Egypt’s famed Cairo Opera House (Cairo’s National Cultural Centre) is located on the southern end of Gezira Island, which is also home to the district of Zamalek. With the opera house being one of the many buildings located in the large gated grounds, it is probably the opera’s significance that leads to confusion whereby many … Continued
Arab American Soundscapes: An Evening of Music, Poetry, and Performance lit up the Cedar Cultural Center. Presented by St. Paul-based Arab American arts organization Mizna, the program highlighted live readings and performances from eight different poets–some local and some national, but all identifying in various ways as Arab American. The event was one of the many offshoots of this year’s massive Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference.
A video projection of a rippling Euphrates River and digital music from local artist Naj Bagdadi served as the backdrop of the evening, both literally on stage and more symbolically as cultural and historical touchstones. (The video was an original Mizna commission, by Iraq-based video artist Ali Al-Tayar.) Opening the evening were poets Hedy Hebra, Glenn Shaheen, Trish Salah, Philip Metres, and Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán. Many pieces touched on themes of displacement, cultural identity, queerness, and love, among others.Mizna Executive and Artistic Director Lana Barkawi says that creating a space for Arab American voices to tell these stories was one of the main reasons for the event. “We live in a country and a culture that speaks for Arabs,” said Barkawi. “We’re in the headlines. We’re victims of hate crimes. We’re profiled and under suspicion. Mizna exists to flip that conversation so that Arabs have a space to tell their own stories and be the artists who we are, on our own terms.”
For headlining poet, performance artist, and Mizna Program Director Moheb Soliman, that has meant looking outside of political categories of identity and thinking about ways of identifying as a human being in relation to, for example, nature or geography. For his performance on Thursday, he emerged on stage barefoot in a sleep mask, hoodie, and boxers, feeling his way (in words) through displacement, as represented visually by a Google Maps projection live-navigated by a collaborator.
By contrast, Chile-based Palestinian-American poet Ismail Khalidi delivered his poetry in a powerful spoken word style, speaking to issues such as anti-African sentiment in Israel and Palestinian dispossession. Closing out the night, poet and Columbia University professor Nathalie Handal read about experiences in Bethlehem and the Arab-Latino diaspora, as well as of experiences independent of place.
“We hope to believe that just because we may come from these war torn countries [it doesn’t mean] we can’t write about love or any other topic,” said Handal. “I think in general, we should just focus on the beautiful words and song and art and the message that these art works bring to us, without analyzing or labeling them so much, but just voyaging with them.”
That seems to be exactly what Mizna has always done and intends to do—provide a platform for Arab American expression, wherever those expressions may lead.
For more activities from Mizna beyond “Arab American Soundscapes,” they also have an active literary journal and annual Twin Cities Arab Film Festival. For more information: www.mizna.org.
Source: www.tcdailyplanet.net
The words “Gaza” and “siege” have become closely linked to each other in many people’s minds. This is the result of eight years of total strangulation.
In those years, the population increased by 400,000, and a whole new generation was born, a generation which has never seen a single day without power cuts, and who found themselves having to be satisfied with crowded classes, inadequate sanitation and inescapable malnutrition, believing that this is the norm.
But this is not the complete picture. Factoring in three major attacks since 2008 and decades of military lockdown by Israel is only the beginning of understanding Gaza’s multiple layers of suffering. We have now arrived at a point where hope is the scarcest necessity of all.
Despite the ceasefire that ended Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza, the humanitarian needs remain enormous and reconstruction seems so far away.
Oxfam estimates that at the current rate it will take 100 years to repair the damage from that attack, if this ever happens.
However, it is the cumulative effect of the blockade which must be addressed, not only the effects of the 2014 attack. Eight years of blockade had already left Gaza with a shortage of 75,000 housing units before last summer’s offensive.
Vulnerable
An already vulnerable civilian population was left more exposed by each attack. Vital infrastructure such as water systems, sanitation and health services were all badly damaged by the recent Israeli campaign.
But those were already on the verge of collapse. Millions of liters of wastewater are disposed of in the Mediterranean every day, and sometimes sewage floods whole neighborhoods. More than 100,000 people have had their homes damaged or destroyed. Access to running water is limited to a few hours a week, and most areas of Gaza are now without electricity for eighteen hours a day.
