April 9 - Some thoughts on music

I was reading an article recently that helped me to make some sense of the passion of the Arab World with regard to the Palestinians.  What I was able to get from the article, and you can get the link below, was that popular music in the Arab world has helped to change the Palestinian plight from a personal to an Arab concern.  That is, Palestinians have become the symbol for repressed Arabs everywhere, and through the use of music common people have a great bond (regardless of the official stances of the various governments in the area). 

 

This article described songs performed by the thousands, and got me thinking.  Naturally I went to youtube.  There I found Michael Jackson singing the Heal the World, We Are the World, and any number of other U.S. songs that strive to bring international issues to the forefront of the American mind.   However, despite the effort they come across as corny and I doubt many people would count them among their favorites.  It was rather difficult to find the older Arab songs on YouTube, however, the article clearly describes some of them being performed by tens of thousands and becoming national favorite songs… something rarely seen anywhere today…

 

This further led me to the idea that the problem of Israel-Palestine is something owned by the entire Arab world… so I remembered conversations with my numerous Arab friends.. they all own the issue of Palestine as their own – be they Syrian, from the Emirates, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi – I detected no sense that the were far removed from Palestine (many of them travel regularly to the Middle East, and even organize protests and vigils as tensions unavoidably escalate between Israelis and Palestinians every year… This appears a clear testament to the argument posed by the article (although it is certain some of this sentiment must also come from popular news, movies, and other media as well).  Hey, I even found an Israeli-Palestinian peace song with artists of both nationalities, but strangely I couldn’t locate the song “Al-Hulm al-'Arabi,” (The Arab Dream) despite the fact that it came out on television in 1998 and was reportedly performed by hundreds of thousands of people in Beirut…  This seems like censorship, because these songs are purportedly nationalist and sympathize with the Palestinians, guess it’s hard to find out (if someone has a clip of this song or the performance in Beirut could you please put a link up).  Similarly, I could not locate the song mentioned in the article "al-Quds Hatirla' lina" (Jerusalem will return to us)… It’s certainly possible that I suck at searching Youtube and Google, but hey, it shouldn’t be that difficult to find a song by it’s title right?? I would like to find someone to translate these epic performances as I watch them, but I guess that’s just not possible.

 

I guess where this is going is that if art has such an influence that Arabs round the world identify with the Palestinians, where is the American equivalent…  there are dozens of songs and statements that have been around and are readily accessible since Vietnam, yet public outrage at the current war in Iraq seems to pale in comparison with the epic protests of the 1960s.  Furthermore, if this music and art has brought the Arab world together to such an extent, why have their notions and lyrical ideas (clearly popular and well-selling) been so limited in the U.S. I’ve even found that these songs of protest are the favorites of many Arabs….   

 

Surely this entry asks many questions to which there can be any number of answers (and there’s always the possibility I got some stuff plain mixed up), I just hope it stirs the pot (so to speak), and helps us to consider the popular effects of the media, political censorship, etc.. be they musically inspired or otherwise.

Here are some links from pieces I referenced:

 

Michael Jackson Peace Superbowl (1993)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5upJ1I_jDY

 

We are the World:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmxT21uFRwM

 

Wantani Habibi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYqfVgF67gE

 

Jewish-Palestinian Peace Song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d_i2F2LlF8

 

Article:

“Liberating Songs: Palestine Put to Music” by Joseph Massad

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3247332