Fatah in public is a direct provocation against Hamas. The other night, a Fatah anthem sounded through the streets. It turned out to be a bachelor party. A rented bandstand with flashing lights had been erected in a square.
The men, heads skyward, danced with a mad intensity, escaping into the deafening music. The inky sea was up the street, silent and shimmering. There was no traffic, no movement on the sidewalks otherwise, but at the end of the block, several young, armed Hamas soldiers lingered in the shadows.
“You never know,” said Mr. Kihail, back at New Sound. “No direct threat has come, but you cannot joke with Hamas.” Next to the cash register — beside tapes bearing an image of the long-faced, white-bearded Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin — he nonetheless still stocks Fatah tapes with pictures of Samih Madhoun, the fighter whom Hamas last year elaborately executed. When asked to play a selection from the tape, Mr. Kihail kept an eye on the door.
“Arafat, you left,” the singer wailed, “but you left behind an earthquake that is Samih Madhoun.”
Just then, a middle-aged woman in a head scarf wandered in, and fondled a CD by Mustafa Amar, an Egyptian singer in a dashing white scarf, standing before the Pyramids. “It’s an escape,” she said, making clear she meant the music, not the album cover.
Mr. Kihail asked her if she was also a fan of Abdel Halim, the Egyptian crooner, who died in 1977 and who remains universally beloved here. He cued up a Halim song, one about a man abandoned by his lover, with a baleful melody. She nodded. Briefly, Mr. Kihail teared up.
“I blame him,” the woman said, about Halim, “for being so romantic. Life is not like that.”
“No,” Mr. Kihail said, “it isn’t.”
Monday, April 21, 2008
Meredith Monk in Syria
Yahoo Music News
Pioneering U.S. singer enthralls Syrian students
04/20/2008 5:00 PM, Reuters
Avant-garde musician and performance artist Meredith Monk enthralled Syrian students on Monday with a lesson on vocal and choreographic techniques in a rare cultural exchange between the two countries.
Monk, an innovative singer, composer, filmmaker and choreographer, gave a workshop at the national conservatoire before a concert in Damascus on Monday with vocalists Theo Blackman and Katie Geissinger.
Washington has imposed sanctions on Syria over its support for anti-U.S. groups in the Middle East.
Politics featured little as Monk and Geissinger gave Syrian singers, dancers and actors lessons in choreography, vocal techniques and how to construct complex singing forms.
"Everybody was nervous and little by little we spoke the same language. I shared some of the discoveries I have made in very direct way. It will help people experience the concert with more knowledge," Monk told Reuters.
"If we come and just perform we will never find out where Syrian artists are coming from and what they know."
Monk was invited by the Syrian government as part of performances to celebrate Damascus as the 2008 capital of Arab culture.
The last U.S. group to perform in Syria was the jazzy Freddie Bryant and Kaleidoscope in 2004.
"Music is fundamental as breathing. It speaks to any body. This is why I am here. The politics does not matter," Monk said.
One of Monk's favorite singers is the Arab diva Umm Kalthoum, who died in 1975. Like Monk, Umm Kalthoum stuck rigorously to traditional forms of music and singing.
Monk said strict practice and adherence to musical forms did not prevent improvisation even if the text, scale and melody hardly changed.
"A piece I sang in 1978 and I sing now is the same, but you will also hear that I have room to play. It is not that different from Arabic music. Umm Kalthoum took one text and did it different ways," she said.
Monk's performance on Monday at the Opera House will span work from her 43-year career, including unaccompanied solo pieces and others with piano and violin.
"I always want to be risky, working on something that I don't know rather than something I do now," she said.
Syrian students gave Monk an enthusiastic reception, although her techniques differed from traditional methods taught at the conservatoire, where classes are influenced by Communist era curricula from Eastern Europe.
"Her whole art is different. The exercises she gave we would not have learned in a year," actress Fatina Laila said.
(Editing by Andrew Dobbie)
Pioneering U.S. singer enthralls Syrian students
04/20/2008 5:00 PM, Reuters
Avant-garde musician and performance artist Meredith Monk enthralled Syrian students on Monday with a lesson on vocal and choreographic techniques in a rare cultural exchange between the two countries.
Monk, an innovative singer, composer, filmmaker and choreographer, gave a workshop at the national conservatoire before a concert in Damascus on Monday with vocalists Theo Blackman and Katie Geissinger.