Farmers have been unable to access their fields to plant their new season of crops, and when they do so they are risking their lives. Fishermen, too, are daily targets for the Israeli surveillance boats. Just last month, a fisherman was shot dead not far from the shore.
The blockade has also systematically devastated Gaza’s economy. As a result, a million of Gaza’s population of 1.8 million is dependent on aid.
An average of 48 truckloads of exports have been allowed to leave Gaza per month recently. That was just 4.5 percent of the level before the siege was imposed in 2007.
The transfer of agricultural products and other goods to Palestinian markets in the occupied West Bank is almost entirely banned.
Unemployment rates have hit an unprecedented level at around 50 percent. Hundreds of factories and workshops have either been destroyed or stopped functioning as essential materials are not allowed into Gaza.
Furthermore, most people are unable to leave Gaza which has been effectively disconnected from the rest of Palestine and the world. Many patients have died due to limitations on movement of individuals.
It is impossible to quantify the opportunities that have been lost because of Israel’s blockade.
History teaches us that peace which is not built on justice and freedom is only temporary. The foundations for a lasting peace demand the end of the Israeli occupation in Palestine, and the restoration of our rights, starting with the most basic. Ending the siege is merely the beginning; a small step on the road.
Thick cloud of propaganda
The first step towards achieving this noble end is to understand, to undertake a comprehensive appraisal of the facts on the ground as well as the facts of history and then to convey this understanding to others.
We understand that it can be difficult to see through the thick clouds of propaganda. But Gaza must not to be seen just through Israeli eyes — as a security threat. Instead, it must be seen for the steadfastness displayed by its people in the face of enormous injustice and for their limitless potential.
We, the people of Gaza, urge complete support for and involvement in the Palestinian-led movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.
Universities have been among the most active in boycotting the institutions of Israeli apartheid; we call for this trend to continue and to intensify.
Every step matters. Earlier this year, 700 UK-based artists, journalists and writers denounced Israel’s occupation and policies and joined the campaign for an academic and cultural boycott. This step was warmly received by Palestinians. The positive reverberations of every such move are immense.
Parliaments, too, carry a share of the responsibility. Palestinians welcome the recent steps taken by many countries towards recognizing Palestine as a state. At the same time, we strongly request that this step be followed by actions to push Israel to fulfill its commitments and to end its illegal siege and occupation.
Accountability is of key importance towards achieving a sustainable peace. When we, Palestinians, applied to join the International Criminal Court, we were hit with sanctions, both financially and on the ground, which made the lives of the wretched even more difficult.
We need our efforts to attain justice to be backed up by international action. After the campaign of terror known as Operation Cast Lead in late 2008 and early 2009, legal teams in the UK filed a lawsuit against the British government’s complicity in Israel’s crimes. Lawyers sympathetic to Palestine were able to deter war criminals — including the prominent politician Tzipi Livni — from entering the UK for fear of being apprehended.
This is just one example of what small but brilliant efforts could achieve. Let these efforts continue; we are ready to submit whatever evidence they need to proceed.
Israel fears facts, and it thrives on propaganda. For eight years, Israel has been efficiently stifling our voices, limiting our activities to Gaza, and our access to the Internet.
It is our belief that an independent body, free from the pressures of the Israel lobby, would be of great help and have a major impact. I long for the day when we will have an active European organization to end the siege of Gaza.
Despite the many hardships we are facing, and the endless list of catastrophes that we have endured, glimmers of hope reach us every time a human being — even if he or she is thousands of miles away — expresses sympathy and understanding.
Believe me when I say that, in Gaza, hope is as important as oxygen.
Jamal Khoudary is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and head of the Popular Committee Against the Siege.
