Mendeel Um A7mad (N x I x S x M) is a multimedia installation by New York-based artists Fatima Al Qadiri and Khalid al Gharaballi. The Arab Fund for Art and Culture (AFAC) grant-winning project presents the tissue box as an unlikely Kuwaiti national icon. The two-part installation consists of a film projected inside a monumental tissue box–created in collaboration with Kuwait-based designers Aziz Alqatami and Nanu Al-Hamad. In this project the artists investigate the… [read more »]

Nigeria, 2011 Danny Young’s video for his song, “Pop Champagne” contains some of the best, unintentional art direction I’ve seen in a while. The video starts with images of rolling postcard cityscapes (New York, etc) cutting to Danny in the lobby of what looks like the kind of over-lit, 4 star chain hotel that terrorizes the world with its insipid aesthetic of fake palmtrees and high ceilings. In the midst of this are stock videos… [read more »]

Since Gaddafi’s infamous “Zenga Zenga” speech, a new trend has manifested across the Arab world. Remixing dictatorial speeches into satirical techno tracks and uploading them to Youtube. In this clip, we see Bashar Al Assad, Syria’s ruthless former dentist at the helm, stating “Ilal ammam! Naseer ilal ammam” (Go forth! We shall go forth!) Mashed with select clips of Gaddafi and Bashar chanting, “revolution” and against, “terrorists, traitors, villains, cads” and the like. A lot… [read more »]

Ukraine, 2011? This video is an undated remix of Ukranian pop star, Evgenia Vlasova’s aptly-named, “Wind of Hope” track from 2002. A pastiche of the original video and some amazing Windows ’97 kaleidoscopic beach templates (don’t quote me, I’m no screensaver connoisseur), the imagery is meant to elicit the most appropriate kind of “hope” — the default kitsch variety. The unmistakable thread lining a lot of Ukrainian pop music is that many artists are classically… [read more »]

Angola, 2008 Ok, this is a kuduro video. There are a shitload of blog entries and articles about this genre hailing from Angola and the Angolan diaspora. Read up. I’m only discussing the video here, which is “Mama Kudi” by DJ Nays and Costuleta. The video begins with a BMW SUV pulling up on a dirt road, then all hell breaks loose. We see the requisite dancing girls, but more importantly, Costuleta—the one-legged co-producer of… [read more »]

Iraq, 2011 I really wish I could just permanently blog about Iraqi music, it’s always on point. In this video, Hassan Hadi sings Aroosa, meaning “Bride.” The bride in question is at her dead husband’s grave, looking a little Matrix with her entourage. Hassan is coyly asking for a kiss with the permission of her dead man. Back up: Iraqis are an extremely melancholic people, and no amount of death references can faze them. They… [read more »]

Dominican Republic, 2010 Omega “El Fuerte” is a singer with a musical double life. He has a repertoire of grandpa-style mambo, but also makes a kind of “narco merengue” or Merengue Electronico (the latter is also the name of a song of his), as exemplified in this video. The song is Tu Si Quieres (You Want It), and I’m sure he’s singing some gangsta lyrics cause the video is about someone, mainly him, getting shot… [read more »]

Jamaica, 2009 Listening to Jamaican female MCs nowadays is like being pounded with a steel handbag. The violence of their vocals is real, and like most Jamaicans, they don’t give a fuck. This video is a dream duet between two such MCs, Spice and Pamputtae called Slim vs. Fluffy. And although the song is surprsingly about weight, slim vs. fat (fluffy)–a subject denigrating to women, this video inadvertently chills the heated issue with a pride-heavy… [read more »]

Kurdistan, 2011 A Serb coined the term “Turbo Folk” in the late ’80s to describe a revved-up folk music via pop and dance engine fuel. And although Turbo Folk is inherently Serbian, I believe the term can be used to describe many a globally updated folk genre. Keeping this in mind, we approach the video for the song “Gal Gal Nazdaran” by Mehdi Alizadeh with a fast and furious zeal. The song is an example… [read more »]