Washington has imposed sanctions on Syria over its support for anti-U.S. groups in the Middle East.
Politics featured little as Monk and Geissinger gave Syrian singers, dancers and actors lessons in choreography, vocal techniques and how to construct complex singing forms.
"Everybody was nervous and little by little we spoke the same language. I shared some of the discoveries I have made in very direct way. It will help people experience the concert with more knowledge," Monk told Reuters.
"If we come and just perform we will never find out where Syrian artists are coming from and what they know."
Monk was invited by the Syrian government as part of performances to celebrate Damascus as the 2008 capital of Arab culture.
The last U.S. group to perform in Syria was the jazzy Freddie Bryant and Kaleidoscope in 2004.
"Music is fundamental as breathing. It speaks to any body. This is why I am here. The politics does not matter," Monk said.
One of Monk's favorite singers is the Arab diva Umm Kalthoum, who died in 1975. Like Monk, Umm Kalthoum stuck rigorously to traditional forms of music and singing.
Monk said strict practice and adherence to musical forms did not prevent improvisation even if the text, scale and melody hardly changed.
"A piece I sang in 1978 and I sing now is the same, but you will also hear that I have room to play. It is not that different from Arabic music. Umm Kalthoum took one text and did it different ways," she said.
Monk's performance on Monday at the Opera House will span work from her 43-year career, including unaccompanied solo pieces and others with piano and violin.
"I always want to be risky, working on something that I don't know rather than something I do now," she said.
Syrian students gave Monk an enthusiastic reception, although her techniques differed from traditional methods taught at the conservatoire, where classes are influenced by Communist era curricula from Eastern Europe.
"Her whole art is different. The exercises she gave we would not have learned in a year," actress Fatina Laila said.
(Editing by Andrew Dobbie)
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Global Brass Bands
New York Times
April 9, 2006
Music
They're With the Band, Speaking That Global Language: Brass
By JOSH KUN
LAST December, the veteran Mexican-American rock band Los Lobos dusted off its 1992 album "Kiko" and performed it live, start to finish, at the House of Blues in West Hollywood. For most of the night it was a standard rock setup, but when it came time for the album closer, a woozy Mexican folk swoon called "Rio de Tenampa," Los Lobos brought out Los Cenzontles, a Northern California banda troupe. While Mexican bandas (brass bands) can have as many as 20 members, Los Cenzontles didn't need much more than a tuba, a trumpet, a thudding bass drum and a pair of clarinets to turn the club into a raucous cantina.
Brass band music can have this effect. The stammering pepper-spray of horns, the crisp snaps of snare rolls: it's precise and excessive at once, a joyous emotional tornado awash in spit, sweat and celebration. No wonder it's one of the world's most-spoken musical languages — from Serbian villages to Manhattan's bustling "gypsy punk scene" to this year's Grammy Awards, where Kanye West reinvented "Gold Digger" by having a marching band play, running through the aisles. Awareness of international brass styles has blossomed in recent years in the United States, thanks in large part to an increase in domestic album distribution deals and more frequent international concert tours.
"You would think that a brass band, which has no strings at all, would be limited in its sound," said Tamir Muskat, the Israeli-born co-founder of Balkan Beat Box, a new-school crew in New York known for wild live shows that mix Balkan horn blasts with electronic beats. "But it's unbelievable what people manage to do with it. There is a whole world of brass out there."
Listen to enough brass band music — whether a slice of Mexican banda or the Romanian group Fanfare Ciocarlia pulling the trigger on a dizzying blast of high-velocity trumpets — and you start to hear the history of the world handed back to you in a horn section. Suddenly, Serbia and Romania could be the alternative birthplace of Brazilian frevo; brass flurries from Gypsy bands in Macedonia and Bulgaria could be lost cousins of the Jaipur Kawa Brass Band from India, the Gangbe Brass Band from Benin or any New Orleans jazz troupe.
The connections are more than theoretical. In the 1860's, thousands of former Gypsy slaves fled Romania for the American South, landing in mostly black neighborhoods. The brass music they brought with them, like that of all Balkan countries, can be traced to the Turks, the original band geeks. Last year's "Blowers From the Balkans" compilation (Topic), which unearthed a trove of early 20th-century Balkan brass recordings, spelled it out loud and clear: it was the Ottoman Empire's janissary bands that turned brass into the lingua franca of Serbia, Macedonia, Romania and Bulgaria.