Source: electronicintifada.net
Arab America wishes all celebrating a blessed Easter. Easter is the most important annual religious feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to Christian scripture, Jesus was resurrected from the dead on the third day of his crucifixion. Christians celebrate this resurrection on Easter Day or Easter Sunday two days after Good Friday and … Continued
International Medical Corps Responding LOS ANGELES/LONDON – As the fighting in Yemen continues, hundreds of thousands of children, already malnourished prior to the start of the recent conflict, are in dire need of humanitarian relief to stay alive. Health facilities are struggling to meet the needs of those affected by the conflict, especially children. Food, … Continued
Broadcast live from the National Press Club, this unprecedented gathering will focus on the Israel lobby in America. How big is it? How fast has it grown? How interconnected are the organizations and individuals? How much revenue does it raise and where does the money go? What are the common objectives of the lobby? What … Continued
For an American audience used to war movies with explosions, good guys and bad guys, and finite conclusions, the Oscar-nominated, Mauritanian film Timbuktu is a departure. The violence is never gratuitous, most of the jihadists seem like normal (albeit dangerously misguided) people, and, at the end, the fates of the eponymous city and several main characters are left hazy. The people who would most likely choose to see Timbuktu are already numbed by the constant stream of horrific news out of Syria, Nigeria, Pakistan, etc., so this low-key approach is the perfect strategy. We know about the executions, suicide bombings, and coalition airstrikes. But what we don’t realize is, perhaps, the main takeaway from the film: This type of militant extremism, more than anything else, is soul-crushingly boring for the occupied populations.
A New Take on Jihad
Directed by Abderrahmane Sissako, a Mauritanian-Malian filmmaker, Timbuktu chronicles a brief period during the 2012 occupation of the ancient Malian city by the militant Islamic group Ansar Dine during the Malian Civil War. The jihadists single-mindedly go about instituting sharia law in Timbuktu, a city famed for its diversity and as a center of Muslim learning. Each day, seemingly, a keffiyeh-covered jihadist walks the empty streets and shouts into a megaphone in multiple languages all that is banned—soccer, music, cigarettes, adultery, sitting in front of your home, “any old thing”—and, mostly for women, all that is required—socks, gloves, head scarves.
It is an exhausting charade for all. A jihadist leader sneaks cigarettes behind sand dunes and flirts with a married woman, young militants passionately argue about soccer superstars Zinedine Zidane and Lionel Messi, and every night, the fighters creep through Timbuktu’s alleys searching for the source of soft guitar music. The locals, meanwhile, mostly stay indoors (many of the scenes taking place in the city portray it as eerily quiet). Those who do venture outside are either gently subversive, like an older imam who attempts to teach the ignorant, young militants what “jihad” really means, and the group of teenaged boys who incredibly mime a soccer game without a ball; or are outright defiant, like the fishmonger woman who dares the jihadists to chop off her hands for refusing to wear gloves. (The jihadists decline and the woman eventually covers her hands.)
These episodes, which are equally hypnotic, with the silent, sun-drenched city as a backdrop, and humorous, as the jihadists barely attempt to hide their hypocrisy, are interrupted by disturbing scenes of extreme violence: A woman is given 80 lashes for singing (and then sings as she is getting whipped), a young couple is buried up to their necks and stoned to death in broad daylight, and an argument about fishing nets and drinking water for cows ends in tragedy for two families. These moments are a stark reminder of why Ansar Dine is in charge.
Beyond Islamic Militancy
In this film, though, which is rightfully being hailed as a groundbreaking artistic statement against terrorism and extremism, the main conflict (the aforementioned argument that ends in tragedy), taken literally, is not even about Islamic militancy.
Kidane, a young cow-herder with a loving wife and daughter, lives quietly on the outskirts of the city sipping tea, playing guitar, and watching over his eight cows. This serenity is shattered when a fisherman, Amadou, kills Kidane’s favorite cow, a pregnant sow named GPS, after she gets tangled in Amadou’s nets in a nearby watering hole. Kidane, with a gun concealed under his clothes, confronts Amadou, and accidentally shoots and kills the fisherman as they scuffle in the water. Kidane is soon apprehended by the militants and is imprisoned and sentenced according to sharia law.
At first glance, this fight seems tangential to the film’s message, but a closer look at the conflict between Kidane and Amadou offers a synopsis of life in Northern Mali. Sissako could be saying that the conditions that led to the shooting are the same as those that bred Islamic extremism and allowed it to take hold in the region.
