Music for shaabi dance

buikdanseres

New member
Hi guys. Love to see the shaabi video's on youtube, but have a question about the music. I would like to know what kind of music one could use for dancing shaabi. Since the dance is witty and playful I guess lyrical jokes are often common in the music? Could you also dance to music alone or does someone have to sing? Does it have a special rhythm? Are there special musicians that make shaabi music or are there famous shaabi songs?
 

Greek Bonfire

Well-known member
Shaabi is not my favorite so I know others will have more information than me. As far as singers go, the first name that always comes to my mind is Saad, and he has a nice voice as well as his music being very upbeat. Hakim also sings more shaabi and the lyrics to his songs are less "colorful" for lack of a better word. Dina dances a lot of shaabi now so you may want to view her videos on YouTube.
 

buikdanseres

New member
Thank you for your reaction. I guess shaabi isn't very popular around here considering the number of replies lol. But you helped me with some names :)
 

Darshiva

Moderator
The problem is that shaabi music can be a political minefield and most of us do not have the competence with arabic required to sort it out, so most (sane) people will leave shaabi alone unless they do a workshop with an arabic-fluent person who knows the songs they are teaching to.
 

mafadalo

New member
I think Sha'abi can be many things, yes political, but I can only think of Shaaban Abdel Rahim who tends to have political songs, there was Sahar Hamdi's tgannen song that got banned as it was a bit naughty, but then it used to get played at weddings so go figure! A lot of it is party music, so the lyrics for the most part are probably pretty silly, I can understand a bit of Arabic and can usually work out when it's something you don't want to dance to in public!

I am in love at the moment with Manar Mahmoud Sa'ad who has loads of clips and generally sings at weddings, I would consider her sha'abi but haven't found her music anywhere where you can buy it easily but this gives you an idea.



The hardest thing with sha'abi is buying the music, there's Sa'ad al soghayar who is "safer" Hakim's music is pretty safe as well and they tend to be available on legit sites. With a lot of Egyptian sha'abi singers you'll find them more likely with less legit download sites or only on cassette tape if you look for them in Egypt.

A lot of sha'abi music is considered music of the poor, I remember trying to buy sha'abi music in Egypt and the music vendor said to us "why do you want to buy poor people's music?"!!!!! This is one of the reasons why it's hard to find easily. I tend to get easily distracted on YT but I'll do another posting with some stuff I like to give you a better idea. Have a search on this site as I'm sure it's been discussed a number of times before so you might get some more ideas.
 
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