People & Stories Worth Knowing
The K ·
The 1.65 million followers on his Twitter account @BidzSaleh and hundreds of thousands of views on his youtube videos make Badr Saleh one of the most popular comedians in the Arab world.
His short comedic sketches make fun of the media and culture in the region, here is one of his recent videos critiquing the sorry state of Gulf television serials:
* In Arabic, no subtitles. If anyone has a translated version let us know.
The K ·
“Maps are traces left behind by the operation of power, and they reflect the production of spatial relations and exclusions. The way in which Beirut has been understood as a symbol first for the promise, then the failure, of a secular, liberal multi-ethnic city in the Arab Middle East is revealing both of the geography of Eurocentric historical imaginaries and of the strengths, incoherence, and frailties of modern forms of power”
The K ·
“A man from Zubayr in Iraq arrived in Kuwait and opened a café where he played cylinder records on an Edison cylinder recorder/record player he had brought along with him (cylinder records are called “Umm glās” in Kuwait where kūb (glass) is called “glās”).”
Tonight's "Evening Listening" treats are two podcasts from Min Al-Tarikh produced by The Arab Music Archiving and Research foundation (AMAR) in collaboration with Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF)
They consist of an interview with Kuwaiti, musician, ethnomusicologist and musical recording expert Ahmad AlSalhi. The audio is in Arabic but English transcripts accompany the podcasts. It offers a wealth of information on Gulf musical heritage of the early 20th Century, with musical recordings that are absolutely beautiful and hard to find. These are two audio gems you need to hear.
Here are some quotes from the interviews to whet your appetite:
“Abd al-Laṭīf al-Kuwaytī recorded with Odeon in Baghdad around 10 or 12 records that were very varied and included some of the tunes he had already recorded with Baidaphon. Moreover, he was accompanied for the first time by a qānūn –an instrument unknown to Kuwaitis until then– played by Iraqi qānūnist Ṣayūn Cohen who had accompanied Muḥammad al-Qubbanjī in his famous Berlin recordings and Ḥabība Masīka in Berlin, added to other great Iraqi muṭrib. Ṣāliḥ al-Kuwaytī accompanied him on the kamān and Dāwūd al-Kuwaytī on the ‘ūd.”
“The local national companies first appeared in the late 1940’s after the World War, and the first founder of a local record company was His Master’s Voice’s representative ‘Abd al-Ḥusayn al-Sā‘ātī. He decided to establish a record company in Bahrain and bought a recording machine from London through a newspaper ad. It reached Bahrain and he started recording”
“Some of the first muṭrib were scared of recording, thinking the microphone would steal their soul... maybe because an artist had died right after recording… maybe they thought that records had to steal a soul in order to produce a voice. This belief was very strong. Ḥuḍayrī Abū ‘Azīz had refused to record the first time for this same reason, saying: “I was afraid the mic would steal my soul”. The point is Muḥammad Fāris refused… there are different versions to this story.”
Happy Listening:
Follow Ahmad AlSalhi on Twitter @AlSalhi1974 and Instagram @alsalhi1974
Listen to a wealth of music at Zeryab which was co-founded by Mr. AlSalhi.
The K ·
The pretty things you can find going through the digital archives of the public domain. The actual manuscript can be found at Miami University.
Syriac- The language was born around the 5th Century BC as an Aramaic dialect and then had its heyday between the 4th and 8th centuries. It bore upon its back the Christianities that came from the Assyrian Church such as the Nestorian church and others, spreading as far as Malabar and China from its Levantine base. It is part of the Semitic family of languages which means it is a cousin of Arabic and Hebrew, which is why similarities can be found between them all.
The K ·
The K ·
We have been big fans of Beirut Jam Sessions for a while now. They pick beautiful music and showcase it in interesting locations and really, what more could you want?
Tonight's "Evening Listening" segment is from their session with The Wanton Bishops, a Lebanese band that leans towards rock spiced blues.
Here is the video of them playing "Bad Rhyme" in an abandoned space in Sioufi, Achrafieh Beirut.
Trivia: The Sioufi Quarter got its name because of the Sioufi furniture factories built there in 1910.
The K ·
@aljisrmusic hopes to be a 'bridge (Jisr) between music and comedy'. Their first music video uses humor to call attention to the overworked, underpaid and disrespected migrant worker who sings that he isn't afraid of his Kafil/sponsor.
“You think I’m scared?
I can see everything that you are up to”
The singers turn the usually insulting stereotypical portrayal of migrants on its head as they sing in the broken Arabic that is usually used to mock them on popular television. This time it is done as an act of defiance, as they hilariously blend the rap genre with local flair to lace the serious topic with enough tongue-in-cheek to get it passed around on everyone's social node.
Follow @aljisrmusic
Anti-sponsorship system video goes viral
Listen to them mentioned on BBC World Service: Outside Source (at 38.17 mins)
The K ·
The Kalendar is a place for news, updates, features and stories about anything to do with the Middle East and general culture. What it is not is a place for the mostly negative and the ugly. We have enough of that to go around. The Middle East, whatever line you choose to draw around its borders, is a place that is rich and vibrant. It is not a monolith and it cannot be encapsulated in a sound bite. We hope to explore and present all things worth seeing and hearing. Join us in sharing and discussing the best of what the region has to offer.
The "K" is a nod to our home base: Kuwait. And so it begins...