The two men were actually fighting over much more than GPS. Perhaps adding to the tension are the clear differences between the two men. Amadou has the dark skin and the given name of an ethnic West African and wears shorts and polo shirts. Kidane is a Taureg who has lighter skin and wears traditional Berber clothes. Furthermore, the physical land that two men share is under attack as well. As the Sahara Desert expands, which has been occurring at an alarming rate, it swallows up watering holes, forcing fishermen, cow-herders, farmers, and thirsty families, of all types of ethnicities and traditions, to share valuable and dwindling resources.
This punishing environment, it can be argued, created conditions ripe for extremism. It is not hard to imagine that if Kidane and Amadou had taken a few different turns in their respective lives, they could have ended up as jihadists. Why struggle with cowherds and fishnets when you can just grab a Kalashnikov, interpret the Quran in a different way, and strut around as the ruler of one of the world’s most iconic cities?
These facts are not lost on the jihadists, either. Most (maybe all) of the militants are outsiders, ignorant of the local traditions, and speaking Arabic, French, or English, and not the local dialects of Tamasheq and Bambara. This means that the terrorists chose Northern Mali and Timbuktu to wage their war and it is easy to see why. How can the local population be expected to fight back when they are fighting amongst themselves? Indeed, it took the outside intervention of the French military during Operation Serval to rid the city of Ansar Dine.
Looking Backward and Forward
No matter how hard the jihadists tried, glimpses of Timbuktu’s culture managed to peek through. The locals still wore their brightly colored clothes (the woman maybe just wore more of them to conform to the new dress code), soft guitar music still could be heard at night, and the devout prayed peacefully in the city’s mosques. It was as if many of the residents assumed that the militants would just be a passing phase and they would soon have their city back. It was nonviolent resistance in its own way.
There are myriad geopolitical questions that arise from these types of situations. (Is nonviolence enough when an entire culture is being threatened with whips and machine guns? What would have become of Timbuktu if the French hadn’t intervened?) But Sissako doesn’t attempt to answer these questions and he doesn’t and shouldn’t have to. He is an artist and this film is how he saw the Ansar Dine occupation of Timbuktu.
In the same way, the vast majority of Syrians, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Afghanis, Libyans, Somalis, and Nigerians shouldn’t have to answer these questions either. Violence has invaded their parts of the world, but their lives should not be defined by it. Their stories existed before and will exist after this particular type of extremism (hopefully) dies out. It is difficult to make a movie based on this principle but Sissako has done it masterfully.
Ethical Issues and Discussion Questions
1. Was a foreign intervention the right answer to the problem of Ansar Dine in Mali? Can nonviolent resistance ever be a useful strategy against terrorism?
2. What obligations do artists have (if any) in times of war and conflict?
3. How does Sissako’s portrayal of the militants differ from portrayals in other films and television shows? Does Sissako portray them fairly? Should he have been “tougher” on them?
4. This review made the case that the fight between Kidane and Amadou was a synopsis of the struggles of Malian society. Is there another interpretation of this?
5. In this review—and more generally in Western media—various words have been used to describe the kind of fighters who came to Timbukutu: “Islamic militants/extremists,” “terrorists,” “jihadists.” Are these the words that we should be using to describe these groups? Are there better/more descriptive terms? Do words matter in this context?
6. Does this film change the way you think about other Islamic militant groups, like ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, or the Taliban, or individual Islamic militants? From the way it is portrayed in the film, is Ansar Dine different from these groups?
Source: isnblog.ethz.ch
This week we commemorated the massacre of Deir Yassin.
On the anniversary’s eve, I went with a group of Palestinians, Israelis and visitors from abroad to a tour in the village organized by Zochrot, the Israeli group that continues relentlessly to remind Israelis of the crimes committed during the Nakba.
Last year such a visit ended with a violent attack by a local resident of Har Nof — the Jewish ultra-Orthodox neighborhood built on the village’s ruins — so two sulky policemen accompanied us to the site (mainly there to make sure we did not deviate from the path allocated to us). The very hot day probably deterred the usual suspects from a repeat of last year’s aggression.