"The Ottoman empire used brass bands to impress the enemy, walking and playing in front of the first line of soldiers," explained Oprica Ivancea, the lead clarinetist for Fanfare Ciocarlia, a 12-piece band of Romany Gypsies who work out of the remote mountain town of Zece Prajini (population 400) in eastern Romania. "But in the early 19th century, brass got popular in Germany and Austria and because Romanians always want to be like the Germans we began to adapt to their sound as well."
Long before Kelly Clarkson and Jay-Z (and for that matter, long before rock 'n' roll), European military and church bands were the world's top global musical exports. Locals throughout Asia, Africa and the Americas were trained in the ways of the marching band as part of colonialism. As empires dissolved, official bands soon became voluntary village bands, and by the turn of the 20th century most of the world shared an ingrained knowledge of all things brass.
"All brass bands have a link somewhere," Mr. Muskat said. "Ninety percent of all brass bands are based on the same elements. It's all rhythm and horns."
Mr. Muskat's Balkan Beat Box partner Ori Kaplan grew up in Jaffa, Israel, where he watched Egyptian orchestras on television and learned to play Eastern European klezmer clarinet from a Bulgarian trained by Gypsy brass musicians. When Mr. Kaplan moved to New York 15 years ago, though, he wanted nothing of his klezmer past, choosing instead to play in industrial punk bands. That all changed when he heard a CD from Macedonia's top brass band, Kocani Orkestar, and learned about the Gypsy-Turkish fusions of the Bulgarian horn stalwart Yuri Yunakov, another New York City transplant). "I started to listen to Balkan music constantly," Mr. Kaplan said, "I became a brass band freak."
Of brass band enthusiasts in the United States, however, few can top the trumpeter Frank London, whose Klezmer Brass All-Stars have just released their third raucous manifesto of brass globalization, "Carnival Conspiracy." While firmly grounded in both Balkan and klezmer traditions (Mr. London's main gig is with the tradition-bending Klezmatics), "Carnival" makes cross-cultural brass connection its guiding impulse, riffing on the beer hall oompah of Mexican banda and the funk marches of Brazilian frevo and batucada. If the batucada seems like a stretch, it shouldn't: the first Jews in North America were Eastern European immigrants from Recife, Brazil — the capital of Brazilian big band.
"The idea of brass repertoires crossing genres and being assimilated into different traditions has been going on in all of these brass band musics forever," said Mr. London, who in the 1980's also fronted Les Misérables Brass Band, playing music from Pakistan, Serbia and South America (as well as the occasional Jimi Hendrix cover). "For many years, the most popular song for Indian brass bands was 'Tequila.' When you play an Italian feast, you don't just do Italian parade music. At the end you sit down and play opera overtures, then you can do covers of popular music, dance music, jazz music. Most brass bands just have this breadth of repertoire and styles at their fingertips."
Fanfare Ciocarlia have made a career out of this kind of stylistic juggling. They play everything from Russian-influenced Romanian doinas (slow improvised melodies) to Gypsy maneas (melancholy love songs) born in India, and on their latest CD, "Gili Garabdi," tackle an Afro-Cuban rumba alongside versions of the James Bond theme and Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol's "Caravan."
"We play music and dances we learned from our fathers," said Mr. Ivancea, who considers Gili Garabdi a tribute to the shared heritage of Gypsy brass and African-American jazz. "But we also play any tune requested during a wedding or baptism. We provide a service — we have to play what people want to hear."
In 2003, Mr. London decided to test these theories of a single brass family tree on an actual collaboration. So on the Klezmer Brass All-Stars' sophomore outing, "Brotherhood of Brass," he sought out the Hasaballa Brass Band from Cairo and Boban Markovic, a Serbian trumpet king, for a series of reeling geography mashups that imagined Eastern European shtetls and Egyptian markets sprouting up in Serbian villages.
"Over the last few years, I've noticed that my music has become part of a larger global conversation," said Mr. Markovic, who has been known to start his live sets with a version of the theme from "Titanic." "Knowing someone's music is so much easier these days. But I am still mostly trying to communicate with local people, especially communities in the south of Serbia and in the Balkans."
