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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.

Rock, Paper, Music: Intifada “Stone Thrower” Debuts Palestinian Soundscapes to Western Listeners

One boy’s stone is that grown-up man’s music. For world-class musician Ramzi Aburedwan, this could not be a truer story. Extolled by Palestinians in the late 80s and early 90s, Aburedwan ‚better known to his fans as Ramzi — first caught the eye of Arabs worldwide in 1987 when a photographer famously shot a picture of him, dressed in a red coat and scuffed blue jeans, tears running down his eyes, an over-sized rock in each hand, just as he raised his right arm to hurl one at an Israeli sniper he witnessed shoot his classmate in the head as she walked home from a bakery. Only eight years old, he became the first kid from his refugee camp to throw a stone as Israeli soldiers. The photo circulated rapidly amongst Arabs, the image sold as posters and t-shirts throughout the West Bank, immortalizing him as “the stone thrower,” the icon of Palestinian rage and frustration during the First Intifada in 1987-1993.

Sounding Holy Joy: Concert Unites Israeli, Iranian and Palestinian Performers for Middle East Peace

“Music is the sole border that we may all cross together with the passport of love in our hearts and peace in our souls.”

~ Naser Musa

There actually may be peace in the world if we had more people like Julia Gilden and Yair Dalal. Gilden, who currently works as a dance teacher at Temple Sinai in Oakland, Calfornia, has spent much of her life bringing people together through her love of modern dance, experimental theater and spoken word. Yair Dalal is a prolific Iraqi/Israeli composer, musician and peace activist whose compositions celebrate Iraqi and Jewish Arabic music.

Rap Against the Machine: Lupe Fiasco’s “Food and Liquor II” and American Political Culture

Lupe Fiasco is the modern poster boy for politically conscious music in the U.S., having come up with just the right recipe for crafting verses about income inequality and foreign policy that still sell well. His latest album, Food and Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album, Pt. 1, delivers on more of his brash, anti-establishment stances, his well-delivered wordplay and sound commercial success (the album debuted on the Billboard Top 200 at number five and sold 90,000 records in its first week). It seems to have revived his spirit of authenticity following Lasers, widely considered to be a major stumble of the pop-rap variety, even by the rapper himself. Food and Liquor II, set up as both the follow-up to Food and Liquor I and the first part of The Great American Rap Album (with a promised Part 2), is bursting with full-speed changes from subject to subject, saxophone melodies, and vulgarity in the name of in-your-face social consciousness.

Singing Truth to Power: Morocco’s Complicated Relationship with International Superstars and Dissident Artists

Howard Cosell never actually said, “The Bronx is burning.” It’s a longstanding urban myth that the famed sports announcer delivered the line at the start of coverage of the second game of the 1977 World Series. However, the fire that destroyed Public School 3, just blocks from Yankee Stadium, was no myth. It is no myth that between 1970 and 1980 over 40% of the South Bronx had been burned or abandoned. Commentators at the time likened the devastated neighborhoods to those of European cities left in ruins by WWII.