Music 2007

PopMatters, gave the Arab world some love by putting two albums on its Best World Music of 2007 list.

The first artist is Nawal from Comoros Islands (Myspace link). Her music is actually not that similar to a lot of the Arab-E. African taarab music that you might hear from Comoros, Lamu or Zanzibar, instead she seems at times to have more in common with any number of African-Arab-French artists. Although all her publicity pics seem to have her holding the torbi (sometimes called the 'ud saghir, or small lute), one of my favorite instruments, I don't really hear it in any of her songs. Although she has a great voice and I enjoy her music, she seems to be catering to the world music as mystical fusion narrative a bit too much. Plus, are people from Comoros really Arab? Their democratically elected leader owns a mattress factory that he still lives above. That kind of lack of gross corruption is simply not going to cut it if they are trying to assert their A-rab bona fides.

The second artist on the list, Syrian Omar Souleyman, has no pretensions about mysticism or international status. He brings it raw, frenetic and shaabi. Enjoy the classic video:

The label, Sublime Frequencies, that re-issued these local (probably cassette) recordings is very much worth checking out. Their catalog includes some great examples from W. Sahara, Palestine, Choubi from Iraq and other great Arab and World music.
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Although probably released too late to make the top ten list for hip-hop albums, I have been really impressed by the new Lupe Fiasco album, The Cool. His song "Little Weapon" (is that an Arvo Part sample?) delves into suicide bombers, video games, school shootings, and child soldiers. Here is a youtube link for the audio and lyrics, but not the video. Yeah, I dunno.