In that spirit, Mr. Markovic's newest album, "The Promise," features his typically kaleidoscopic takes on standard coceks (stomping Gypsy dance tunes), but also dips into the Latin American brass band tradition with "Latino" and "Voz," songs that wouldn't sound out of place on the set list of a Mexican banda. Which makes perfect sense considering that the Mexican brass style — one of the most commercially dominant genres in that country's music industry — was initially inspired by the Franco-Austrian military bands that reached Mexico through the coastal hub of Mazatlán in the 1800's.
"Our brass music is very similar to German music," said Poncho Lizárraga of Banda el Recodo, Mexico's longest-running brass ensemble, founded by Mr. Lizárraga's father, Don Cruz, in 1938. "We just interpreted it differently, turned the polkas into our own rancheras. My father wanted something different from all that music coming from Europe. It was music just for our town, and in the beginning, mostly for people who liked to spend too much time in the cantinas."
More than six decades and 180 albums later (their latest, "Hay Amor," has just been released), Recodo's 17 members are international banda ambassadors who wear matching jewel-studded suits made of black velvet, and their music has become a favorite sample source for hip-hop and electronic acts like Akwid from Los Angeles, Wakal from Mexico City and Nortec Collective from Tijuana. Similarly, the growing popularity of Balkan brass with sample-hunting D.J.'s in the United States and Europe — led by Shantel of Germany, whose "Bucovina Club" nights in Frankfurt ignited an electro-Balkan avalanche — which has been a key factor in introducing the centuries-old music to first-time listeners.
On Shantel's new "Bucovina Club Vol. 2" mix CD, Balkan Beat Box makes an appearance, and he throws a few house beats under cuts from Fanfare Ciocarlia and Mahala Rai Banda, another Romanian band, but mostly he lets the old-school originals speak for themselves: the traditional as the new cutting-edge.
"People are tired of corporate-friendly rock 'n' roll and the cold nihilism of the electronic music scene," said Mr. Kaplan of Balkan Beat Box. "They're hungry for this really sweaty, personal, alcohol-driven, familiar, ceremony-like music. There's something very healthy about all of this interest in brass music. People just want to get back in touch with their feelings."
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
OBITUARY: Shoshana Damari, 'Queen of Hebrew Music'
OBITUARIES
Shoshana Damari, 83; Israeli Singer, 'Queen of Hebrew Music'
From Associated Press
February 15, 2006
Shoshana Damari, whose voice came to embody the emerging nation of Israel and comforted its people during their most trying times, died Tuesday. She was 83.
Damari, who was battling pneumonia, had been taken to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv on Friday and put on life support. Her many friends, as well as leading Israeli singers, congregated around her hospital room in recent days, singing her songs and praying for her recovery.
She made her last public appearance a week ago at the Ami Awards, Israel's equivalent of the Grammys, where she complimented the nation's young generation of singers.
Known as "the queen of Hebrew music" and a recipient of the country's most prestigious cultural prize, Damari entertained Israeli civilians and soldiers for nearly seven decades with her booming alto voice, continuing to perform until shortly before her death.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called Damari "one of Israel's cultural greats."
"Her voice and noble image guided us for more than 60 years … through the establishment of the state, through wars and peace, happiness and grief," Olmert said in a statement. "Shoshana Damari was an example for love of humanity, love of the land of Israel and, especially, love for the Hebrew song….
"We will remember her forever as the national voice."
Damari immigrated to Palestine, now Israel, with her family from Damar, Yemen, as an infant in 1924, but her singing featured a distinctive Yemenite pronunciation, adding an ethnic quality to her Hebrew songs.
The diminutive performer was known for her powerful, low-pitched voice that seemed to start from her toes, working its way up her body.
She studied singing and acting and began appearing in public in her teens, performing on radio from the age of 14. She made many recordings and helped soothe the nation during its war of independence in 1948.
In 1988, Damari was awarded the country's top civilian honor, the Israel Prize, for her contribution to Israeli vocal music.
As word of her death spread Tuesday, a wave of nostalgia washed over the country.
Her songs, such as "Kalaniot" (Anemones), were played repeatedly on the nation's main radio stations, evoking memories of a bygone era of innocence. Israeli television also went to special programming Tuesday night, with tributes to her career and the airing of her last interviews and concert performances.
Damari is survived by a daughter who lives in Canada. Funeral plans were not immediately announced.
