My dear smug compatriots, I have
been meaning to sneer at you about this for a while now. I shall skip
unnecessary introductions and get right to the point. Arabic music is my chosen
subject for tonight. I am sure 90% of you will have stopped reading already.
For those who haven’t, get ready
to be taunted. Let me put it this way: have you ever been to a night club in
Europe that plays Majida el Roumi or Amro Diab? Have you ever encountered a
driver blasting Wael Kfoury or Najwa Karam in his car in South America? I bet
you haven’t, or even if you have, then what a rare opportunity you have
witnessed, an envious experience even!
People, my message here is
simple: Get over yourselves and give some respect to your origins. I am not
saying you should quit listening to foreign songs, I am not saying the Beatles were
a fart or Bob Marley was an idiot. I am not asking you to delete Red Hot Chili
Peppers from your iPods nor am I urging you to laugh at an indeed laughable
Britney Spears. I am just trying to make you try and relate to a music that
reeks of you although you keep trying to brush it off your shoulders as if it
were dandruff.
Compadres, don’t get me wrong.
This is not a shout for you to start enjoying Ali el Dik’s duo with Dominique
Hourani. I am definitely not recommending petty, disgusting, or even insulting
tunes. I am aware that Arabic music has been undergoing some serious damages
lately, it has been stained by too many imbeciles and has been gradually - not
to say totally - declining, but that doesn’t mean that our own oldies for
instance, much like foreign oldies - to a difference, don’t remain actual
pieces of art to this day.
What I actually have a problem
with is your attitude towards Arabic music. It feels to me as if you have an
internal buzzer that switches on the second you hear a Oud note or something.
You are, plainly put, funny to me. You make me giggle at your poorly founded
opinions and tastes.
It goes on without saying that I
don’t listen to Ragheb Alama and Nancy Ajram from dusk till dawn, yet I don’t
flinch at the thought of hearing their voices. Their songs are part of a
popular culture I belong to, no matter how much I would have preferred
belonging to another.
Try and enjoy the beauty of songs
that speak of us, even though we deny our reflected identity through them. Music
is the representative of cultures, and like it or not, you distinguishably make
part of this culture. You don’t fancy our music as it is? Then do something
about it, revolutionize it, don’t just heartily despise it.
Oh and a footnote for those of
you who will feel unconcerned with the subject since they already listen to
those 20 Arabic Jazz tracks we have in our repertoire, get over yourselves as
well. Ziad el Rahbani, although I casually enjoy his music from time to time,
is not the master.