Three buildings are still standing there: the school, now a yeshiva, and two houses. The rest is covered by ugly cubic buildings, forcing memory and imagination to work hard if you wish to reconstruct the beautiful village standing at the very top of the western slopes of the Jerusalem mountains.
It was one of the first targets of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that began weeks before the village was attacked.
On 1 April 1948, the Zionist forces that had been given the instruction to cleanse dozens of Palestinian villages from the western side of Jerusalem received a large bundle of orders.
Among them was a directive from the intelligence service of the Hagana depicting every village as an enemy base and anyone above the age of ten as an able fighting male. The villages and the men and children in it were thus considered legitimate military targets to be destroyed and killed.
Dehumanization
In Deir Yassin, women and babies were also not spared. But the importance of the directives lies in the dehumanization of the Palestinians that was integrated into the orders dispatched to troops that in the next ten months or so would massacre thousands of Palestinians and expel almost a million of them (half of the country’s population), demolish their villages and destroy their towns.
This dehumanization also explains why the so-called non-aggression pact the villages signed with their Jewish neighbors and military command in Jerusalem was sinisterly brushed aside once the order to cleanse the region was given to the troops on the ground.
Jews are not different from any other people on this planet. Almost every group of people can be indoctrinated to dehumanize another group of people.
This is how normal Germans were recruited into the death machine of the Nazis, Africans into the genocide in Rwanda and farmers to the killing fields of Cambodia. Even people who claimed to be victims of such dehumanization, as were the Zionist troops of 1948, very keenly engaged in the business of killing babies, as well as old men, in Palestine.
This dehumanization appears now daily in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen.
Journey of destruction
The world is divided roughly into three responses to the present-day dehumanization. The first is characterized by cynical manipulation of the tragedy by political and economic elites in the West, China and India. There you can find arms traders, financial mavericks and cold-blooded politicians calculating daily how this is going to empower them politically or financially.
The second approach is indifference exercised by the majority of people who could not care less one way or another.
The third approach is genuine human concern and solidarity shown by the conscientious sections of society who wish to do something and get involved.
For all these groups, it is important to stress the link between what happened this week 67 years ago in the village of Deir Yassin and the present day barbarism.
The massacre of Deir Yassin, by no means the worst or the last in the history of Palestine, symbolized what was so unique about the Palestinian plight. Immediately after it occurred, the people who initiated it (the Zionist leadership) blamed their extreme wing for doing it and apologized.
At the same time, they published as widely as possible the news in order to frighten those living at the next locations in their journey of expulsion and destruction. They were about to assault the cities of Palestine and they hoped that the massacre would cause people to flee. It did not work that well; they had to massacre and expel by force the people of the towns throughout the month of April 1948.
Absolving Israel
But the propaganda about the massacre bore success elsewhere. The new state, Israel, was absolved from this and similar massacres — in fact, it has been let off from all the crimes it committed in 1948 and ever since. The immunity granted in April 1948 remains today.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, a different kind of exceptionalism was exercised. Pro-American regimes, unless they went wild, could abuse human and civil rights, while those who were not on the right sight were condemned as rogue states.
Those which had other assets coveted by the US were punished more severely. But even those with an exceptional status in the eyes of Washington were not received as members in the community of civilized nations in the way Israel has been. The exceptionalism there is unique.
It is this exceptionalism that prevents good people in the West to participate in any significant way in the urgent conversation about human and civil rights in the rest of the Middle East.
Everyone should take part in this conversation about barbaric acts committed against the innocent. But everyone who commits such acts should also be targeted in this conversation.
The criminals who have attacked Gaza, the Yarmouk refugee camp, the Yazidi villages in the north of Iraq and the bombardiers of Aleppo and operators of drones in Pakistan should not be exonerated in any way; they should all be brought before the International Criminal Court, or similar tribunals.
Justice should be demanded for all their victims.
When this will happen we could come back to Deir Yassin, knowing that some sort of justice was served to people who have been victims of crimes not yet acknowledged, let alone punished.
The author of numerous books, Ilan Pappe is professor of history and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter.
