Professor Swedenburg recently uploaded a link to his 1992 article on the history of the Kufiya, if anyone is interested.
http://swedenburg.blogspot.com/2023/11/my-kufiya-article-from-1992-seeing.html
And here's some mood music to read by--Palestinian singer Mohammed Assaf singing "Ala al...
Come on, ya sohabi! I'm not writing a blog here. If the forum is ever going to get back to being viable, somebody else has to start a thread.
So the other night, I'm trying to remember that clip of the dancer in the apartment and the woman is singing and the guy downstairs from the singer is...
Eh, nobody has anything else to post? These are a little old, but they're something to talk about...
Traditional Christian hymn sampled in a wedding song about a beautiful bride...
راشد الماجد - أجمل عروس
Rashed al-Majed - Ajmal Arous
Song about a guy being released from jail repurposed as...
This clip is described as "Amazing Music Dance performance of Saudi Arabia at Saudi Pavilion," and as far as I can tell, it was filmed in Dubai. I don't think I've ever seen this kind of dancing with skirtwork before. I wish I had more information about it...
Saudi Arabia Traditional Dance...
So this turned into one of those rabbit holes, where you think "It's just one little YouTube clip" and then...
Katy (Kitty, Keti) Vintage Bellydance
From the 1949 film "The Egyptian Effendi"
WHAT ARE YOU DOING, KATY? Put the front of your skirt DOWN, please.
So I noticed someone asked for...
So this happened...
https://nypost.com/2020/12/02/model-photographer-arrested-after-pyramid-shoot-in-egypt/
News outlets have also identifed her as a "dancer," but without watching everything on her YouTube channel, it looks like "person who lip syncs and poses to music in the hope of...
Well, this is not the sort of snake dancing we're used to seeing.
This turned up in my YouTube feed the other day. 47SOUL (47soul.com) call their style "Shamstep," a fusion of traditional Levantine music with electronica, hip-hop, dubstep, and other worldmusic elements. The fusion of dabke...
So I started trawling around the internet, trying to teach myself about the career of Golden Age Egyptian singer and actress Badeaa Sadek the other day, because that's the sort of thing I do in my spare time...
My Arabic is way too weak to understand the intricacies of whatever crazy jive went...
Just came across this article about Egyptian cotton farming...
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-end-of-egyptian-cotton
Other than the throwaway line about folkloric songs, it isn't BD related, so let's see what we can dig up music-wise...
From the film "Khadra W al-Sindbad...
In a move that no one could have possibly anticipated, a young female Saudi musician was arrested for rapping about being from the city of Mecca. Ayasel Slay has been accused of being disrespectful to Islam, not being Saudi enough, and attempting to behave like she lives somewhere other than...
This is slightly off topic, but it is an interesting article that explains some of the dynamics behind the recent history of the Middle East.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/01/muslim-world-saudi-iraq-iran-egypt-lebanon/605431/
Here are some famous folks who departed in 2019. Did I miss anyone?
Houari Manar (December 18, 1981 – January 7, 2019)
Houari was an Algerian Rai singer who was known almost as much for being a semi-closeted gay performer as for his music. Even though he never fully came out, his refusal to...
It seems fear of making mistakes or not performing "perfectly" holds a lot of dancers back from doing their best possible work. This article doesn't specifically discuss dancing, but it might have some useful insights for struggling students...
Has anybody seen the latest Humira commercial? Blink and you'll miss it, but they're belly dancing around 0:23.
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/oXac/humira-body-of-proof-drums
Pros:
- It's shown as a respectable hobby along with other types of dancing.
- They resisted demonstrating symptom-free...
I hope whatever reputation I had from Bhuz precedes me in a good way!
I have been dancing on and off since 1999, studying mostly Arabic styles. I'm also a bit of an Arabic popular music nerd.