Estonia, 2007? As I searched for this week’s installment, I decided to go for a more random country, one that didn’t strike me as a primary magnet for world music lovers. And that’s when I came across this confounding video for Raske loobuda, a song by the convivial Estonian duo, Pixie Twins. Confounding because it’s intensely comedic, while being entirely devoid of the later intention or any sense of self-awareness. Basically, if a Hallmark card… [read more »]

Tanzania, 2007 Soggy Doggy (AKA Chief Rumanyka) has to be one of the best MC names out there. The fact that he’s rapping over what clearly sounds like Grime in Tanzania is totally badass. The intro for this video features Soggy dangling a silver cross chain, behind him a beach full of people wearing white clothes, swaying to a Grimey beat. We then see Soggy, a man of small stature, practically drowning (in a good… [read more »]

Bulgaria, 2011 Where do I begin? If you haven’t already heard of Azis, Bulgaria’s uber pop tranny extravaganza, then let me clue you in. Aside from being named one of Bulgaria’s top ten celebrities, he possesses a large body of unreservedly homo-erotic, singularly-styled music videos. The video for the song Nyama Nakade (“No Way”) is just one other-worldly work in a buffet of heavenly gems dripping from Azis’s perfectly trimmed, blonde beard. The scenario in… [read more »]

Tanzania, 2008? The video for the song “Ni Soo” by Tanzanian heartthrob, Pasha, is brimming with saturated, earth tone sensuality. But before we delve into the visual aspects of the video, let’s reflect on Swahili, the language of this song and the lingua franca of East Africa. Swahili has always held a mythical, slightly dreamy status in my mind, its name adapted from the Arabic word sawahil, meaning “coastal.” It’s widely spoken in the aforementioned… [read more »]

Iran, 2006? DJ Negar is a tween trance act from Iran, a trusted source of hyper-melancholic music. In this first video, we find Negar decked out in a faux Formula-1 Racing outfit, complete with red baseball cap, in a TV studio recording. Her weepy facial expressions and praying/pleading hand gestures amidst a glistening sheen background visual is bewildering and begs me to ask, how did they reach this styling conclusion? The name of the song… [read more »]

Afghanistan, 2007? This incredible song, whose title remains mysterious, by the duo of Feroz & Naznin, allows the viewer to look into a demonized country’s entertainment. Afghani music remains largely unexplored by outsiders, and to a certain extent, is seen as existing in a medieval vacuum of classicist, folkloric genres. This video, and many others, challenge that cliched notion. The use of auto-tune for vocals, which although rampant across the globe, is refreshing in this… [read more »]

Kazakhstan, 1999? The video for “Legko,” the only song I could locate by Kazakh boy band Bubliki, is a perfect example of a cheesy late 90s Europop Techno track. But it’s way more than that. The band is comprised of ethnic Kazakhs and Caucasian guys singing in Russian, the second language of many a former Soviet state. This Eurasian situation makes it way hotter, obviously, and reflects the geographical position of a transcontinental nation that… [read more »]

Iran (via California), 1997 The 90s band Silhouettt -with three T’s- known as Sepideh in Farsi, consisting of three women, was supposedly the first all-female Iranian band. The name of this song, Korshid Khanom (Lady Sun) from their album, aptly-titled, “Water, Fire & Earth,” conjures up a Witches of Eastwick sensibility, however with Zoroastrian directions instead of New England Satanism. Regardless, it’s pretty amazing how much the movie influenced this particular video. Although the film… [read more »]

Bobby Brown had a sweeping effect upon young men in the Middle East during the late ’80s and early ’90s. I remember the boys in Kuwait desperately trying to copy his style to impress the girls, who were all naturally Bobby-obsessed. One Turkish guy went all the way to emulate not merely the style but also the singing of our New Jack god: Ahmet. Wrapped in a black tee; full-length, opened pin-striped shirt (with a… [read more »]

This first installment offers a glimpse into the world of Hijab Mannequin Head styling.