Monday, July 24, 2017

Mashru` Layla

I watched the latest video of Mashru` Layla, titled Roman.  It appears to me the product of a classical Orientalist fantasy, or an attempt to produce music which an Arab imagines Westerners would like (in fact, Rabi` AbuKhalil (no relation) made a career of producing music that a Westerner would like Arabic music to sound like).   And why does the Arabic in the song sounds like as if it was spoken by a Lebanese immigrant in San Paulo who has never been back in many decades?