2023-08-27 05:43:10
“What a sweet day this is”…the curse of the shrines and the Arab economy
What distinguishes Arabic music is that it remains a faceted one when it comes to its expressive potential. While Western music, composed peacefully, is drawn according to emotional boundaries that less ambiguously separate the worlds of the two scales, large and small, between joy and joy, sadness and gloom, the eastern maqam, thanks to the dynamism of the races that make it up, can express multiple, sometimes contradictory feelings.
The Nahawand maqam, for example, whose first gender corresponds to the minor scale in Western music, is like the Hijaz and Saba, among the main maqams of a melancholytic character in general. However, if the nahawand is approached from the Kurds, i.e. the gender formed by it at the “dimple” or the fifth note, it will create a more joyful situation, as the Kurdish gender, if played starting from the third note, will match in the order of its notes the joyful gender of the non-Arabs, which is similar to The first genus of it is the grand scale, joy and joy in Western music.
Add to that the rhythm stand, and it might apply to all the music of the earth. The faster the rhythm or the more dab dance calls for, the more lively the music becomes, and accordingly it acquires an obtuse expressive potential. Conversely, the slower and slower the rhythm, the lower the vitality of the music, thus acquiring an expressive potential closer to majesty or joy. Therefore, you hear many public songs composed on maqamat that have a sad effect, such as Nahawand and others, that spread joy, or at least, that inspire a desire to dance, given their fast danceable rhythms.
The song of the Egyptian singer Ahmed Saad, “What a sweet day this is”, which was released as part of a movie entitled “Their Uncle” in 2022, is a model of the mass dance song that motivates feelings of radiance and optimism, although it was composed in the maqam al-nahawand; It is sufficient for its melody to be set to the rhythm of the maqsoum that is organically linked to oriental dance, so that the heart of whoever hears it will open and the energy will flow into his body, to dance to its tune.
In addition, the speech was organized to the rhythm of the song and its melodies were set for it. Unusually in the old popular Arabic song, it is not purely flirtatious, does not deal with love in a pivotal direct manner, and does not address a lover or a lover. And if there is love, then it is self-love and self-centeredness (he says: My mood is sweet, and my appearance is sweet to me, so it is appropriate for me) and love of life and the desire for it (we will love the world as a dance, what salvation, oh jinx with farewell).
There is also a message carried by the song, its content calling for simplicity, relaxation and indifference. There are adjectives such as “cool”, and phrases such as “the refrigerator of my nerves is cold and does not concern me or need.” All of this is in the midst of a cupola filled with overwhelming joy, touching the limits of conscience, when the singer repeats the stanza “What a sweet day this is”, composed at a high melodic height, where the gender of the Kurds is. In addition to the sound of the accordion, which is commonly used in Egyptian folk music, and whose color is associated with wedding and joy.
Like the echo of voices coming from the West, which have been rising from the platforms of social networking sites, preaching gratitude for life and embracing it, and calling for self-love in order to improve it, Ahmed Saad’s song swept the Arabic-speaking world. For a year now, it has been broadcasting on radio waves and in television programs for most of the official and private channels, terrestrial and satellite. until it became a fad that led to a wave of setbacks; As songs appeared by other performers, imitating them in form and content, urging in turn to “arwaq”, to live happily, and to live happily. And suddenly, the narrative of love, unlike the prevailing Arab habit, is no longer associated with the other, but rather with the ego, nor with an open wound and constant complaint, at times as a result of abandonment and separation, and at other times due to the impossibility of communication.
Thus, the Lebanese singer Ramy Ayach finally released his song “Lamat Al Habayeb” in the color of mass techno, as the lyrics tell the story of a group of friends celebrating happily inside a restaurant in elegance and prosperity. In turn, from a luxurious beach resort, Nancy Ajram pretends to be a white swan in a dress of white feathers, lonely. As for the Egyptian Hamza Namira, he chose for his latest album the title of his song, “Rayek”, in which he begins by singing: “It doesn’t matter who is above me or who is with me.”
Considering that the oriental maqam in Arabic music is a mirror that reflects the shrines of the human soul and its shifts in feeling, the feature that characterizes it, when it comes to its expressive potential, makes the multiplicity of feelings, and perhaps their contradiction, a mirror that reflects the reality of life throughout the region, after a decade. Asir began with a promising revolution, and was tailed by a counter-revolution that weighed heavily on bleak economic and social conditions.
In Egypt, while the media channels broadcast the song “Raik”, the people’s condition continues to worsen, coinciding with the continued decline in the value of the national currency, which reflects negatively on the contribution of the export industry sector to the national product, and accordingly, the deterioration of the health, education and service sectors.
The situation in Syria seems similar when the song “What a sweet day this is” is heard every day, even if it is exacerbated by the destruction of the infrastructure as a result of the war and the exploitation of its rich people in the country’s steadily collapsing economy. As for when people in Lebanon hear “Come, we will be happy,” they may be confused about what they hear and what they are going through in a country whose economy has become the fourth among the worst economies in the world. It is as if I am here with the effect of the sad Nahawand fading away, to express the most sincere expression of the current Arab situation.
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