Source: electronicintifada.net
Bahrain commemorated the 40th anniversary of the death of composer, singer, virtuoso oud player and actor Farid Al-Atrash. The National Arab Music Ensemble staged a concert at the Cultural Hall which showcased the spirit of classic music and soulful authentic Egyptian tarab style.
The concert which revisited the rich repertoire of Farid al-Atrash, often referred to as “King of the Oud, was held as part of festivities marking the 10th edition of the Spring of Culture. The commemorative event was hosted in cooperation with the Egyptian Embassy, in the presence of Egyptian Opera House President Dr. Enas Abdel-Dayem . Founded in 1989 under the National Cultural Institute (Egypt Opera House), the group pays homage to authentic classic Arab music and art repertoire.
Source: www.albawaba.com
There is no doubt that music is important to us, there is also no doubt that the same goes for the way in which we listen to it. But while our love of music hasn’t changed, the way we listen has. The internet, mobile applications, and streaming websites have all stirred a revolution in the music industry, an industry no longer the run by only production companies and distributors.
Amongst these changes probably the live streaming has been the most important. In 1999, we got Napster which introduced a new way to share, listen to, and receive music. In spite of their illegitimacy (in the beginning), music platforms enabled listeners to bypass the traditional distribution channels.
According to the marketing research company Nielsen’s report on the music industry in the US for the year 2014, they found that “streaming continued to show significant growth in 2014, with over 164 billion songs streamed on-demand through audio and video platforms, [while] physical album sales declined.”
While the MENA region doesn’t have specific data or information on this particular part of the music sector there is certainly a growing interesting amongst companies and entrepreneurs to dive in. There has also been an emergence of new mobile and web services, all contributing to industry success.
The digital music industry has brought a lot of changes to a traditional sector and there are still a lot of challenges facing it in the Arab region. For a broad overview of the sector Wamda met with four key players in the Arab world: Elie Habib, cofounder of the music streaming site Anghami; Mustafa Bakhit, head of Mazika, one of the first Arabic sites that became a platform for music and celebrity news; Tamer Ahmed, marketing manager at Trevx, a Google-like search engine for audio files; and Sharif Muntasser, CEO of Dozzan which sets at fulfilling the needs of all players involved in the music industry.
The changes
Artists now rely on the digital industry
Habib points out that more Arab artists are resorting to digital music, saying: “We launched on Anghami twenty times more exclusive songs in 2014 than in 2013, including songs by renowned artists. On New Year’s Eve, more than half a million users listened to music via Anghami.” Habib believes that commercial brands have jumped on the bandwagon and realized the importance of the internet and are now allocating more budgets for mobile marketing and music.
How to measure a song’s success or failure
Bakhit explains that “in the past, artists would release a cassette and say they have sold a million copies. Today, how good a song is is measured by platforms and applications.” Bringing us back to the first ‘change’ on our list, artists and production companies are changing their strategies, shifting their interest toward younger generations. According to Bakhit, this “facilitates the emergence of new talents, because the cost of production is no longer as high as it used to be. It’s easier now for manufacturers to deliver their products to consumers.”
Standards
Ahmed believes that the internet is for the music industry in the Arab world “like a kiss of life. Without it, many things would have disappeared, especially as it has become a means to archive and store Arab music heritage.” He added that “there are many songs that I used to listen to in old Arabic movies or by top artists. They might not receive big demand but the internet has helped to keep them anyway.”
On the other hand, he believes that the internet has contributed to creating another source of music, notably as the records and albums industry is on its way out, and sales have fallen dramatically. “The new generation doesn’t know much about “cassettes” and the internet is the channel that can get music through to the highest possible number of people possible.”
The challenges
Piracy
Everyone agreed that piracy is the biggest problem facing the music industry. Ahmed pointed out that it is “a big challenge because it puts a risk on production and we’re trying to find legal ways for distribution and protection of copyrights.”
Using Steve Jobs as an example, with his launch of iTunes, Ahmed said: “Jobs gathered key production companies such as Sony and Universal, and said to them: you are losing $20 billion a year because of piracy. What if I give you back $5 billion, i.e. 25% and then take 30% of it, (around $1.5 billion), would that suit you? Of course they all agreed since they were losing the money anyway.”
