P&J&...Latin Music???

Um, Rockist Scientist to thread...

First off -- the other Jody Rosen is here! Matter and antimatter will collapse!

Secondly, my sense of Latin music in the very broad sense is how the last decades have seen borders shift and collapse as much as certain styles have developed. Rockist Scientist here will have much to say about salsa, Matt C/Begs2Differ and Chuck plenty about roc en español and so forth on these boards. But a band like Mars Volta ended up on the poll, their two chief members at least are Latino, they have a strong love of salsa rhythms. In LA I'm willing to bet you're going to see a slew of Chicano bands starting to emerge with obsessive loves of Morrissey, the Cure and the like; there's already enough punk and hardcore bands from over the many moons. But observations like mine are skimming surfaces others could say more about.

Love, Jody Rosen

Scott Seward and I both voted for El Gran Silencio, as did a few other critics. We managed to get it all the way up to #164. I voted for two Spanish-language singles that no one else voted for AT ALL, and one English-language single by a Mexican-American singer that no one else voted for AT ALL. So I did my part, but maybe I was just wrong. Maybe that stuff just sucked, and I should have been spending my time on alt.country.laptop.pop.

Besides Cafe Tacuba, no one KNEW or, really, CARED what went on in Mexican/C.American/S.American music this year. This is pretty much a true statement I think. They're the Mexican band to namedrop if you have to pick one. Most people didn't feel the need to go even that far, and if they went that far they didn't go any farther. Great records were released this year by Natalia Lafourcade, Control Machete, Molotov, Plastilina Mosh, and Los Tucanes de Tijuana, among other bands just from Mexico. (Argentina was quiet this year.)

Yeah, Rockist Scientist to thread, I'd like to hear his take on what he would have liked to see up there.

Yay high!

My argument was less that (in fact, not that at all, just poorly phrased on my end) than it was noting that a band that speaks of an open love of same did end up on the poll, an admittedly singular example from the looks of it, and that J. Rosen's original question asking 'what about Latin music' is already mutating into a larger one -- what is Latin music?

I actually think the whole issue has a whole fucklot to do with Latin music not getting played on mainstream pop radio, even in NYC and LA.

I got an email from Jose Marquez of the great electro/tweepop duo Pepito the other day; he thought it would be funny to book some of SF's best-known Latin danceclubs to promote their new record Everything Changes. "Hey, I thought there was going to be a 16-person orquestra here! Who is this couple with shitloads of synths singing about dodgeball and politics? THAT'S NOT LATIN MUSIC!"

By the way, Everything Changes is my #1 for 2004 so far, but the new Allison Moorer is right up there, as is Joyce's record Just a Little Bit Crazy. God bless Brazil for that last one.

*and it doesn't matter whether or not Latin music falls under that banner - in fact I'm sure much of it doesn't - if it's perceived as that. But that 'if' is the question I'm asking really.

A-fucking-men! Woke up in time to put Buscando America (sp?) on P&J. A little late.

Of course now, as haikunym or whatever his new name is, would point out, it's going to be Mexicans who are demographically dominant (in the U.S.) for some time to come.

Soca and Calypso singer David Rudder is often very political so based upon his lyrics he sometimes gets crossover attention, but now that's he's on a small label he rarely gets attention no matter the subject matter of his lyrics.

Tico, not sure how Latin music is perceived. I guess a lot of salsa (to speak about a particular genre) is "functional and frothy party music." It's dance music (obviously). In the 70's, a lot more salsa had lyrics which dealt with larger social issues than the lyrics typically do now.

Coming to salsa now is a little like coming to rock music now: it's an old genre and most people would probably agree that this isn't it's most vital era. That doesn't mean I don't find plenty of salsa from the 90's on that I like.

But honestly, I haven't heard one salsa album from the past year that I think should have been on a list like P&J. Of course, I'm not a critic so I don't get review copies; I haven't been using any P2P sources (though that has just recently changed); and I can only afford to buy so much music. Actually, the most impressive salsa album from 2003 was a compilation of rare material from the 70's: Lost Classics of Salsa, Vol. 1. Other salsa fans I know (mostly virtually) seems to think the last two or three years have been pretty dry.

I've read that a lot of Colombians from the predominantly black Pacific coast area (which has its own distinctive styles, sometimes borrowing from current African pop) are moving into Cali, Colombia, which is a world center of salsa. I'm hoping that this will either breathe more life into salsa (and Cali has already been a source for some of the best salsa over the past decade or so), or possibly lead to a new genre. (For that matter, I haven't even heard this coastal Afro-Colombian music, and I'm curious about that as well.)

I'm going to see Peru Negro tonight. They're a traditional Afro-Peruvian ensemble who were melding folky strumming and African-rooted percussion long before David Byrne started putting out Susanna Baca cds and getting her to tour the US. Eva Allyon who is also part of this gnere helped produced the Peru Negro cd(which is being marketed in the US by the rock,paper,scissors pr firm). They're funky enough for me, but maybe not for some who like more rockin' less NPR/National Geographic sounds...

Rockist, I'm curious about the Afro-Columbian music also. I can't find that Afro-Criollo cd on Palenque that got some world music press ink about a year ago.

Interesting that one of the biggest Spanish-language pop heartthrobs these days is Alexandre Pires, a Brazilian dude who sings in Spanish sometimes to make lots of money in the S.Am. market.