Shoshana Damari, 83; Israeli Singer, 'Queen of Hebrew Music'
From Associated Press
February 15, 2006
Shoshana Damari, whose voice came to embody the emerging nation of Israel and comforted its people during their most trying times, died Tuesday. She was 83.
Damari, who was battling pneumonia, had been taken to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv on Friday and put on life support. Her many friends, as well as leading Israeli singers, congregated around her hospital room in recent days, singing her songs and praying for her recovery.
She made her last public appearance a week ago at the Ami Awards, Israel's equivalent of the Grammys, where she complimented the nation's young generation of singers.
Known as "the queen of Hebrew music" and a recipient of the country's most prestigious cultural prize, Damari entertained Israeli civilians and soldiers for nearly seven decades with her booming alto voice, continuing to perform until shortly before her death.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called Damari "one of Israel's cultural greats."
"Her voice and noble image guided us for more than 60 years … through the establishment of the state, through wars and peace, happiness and grief," Olmert said in a statement. "Shoshana Damari was an example for love of humanity, love of the land of Israel and, especially, love for the Hebrew song….
"We will remember her forever as the national voice."
Damari immigrated to Palestine, now Israel, with her family from Damar, Yemen, as an infant in 1924, but her singing featured a distinctive Yemenite pronunciation, adding an ethnic quality to her Hebrew songs.
The diminutive performer was known for her powerful, low-pitched voice that seemed to start from her toes, working its way up her body.
She studied singing and acting and began appearing in public in her teens, performing on radio from the age of 14. She made many recordings and helped soothe the nation during its war of independence in 1948.
In 1988, Damari was awarded the country's top civilian honor, the Israel Prize, for her contribution to Israeli vocal music.
As word of her death spread Tuesday, a wave of nostalgia washed over the country.
Her songs, such as "Kalaniot" (Anemones), were played repeatedly on the nation's main radio stations, evoking memories of a bygone era of innocence. Israeli television also went to special programming Tuesday night, with tributes to her career and the airing of her last interviews and concert performances.
Damari is survived by a daughter who lives in Canada. Funeral plans were not immediately announced.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
A Peace Song in the Middle East
MSNBC
Peace song serenades Palestinians, Israelis
Simultaneous broadcast is latest sign of easing tensions
By Preston Mendenhall
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 8:55 p.m. ET March 27, 2005
JERUSALEM - A musical message of peace serenaded Palestinians and Israelis on Sunday, in a simultaneous broadcast to promote reconciliation - the latest sign of easing tensions in the Middle East.
Sung in Hebrew and Arabic, "In my heart" is the creation of Israeli musician David Broza and Palestinian instrumentalist Said Murad, whose brother, Wisam, accompanies Broza on vocals. The ballad is about love and land, an issue at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"If we succeed in making this music and create this kind of art, it will help put people together," 44-year-old Said Murad said.
Broza and Murad worked with the Voice of Palestine and Israel’s Army Radio to coordinate the broadcast on Sunday morning.
Despite improving relations, there was an undertone of conflict on the airwaves. Army Radio’s Razi Barkai asked a Palestinian radio official whether his station had "stopped incitement messages on your broadcasts." Shortly after taking office in January, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas ordered anti-Israeli incitement to stop.
Since a landmark Palestinian-Israeli summit, Israel has curtailed military operations and withdrawn forces from several Palestinian towns.
Risk for peace
The musicians took considerable risks by performing together and interspersing Hebrew and Arabic in the song. Broza, 49, traveled to the West Bank to perform the song in a Palestinian village. The two visited each other’s homes during the years it took to complete the project. The Murads live in Palestinian East Jerusalem. Broza lives in Tel Aviv.
"In my heart" is the first song with Hebrew lyrics ever played on Palestinian radio. Its broadcast is a rare appearance for Palestinian artists on Israeli radio.
"I really just think that if we put our minds together, and if we play it right, there will be peace in the Middle East," Broza said in an interview.
Broza is no stranger to the peace movement here. In 1978, a song he penned during Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Israel became an anthem for the peace generation.
"It was like watching the first man on the moon," Broza said. "The first Arab leader landing at Ben Gurion airport. It was something."
Rhythm of friendship
Broza and Murad's shared belief in peace grew into a deep friendship and a metaphor for the peace process: two sides getting to know each other at their own rhythm.
"When we met, David said he wanted to start working first. And I said, let’s wait. Let’s get to know each other better," said Murad from his East Jerusalem studio.