Bakhit said that “piracy takes content worth millions, makes cents, and everyone loses.” Anghami meanwhile focuses efforts on “pirates’ piracy”. Habib said that in order to address piracy, Anghami is seeking to provide an extensive collection of music. “We will reach the 10-million-song threshold in mid-2015 and we offer a great user experience and fast music streaming with a good sound quality, in addition to free and paid services.” He stressed that “piracy has become a habit among users in the region and talking about putting an end to it is pure madness. The only way to address piracy is to provide a better experience to attract more users.”
Internet speed
Things differ from one country to another in the Arab world, but Ahmed cited the example of Egypt, where the speed of internet never allows for music downloading and streaming.
However, Muntasser believed that “the internet is much faster today than it was five years ago, and users can now listen to any type of music online.” According to him, the constant problem in Egypt (20% of the population of the Middle East), is that users cannot handle the cost of streaming music on their phones. Therefore, applications like Anghami, Yalla or even YouTube, only work when the user is using wireless internet or a free internet service.
He believed that the solution is for “platforms to cooperate with communication and advertising companies in order to provide a better service.” Bakhit confirmed this, stressing the fact that the problem is not in the infrastructure, but rather in the high prices of internet access.
Hesitance of artists
Ahmed believed that it is necessary to focus on expanding artists’ acceptance of e-songs, especially amongst the older generation which is still not entirely convinced that online music can be as good in terms of quality as the one they listen to on CDs; while also working on convincing new bands and artists that the internet is a great inexpensive channel and “online presence is a must because things are changing.”
Lack of data
Muntasser long talked about this challenge which he considered the basis of the problem of the digital music industry because “you need the data of songs in order to classify them.” He added that while Dozzan classified 110,000 songs over the past seven years, there is still a lot to do.
Muntasser is not only referring to songs’ public data, but to everything related to them. He realizes that this task requires hard work, pushing a lot of global platforms such as Echonest, Rovi, and Gracenote, even Arab platforms not to do it because it is not profitable in the short term. They instead resort to fingerprinting which allows identifying songs and gathering little public information about them. Only Pandora adopted data collection (one million songs so far). Moreover, Muntasser believed that data collection helps solve another problem, namely meeting users’ needs and preferences.
Accessibility
Muntasser added that everyone wants a playlist that fits their mood, or one that allows them to discover new talent and music.
He believes “this would only be possible if you have data, because the latter is the DNA of music.” He added that users will not use or resort to an application again unless they find on it new songs and music that they like.
He then offered a solution, not dissimilar to Spotify, “Songs should be matched with one another so as to save the user from the trouble of searching. If a user is listening to a song, he definitely does not want to come back to the application or stop what he is doing in order to change the song or select another one.”
However, according to Muntasser, the problem is that trying to match songs on most Arab platforms often gives very bad results. For example, if you are listening to a song by Nancy Ajram, there’s a high chance you might get a different style of song from George Wassouf or Ahmad Alawiyyaah after it!”
He added that “companies today focus on reaping profits, and not on collecting data, but they do not realize that they will only reap profits if users are satisfied.”
Lack of artistic and technical talent
Before delving into this topic, it’s noteworthy that Bakhit considered that Arabic content is rare compared to content in other countries such as India, South Korea, or the United States. He explained that by saying, “Artists here release an album every one to three years. Abroad, singers release an album every year and shoot five music videos at least. Consequently, they have diversified content, which contributes to the supply and demand, unlike in the Arab world.”
He added that another problem lies in applications: “Most developers are not academically qualified to be creative. To be honest, when I go to the Silicon Valley, I sensed a different mindset in technological development; creativity in our region is very weak and we only imitate what works abroad.” He concluded by saying that accessing talent, in spite of competitions and events, is still difficult and we need to guide the ecosystem in order to develop the technical sector.”
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Pamela worked for seven years at the Arabic channel of France 24 in Paris. She recently moved to the region and works as a journalist and translator for several online media portals.
