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Two Iconic Divas Live On In San Francisco

Earlier this month, Aswat, a San Francisco Bay Area musical ensemble dedicated to preserving folkloric, classical and contemporary Arabic music, staged an ambitious musical tribute to honor two of the Arab world’s most beloved singers: Egypt’s Umm Kulthum and Lebanon’s Fairuz at the College of San Mateo Theatre on May 5. The much-anticipated concert sold out weeks in advance, a shining testament to the popularity and love for these two Arab divas, even in an age of Hip Hop and Techno Pop.

The voices of Kulthum and Fairuz are considered the soundtracks of the Arab world not only because they sang popular songs about love, but because their compositions about patriotism and Arab Nationalism served as an inspiration to millions. Both singers came from very humble beginnings and achieved legendary popularity during their lifetimes.

The World is Too Full: Rumi’s Message of Universal Love Still Resonates

“Poems are rough notations for the music we are” ~Rumi

Someone once said that poets are the mouthpieces of God, and there is arguably no better spokesperson than Jelaluddin Rumi, the 13th century Islamic mystic. Today, even after 800 years, Rumi’s message of universal love still resonates, transcending religion, nationality, culture and class. It’s especially ironic- yet perhaps fitting- that more than a decade after 9/11, Rumi is America’s best-selling poet.

“The Rumi Concert: Lion of the Heart,” an event sponsored by the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and performed at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco, was a magical celebration of Rumi’s words, combining the oratory talents of American poet/author Coleman Barks, cellist/composer David Darling, Grammy-award winning percussionist Glen Velez and dancer/storyteller Zuleikha.

Pan-Arab Hip Hop Gets Play at Stanford U

What began as the music of the marginalized here in the States has since grown into a global and multicultural movement- one where beats and rhyme flow as both nonviolent resistance against dictatorship and a globalized call for unity and action. MTV can have their cars and BET can take their bling: Hip Hop has always been, at its heart, the struggle for equality, not manufactured images of drugs, misogyny and corporate materialism.

Take the popular mantra from Arabian Knightz’s 2012 video “Unknighted,” highlighting the multi-national all-stars of Arab rap: “Hip Hop ain’t dead: it never died. It just moved to the Middle East where the struggle’s still alive.” Two of the acts featured in the video- Palestinian trio DAM and Syrian-American Omar Offendum, performed at Stanford University this past weekend at Stanford University for the event Globalization of Hip Hop: Spotlight Middle East. They then took part in a panel discussion about Hip Hop and socio-political revolution, moderated by Stanford Arabic professor and KZSU Arabology radio host Dr. Ramzi Salti.

Mixtape: The Nouruz Playlist

Music hardly exists in a vacuum. Like an interconnected web, each tune, each track released to the world both came from somewhere and leads to something else. At Aslan Media, we recognize that very few tracks come to us without influence, and it’s those artists that walked the road before who helped shape the styles and expressions of the music artists we profile in this website today.

To show that music, in its purest form, is an expression that knows no physical, cultural, societal or economic boundaries, Aslan Media is proud to expand our usual Mixtape series to include editor-curated playlists of tracks that express the diversity of Middle East customs, as well as the music that reflect them. The genres covered by these playlists are limitless, as are the artists they include, which can include those from countries outside the Middle East that carry universal messages found in every region of the world.

Album Review: Rough Guide to Arabic Revolution

It’s hard sometimes coming up with a strong opening for another review of Arab Spring music, not for lack of material or inspiration, but because we continue to see such an abundance of both, intros, it feels, have become exhausted. For the past two years, my work as a writer and an editor has immersed me in more revolutionary music than what I could ever predict, in styles and genres as variegated as the people who make up the region we know as the Middle East. Yet in all this melodic diversity, it’s easy sometimes to forget that these tracks and artists who are now part of my daily lexicon are still unknown names to even those who followed as each country called for reform and refused to take no for an answer. At least several times a week, someone will ask me for recommendations for new music to check out and new performers to pursue.

What I suggest is not far from what the prolific World Music Network offers in their recently released compilation The Rough Guide to Arabic Revolution, which, in its two CDs, presents a sampler of the Arab Spring’s “greatest hits” -the songs that “spurred on protesters during the recent seismic revolutions” and reflect the change so fervently demanded.

Khat Thaleth: Third Rail Vision for Politics and Music from the Middle East

Khat Thaleth, Third Line: Initiative for the Elevation of Public Awareness, set for release from Stronghold Sounds tomorrow, March 5th, is an album full of new Arab rap music, featuring fresh and forceful Middle Eastern and North African hip-hop talents like ZeineDin and El Rass. The title, Khat Thaleth, or third line, is a reference to the idea of a third way, a third electric and energized approach to looking at politics in the Arab world. These 23 tracks of Arabic hip-hop make up a welcome compilation, one that fills a space and a need. The rise of Arab rap in North Africa, the Middle East and in diaspora cultures in the United States, Canada and England has been an important evolution and expansion of the genre- in terms of both form and content. The album is geographically comprehensive, with its 23 tracks coming from all over: Lebanon to Tunisia. The album pairs up MCs in excellent combinations and brings together songs about anger and hope, contemporary bloodshed and historic conflict.