Murad and Broza say they admired each other’s work for more than a decade, but it took four years of "meeting and talking about music, politics and everything," Murad said, to write and produce "In my heart."
Bitterness over years of bloodshed won’t disappear overnight. Yet the musicians say they hope their song will succeed where politics have failed, and help to bring harmony to the Middle East.
"If we love the land, if we believe in history, we can create good future for us," Murad said.
Two sides in studio
Already, the recording of "In my heart" has helped to narrow the divide between Israelis and Palestinians.
For the chorus of "In my heart," Broza and Murad brought Palestinian and Israeli children to the studio to learn to sing in each other’s language.
Israeli TV stations featured the song prominently on Sunday night. And so far, radio listeners say they like the sound of hope.
"If children hear this music, they will understand that the land is for everyone, not just for the Jews or Arabs," said Ismail Khalifawi, a Palestinian student in Jerusalem who listened to the broadcast. "The land is for all."
NBC’s Preston Mendenhall is on assignment in the Middle East.
© 2005 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7309601/
Peace song serenades Palestinians, Israelis
Simultaneous broadcast is latest sign of easing tensions
By Preston Mendenhall
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 8:55 p.m. ET March 27, 2005
JERUSALEM - A musical message of peace serenaded Palestinians and Israelis on Sunday, in a simultaneous broadcast to promote reconciliation - the latest sign of easing tensions in the Middle East.
Sung in Hebrew and Arabic, "In my heart" is the creation of Israeli musician David Broza and Palestinian instrumentalist Said Murad, whose brother, Wisam, accompanies Broza on vocals. The ballad is about love and land, an issue at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"If we succeed in making this music and create this kind of art, it will help put people together," 44-year-old Said Murad said.
Broza and Murad worked with the Voice of Palestine and Israel’s Army Radio to coordinate the broadcast on Sunday morning.
Despite improving relations, there was an undertone of conflict on the airwaves. Army Radio’s Razi Barkai asked a Palestinian radio official whether his station had "stopped incitement messages on your broadcasts." Shortly after taking office in January, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas ordered anti-Israeli incitement to stop.
Since a landmark Palestinian-Israeli summit, Israel has curtailed military operations and withdrawn forces from several Palestinian towns.
Risk for peace
The musicians took considerable risks by performing together and interspersing Hebrew and Arabic in the song. Broza, 49, traveled to the West Bank to perform the song in a Palestinian village. The two visited each other’s homes during the years it took to complete the project. The Murads live in Palestinian East Jerusalem. Broza lives in Tel Aviv.
"In my heart" is the first song with Hebrew lyrics ever played on Palestinian radio. Its broadcast is a rare appearance for Palestinian artists on Israeli radio.
"I really just think that if we put our minds together, and if we play it right, there will be peace in the Middle East," Broza said in an interview.
Broza is no stranger to the peace movement here. In 1978, a song he penned during Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Israel became an anthem for the peace generation.
"It was like watching the first man on the moon," Broza said. "The first Arab leader landing at Ben Gurion airport. It was something."
Rhythm of friendship
Broza and Murad's shared belief in peace grew into a deep friendship and a metaphor for the peace process: two sides getting to know each other at their own rhythm.
"When we met, David said he wanted to start working first. And I said, let’s wait. Let’s get to know each other better," said Murad from his East Jerusalem studio.
Murad and Broza say they admired each other’s work for more than a decade, but it took four years of "meeting and talking about music, politics and everything," Murad said, to write and produce "In my heart."
Bitterness over years of bloodshed won’t disappear overnight. Yet the musicians say they hope their song will succeed where politics have failed, and help to bring harmony to the Middle East.
"If we love the land, if we believe in history, we can create good future for us," Murad said.
Two sides in studio
Already, the recording of "In my heart" has helped to narrow the divide between Israelis and Palestinians.
For the chorus of "In my heart," Broza and Murad brought Palestinian and Israeli children to the studio to learn to sing in each other’s language.
Israeli TV stations featured the song prominently on Sunday night. And so far, radio listeners say they like the sound of hope.
"If children hear this music, they will understand that the land is for everyone, not just for the Jews or Arabs," said Ismail Khalifawi, a Palestinian student in Jerusalem who listened to the broadcast. "The land is for all."
NBC’s Preston Mendenhall is on assignment in the Middle East.
© 2005 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7309601/
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