Source: www.wamda.com
Rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z is facing accusations of copyright infringement on his 1999 hit song, Big Pimpin’. Long-standing allegations of copyright infringement against Jay-Z will finally be heard by a jury, as the relative of a late Egyptian composer says the American hip hop mogul unlawfully sampled his uncle’s 1960s song. Osama Ahmed Fahmy first … Continued
“April 10 marks the 84th anniversary of legendary Arab poet Kahlil Gibran’s death, his verses still resonate in a region mired by political upheaval.
His talent was recognized the world over, with the 28th U.S. President Woodrow Wilson once telling Gibran: You are the first Eastern storm to sweep this country, and what a number of flowers it has brought!”
Just a few years ago, when a U.S. reporter interviewed the late Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who led the coalition to victory against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, the footage showed that Schwarzkopf kept a copy of what is perhaps Khalil Gibran’s most famous work, The Prophet.
“If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.” Kahlil Gibran His writings have even made their way deep into pop culture.
When John Lennon, the lead of top 1960s group The Beatles, sang the lyric: “Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you,” he was quoting Gibran’s famous lines from the aphoristic Sand and Foam: “Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.”
Elvis Presley, known even today as the indisputable “King of rock and roll” was also a fan and was known to read verses of “The Prophet” out loud to his mother and even gave copies of the book away.
“The Prophet” has since been adapted into an animated film, with Hollywood stars Liam Neeson and Salma Hayek providing voiceovers.
Small beginnings
Gibran, who was born in 1883 from a poor family, hailed from Bsharri, a picturesque town in northern Lebanon.
The poet’s youth was spent among the rugged cliffs, cascading falls and towering cedar trees that surrounded the town, leading Gibran to later write: “Nature reaches out to us, with welcoming arms and bids us enjoy her beauty.”
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars. ” Kahlil Gibran His childhood was not, however, idyllic due in part to his father being sent to prison for tax evasion. Eventually, the Ottoman authorities confiscated the family’s property and left them homeless.
On June 25, 1895, Gibran travelled by sea to New York and then settled in Boston in a predominantly Arab district where Arabic was widely spoken and Middle Eastern customs were practiced.
In Boston, Florence Fierce, an art teacher recognized Gibran’s talent and connected him with Fred Holland, a prominent figure in the city.
In the summer of 1898, Gibran returned to his homeland and studies at the Maronite Catholic College, where he learned to speak French and worked on a student magazine called “Al Manara,” or “The Beacon.”
“Only the dumb envy the talkative.” Kahlil Gibran Returning to Boston, Gibran held his first art exhibition in 1904 where he struck up conversation with a wealthy local patron of the arts, Mary Haskell.
‘Life is naked’
“Why do you draw bodies always naked?” Haskell is said to have asked him.
Gibran answered: “because life is naked. A nude body is the truest and the noblest symbol of life. If I draw a mountain as heap of human forms, or paint a waterfall in a shape of tumbling human bodies, it is because I see in the mountain heap if living things and in the water falls a participate current life.”
As his relationship with Haskell edged toward romance, Gibran continued to contribute to local Arab newspapers. The couple never married, perhaps because Haskell’s parents did not approve.
“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair” Kahlil Gibran In 1912, the gifted Gibran moved to New York which was witnessing a golden era. He continued to showcase his art and gained recognition from American artists of the age, with artist Albert Pinkham Rayder telling him: “Your pictures have imagination and imagination is art.”
In 1920, he formed a literary society called “The Pen League” which increased his profile.
Then in 1923, when “The Prophet” was published, Gibran’s status as a leading philosopher-poet was firmly in place.
Due in part to ongoing sales of “The Prophet,” Gibran is still the third best-selling poet of all time, behind only Shakespeare and Lao Tzu.
Less than 10 years later, in 1931, Gibran died, at the age of only 48. He had suffered from tuberculosis and cirrhosis of the liver. Due to the love of his homeland Lebanon, he had never been an American citizen. A year later, his wishes to be buried near home were fulfilled by Haskell, who purchased a Lebanese monastery which has since become a dedicated museum to his life and work.
“Love… it surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be. ” Kahlil Gibran Written next to his grave are the words:
“A word I want to see written on my grave: I am alive like you, and I am standing beside you. Close your eyes and look around, you will see me in front of you.”
Source: jkalternativeviewpoint.com
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