Listened to Middle Eastern Music for the First Time

LadyLoba

LadyLoba

New member
I know that may sound like a strange thread title for somebody who was studying belly dance for months before....but I think I really listened and danced to genuine middle eastern music for the first time tonight. Music has always been my biggest frustration. I had a collection of "Belly dance" songs..and I danced to them and drilled to them...and danced to them some more...and honestly...I hated them and couldnt figure out why nothing I heard in the videos I watch was on any of the CDs I bought...or anything LIKE the music I heard. I wasnt enjoying dancing. Id drill, but just hated all my music.

Well, tonight, I decided to try radio stations online...and found some middle eastern artists on there...some names that sounded familiar from this site...a couple turkish pop groups...and played that instead of trying to find what I bought (I think they got deleted anyway).

It was completely different...now that my ear puts the two together...I realize that the reason I hated what I bought was that it was very techno infused...if not pure techno music. It might have had a bit of Middle Eastern influence, which is why the producers named it "Belly Dance" and put a belly dancer on the covers...but now that I hear real middle eastern music...full songs...without watching anyone else dancing, so that Im focused only on the music...my ear...and body...picks up the difference.

And I must say...I loved the middle eastern music. I was supposed to be drilling to music since I just started back up again after a long break...re learning all my moves...but I kept putting them together and dancing because I was enjoying the music.
 
Yame

Yame

New member
Middle Eastern music comes in many different genres and flavors. Can you tell us a bit more about the music you just found? Like, names of the artists and/or songs?
 
Sirène

Sirène

New member
We need names!!!

Pandora was how I learned about Beats Antique so I know how wonderful online radio stations can be. I'm just curious what you were actually listening to. (If it was Pandora they keep a history!)
 
Farasha Hanem

Farasha Hanem

New member
Radio Bastat is an excellent onine station for vintage bellydance music, but I can't copy/paste links from my iPhone, and still feel too sick to confiscate my laptop from upstairs. Could someone provide the link, please?
 
Avariel

Avariel

New member
I remember my experiences with Arabic music when I was in Iraq; definitely NOTHING like I'd ever heard before here in the States and completely different from some of the bellydance labelled music we get here even now. Greece was the same way; the music on the radios (especially on Crete and the islands where there's more traditional music than in Athens or elsewhere on the mainland) was really incredible and rich and (dare I say it) well performed. I ended up using a lot of the same artist when I first started bellydancing (azam Ali) because some of the other arabic music I was being exposed to wasn't really that good :( It wasn't until I did some searching myself (like you did!) that I found the good stuff!

Spotify is a nice tool, too, because if you find an artist you like you can look them up on Spotify and it'll give you a pretty extensive list of other artists that sound similar. You can also listen to the entire song before you decide to buy it somewhere ;)
 
Farasha Hanem

Farasha Hanem

New member
Avariel said:
Radio Bastet - Vintage Belly Dance Music :D
Click to expand...

Thank you very much! :D

I also have an iPhone app called Arabic Nation (I think) that consists of several Arabic music stations. I wouldn't use any of it for bellydancing, though, as I'm still not savvy enough to distinguish which music might be inappropriate, and I don't want to offend anyone. But it's a really good app to familiarize oneself to the sound of native Middle Eastern music.
 
LadyLoba

LadyLoba

New member
The two artists I really took to are Hossam Ramzy and Emad Sayyah. I use last fm online, so I was able to look for some names I read on this site, listen to some music, and have it generate similar artists.

I've been listening to their stations on the site, and doing an improv "performance" to whatever comes on the radio. It's not a real performance...I do it in my practice clothes, which consist of one of my Tee shirts I sleep in and a pair of the sweat pants I use as cover ups when I have to leave my room...and the only audience Ive ever had is my cat. But I'm learning to move to the music.
 
LadyLoba

LadyLoba

New member
update

I still am not knowledgeable about it like I would like to be...but I am finding myself taking to dancing to Middle Eastern music more and more. When I dance now, it is almost always to Middle Eastern music. Every once in a while I dance to a Shakira song...but mostly Hossam Ramzy and Emad Sayyah. The other night I put on "Moves Like Jagger" by Maroon Five just for fun...and it's hard to dance to that now. I'm sure I also looked completely silly...but then, no matter what type of dance you study I can't imagine looking anything but silly dancing to a song with lyrics about having "the moves like Jagger" :D
 
Zorba

Zorba

"The Veiled Male"
Avariel said:
Greece was the same way; the music on the radios (especially on Crete and the islands where there's more traditional music than in Athens or elsewhere on the mainland) was really incredible and rich and (dare I say it) well performed.
Click to expand...
Yes.
 
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