Shelf | الرف

Baligh Hamdi - Alf Leila we Leila

بليغ حمدي - ألف ليلة و ليلة

Baligh himself professed singing wasn’t something he liked to do. Listing to him perform this composition he made for Om Kolthoum I can’t help but sing along with the same gentle restraint; like whispering on the eve of the unfathomably great -surely he must have known, no?

El-Iqaa - 1001 Fights

I was thinking of gluing a few consecutive tracks before posting this to better represent the album but kept putting it off until I found out this morning that he started following my blog.

El-Iqaa is a project of Joe Namy, a Lebanese artist based in Detroit/New York with an introspective look into the history of recorded Arabic music with respect to our displaced cultural identities. (I guess? Hes doesn’t write a great deal.)

Both his art and his music hit quite a note.

The vast majority of his work can be found through his website, olivetones where you can find links to archived episodes of his show on wynu; his art and the rest of the El-Iqaa project.

Detroit Beirut 2007

Sami Rageb - Alf Leila we Leila

سامي رجب - ألف ليلى وليلة 

Minimalistic organ cover of the most iconic Om Kolthoum song performed by a trio of Middle-Eastern immigrants to the United States, with Sami Rageb (no relation to Salah Ragab) on the organ, Jamil Shamma (Palestine) on the tabla and Arsham Zakarian (Iraq) on the cymbals and tambourine.

Hyetti 1978