If you want to know, there’s a private joke where for a couple of years I’ve been saying « yeah I’m releasing my first NAAR SUYU mix pretty soon »… Hey, everything happens eventually. 

The name of the mixtape means pomegranate juice (nar suyu) but with 2 A’s, in homage to the project NAAR that I find incredible, I’ll tell you more about it later, because the desire in substance is the same at my very small level: create bridges. 

I’ll try not to write a whole book about it though, because I’m not a specialist, but on the other hand, it’s like when the music starts, I’m quickly carried away. It’s impossible to explain to you why it moves me so much and puts me in a trance from the first notes. The tones maybe, the instruments (big heart on the oud!) … And then the language. Besides, I started to learn Arabic to try to understand what it’s about and to limit as much as possible the yogurt when singing along, even if only my cat can hear it. 

I’m under the impression that 10-15 years ago, if you didn’t have a real interest in Arab music, what you heard was not necessarily the best raï and then some classics like Fairuz or a bit more recently Rachid Taha, some Dalida songs too. But it’s so much wider than that! Especially what’s being done at the moment, it’s madness. Maybe it’s because not everyone gets a visa to come and play in Europe (even though I’ve seen some great concerts). 

Besides, it’s probably through traveling that it started to get in my ear. I spent a lot of time in Cairo, in the Agadir region and especially in Tunis. I lived with local friends, we went out to clubs and concert cafés, and above all, we spent hours and hours in the car. Here, when you decide to go to the sea, it’s an expedition, you plan it days in advance even though it’s not that far. In Tunisia you get up in the morning, you say you’d like to go for a swim and you drive for three hours to get to the beach, stay there for a good hour and then drive back the other way. In short, there’s plenty of time to listen to music.  

There were also movies like Jim Jarmusch’s « Only Lovers Left Alive » which has an incredible soundtrack. You can see Yasmine Hamdan giving a concert where she sings the track Hal [track 9]. Even though I may have a more active search, I think a lot of it reached me haphazardly. Like during my Soundcloud wanderings… listening again to Rayess Bek and La Mirza’s Love & Revenge project [track 16] – he remixes Arab music classics while she VJs with film clips from the golden age of Egyptian cinema, crazy!  – After going to see them live on the good advice of a friend, I go from reco to reco and that’s how I came across Hello Psychaleppo [track 7]. Boom, brain explosion. In short, at some point the different algorithms do their job. 

But it’s also the case IRL, when I go to Balades Sonores (my local vinyl dealer), they have a bin called « from Tangier to Beirut », often I let myself be guided by the design of the cover and then I have nice surprises like with Alif [track 22] and the album « Aynama-Rtama ». And of course, there are artists like Acid Arab [track 21] who clearly played a role, or even here in Brussels, Gan Gah who does some crazy stuff. I remember binge listening to a mix he did four [six now] years ago for LowUp Radio. 

And one day I came across the track « Money Call » [track 20] which announced the project NAAR… The sound gave me a big slap in the face and it’s Ilyes Griyeb who directed the wonderful clip that accompanies it.  A year ago, he had co-written an article that caught my attention, entitled « Et si on laissait enfin les artistes arabes raconter leur(s) eux-mêmes? » (« What if we finally let Arab artists tell their own story(s)? ») in which he denounced plagiarism and the use of Arab aesthetics by Western artists of all kinds never promoting the creative talents of these countries. This forum gave birth to an idea, which became a collective and then a platform to finally end up on one of the albums listen to the most in 2019: Safar (Travel). An ultra-ambitious project that brings together 11 Moroccan artists and 19 European and North American ones while maintaining its coherence from the first to the sixteenth track. A concentrated materialization of the talent and know-how of the Maghrebian scene to finally conquer the whole world. (Making of the album) 

I’ve gone on a bit about it but it’s well worthy. Frankly, it’s neat! The trap is international, the darija (Moroccan dialect) is local and it’s kicking. To see how ready the guys are – no kidding, for years they’ve been looking for the best ways to make the words sound, to fine-tune their flow, the technique… – and how much they want it, I advise you to watch the documentary « Wa Drari » which retraces the journey of Shayfeen (duo active in the NAAR collective)

I will conclude with two more recommendations for documentaries related to Arab music: 

During the lockdown I finally watched « El Gusto » by Safinez Bousbia. It’s about chaâbi music, a popular music invented in the middle of the 1920s in the heart of the Casbah of Algiers and which « makes you forget misery, hunger, thirst » while bringing Jews and Muslims together for years in the same orchestra until the war and its upheavals. I’m not spoiling anything but it brought me to tears.

From Algiers, we go to Cairo and move from Chaâbi to electro Chaâbi with the documentary of the same name directed by Hind Meddeb. Victim of corruption and social segregation, the youth of the working class neighborhoods exorcise it all by partying. The idea: to merge sounds and styles in a chaotic way. One watchword: make a mess! So, of course, I like it.

Well, I’ll stop here but as I said at the beginning, I’m far from knowing everything and we’re never done going round it all so if you have any suggestions, make it rain in the comments. Good listening.

– m.

Full tracklist: 

1. Rim Banna – my songs will sound from the squares (ft. Checkpoint 303 & Bugge Wesseltoft)
2. Band فئران تجارب – ملفات
3. Carl Gari & Abdullah Miniawy – Darraje
4. Mauvais oeil – Afrita
5. Majed Alesa – Lehe
6. Deena Abdelwahed – Tawa
7. Hello Psychaleppo – Tarab Dub
8. Ammar 808 – Ain Essouda (ft. cheb Hassen Tej)
9. Yasmine Hamdan – Hal
10. Bachar Mar-Khalife – El Hilwatu (Sama’ Remix)
11. Ibrahim Maalouf – Elephant’s Tooth
12. Yussef Kamaal – Strings of Light
13. Jerusalem in my Heart – A Granular Buzuk
14. Oiseaux-Tempête – Bab Sharqi
15. The Gaslamp Killer – Nissim (ft. Amir Yaghmai)
16. Love & Revenge – Batwaness Bik
17. A-Wa – Habib Galbi
18. El 3ou – Koullech
19. Felix Snow & El Rass – Ali
20. NAAR (Shobee, Laylow & Madd) – Money Call
21. Acid Arab – La Hafla (ft. Sofiane Saidi)
22. Alif – Dars min Kama Sutra
23. Mashrou’Leila – Maghawir
24. Taxi Kebab – Lmchi w Rjou3
25. SoapKill – Tango
26. EMEL – Kaddesh (Ash Koosha Rework)
27. Sevdaliza – Gole Bi Goldoom