Eddie Palmieri: Ritmo Caliente
Los Soneros del Barrio: Siguiendo La Tradicion
Yerba Buena: President Alien
Ry Cooder & Manuel Galban: Mambo Sinuendo [if that counts]
Various: Salsa Dura de Cali [which compiles old stuff anyway]
Elio Villafranca: Incantations/Encantaciones [I'm not big on Latin jazz though]

A few critical favorites (more or less in the genres that interest me) I missed:

Truko & Zaperoko: Musica Universal
Cesar Pedroso: Que Cosas Tiene La Vida
Ricardo Lemvo & Makina Loca: Ay Valeria!
Ivan Cáceres Y Su Bongolandia: Roots of Acid Salsa
Celia Cruz: [whatever the posthumous release was]

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=UIDSUB040402041439151503&sql=Aie7zefuk8gf2

I was listening to the stuff a lot more in the mid '90s (one year I think Caifanes, Fobia, Maldita Vecindad, and Santa Sabina all made my top ten -- I may have also voted for Lisa M and Xuxa that year; maybe also Cafe Tacuba's debut album, which by the way is the least boring thing they ever did; I forget!; I also voted for Selena and Chico Science album somewhere around then, R.I.P.), but I haven't been really excited about the stuff for years. This year I voted for a Molotov single in tenth place, but that's it. Anyway, I don't have time to go much into this here right now -- I still hear Latin records I like, and even write about them(Jenni Rivera's album last year was really good!), but the stuff hardly strikes me as the center of the universe, like it did between 1982 and 1985 or so. Los Fabulosos Cadillacs's "El Matador" was one of the greatest singles of the '90s, but they peaked years ago. Aterciopalados were best on their first two, and punkiest, albums. Caifanes were great for three albums, when they were a quintet; their fourth was bland, and Jaguares are worse. Anyway, I'm leaving tons of stuff out. If I have time sometime, maybe I'll go into more detail...

LFC haven't had a new album out in a while, and their last one was very pop/jazz-inflected, but Fabulosos Calavera from 1997 is one of the greatest albums I've ever heard. It's got death-metal slammed right up against blues walks, ska and punk, experimental in a really fun way. It post-dates "El Matador," which is, as Chuck says, one of the greatest singles of all time.

Again, I have to vote for Argentina as the country we up here know the least about musically. Bersuit Vergabarat's albums Libertinaje and Hijos del Culo are unfuckwithable in terms of weird songwriting and bizarre musical mashups; their singer may be an asshole, but he's an asshole in the cause of good. Plus the band is tighter than Boca Juniors' defense.

As for Yerba Buena...I saw them open for Cafe Tacuba at Prospect Park last summer. They were a blast; a real tight party band, but a bit too slick for my taste. (Cafe Tacuba, incidentally, was spectacular.) Anyway, I have the YB album and have been meaning to revisit it.

Incidentally, there was and possibly still is a free Yerba Buena mp3 on amazon.com, if you download anything at all.

x-post, I missed seeing Yerba Buena live this summer because I wasn't feeling well the night they played nearby.

Long pause. Somewhere, a car crashes, and an elephant knits a splendid wool cap for her lover, so far away.

Okay, then, never mind. But still: next month: Super Riddim Internacional: Vol. 2!

Scott I must needs hear me some damn Opeth now. You bastard.

http://villagevoice.com/issues/0333/eddy.php

...and one more here:

http://villagevoice.com/issues/0346/eddy.php

I do also enjoy the albums Natalie Lafourcade, Kinky, and Yerba Buena put out lately, though none of them come close to blowing me away, especially the Yerba Buena (the rap parts of which are very NPR-hippie-vegetarian-style, but which has some good boogaloo parts to make up for it.) Also I like every Omar Sosa album I've heard (about five of them); Eugene Holley runs those down in this week's Voice...

Otherwise, I thought they were okay. I wasn't blown away, but they were pretty good. I didn't really get the feeling that they were dancer-oriented enough though, not because they wouldn't play a merengue for me, but just because they seemed to occasionally switch up with the rhythm in a way that made dancing difficult.

They had someone playing a drum-kit. I don't remember whether they also had the usual percussion set up for salsa. An Ecuadoran friend commented that some of the singers in the chorus sang Spanish with an American accent, but she thought it was cute.

Also, I heard one of their CDs (their debut, I think) and it was just okay.

Sometimes I think I am a very difficult to please "critic."

(Why is the library suddenly swraming with very cute women? Maybe the Spring feel outside is just going to my head.)

Me either, which is all the more reason to love the reggaeton version of "Get Low" by Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz! (Which is called the "merengue version" on the record but Carol Cooper whose #1 album of the year was the Tego Calderon one sez it's actually reggaeton.)

Heh. I think my own problem with that is not itself but that people want to seem to stop there, with any culture.

"Hark! Yonder traditional music, so much more different from our own soulless Western crap!"

"Well yeah, it's great, but have you heard all the new pop singles on their char--"

"INFIDEL!"

wow I'm a radical hippie today

Aaragahagh. (I'm not a David Byrne fan...at all. That said, Luaka Bop does sometimes surprise me, thus A R Kane getting signed, however too little too late it was.)

Yea it's easy to cite and put down Starbucks Putumayo style collections and the people who buy them, but the hipsters at WFMU and Other Music and Aquarius these days are busy pushing those Balian and Java and Syrian collections put out by members of the psychedelic noise band the Sun City Girls on their Sublime Frequencies label. I guess they're somehow more sincere.

The problem is: what does yr suburban music person (who is, at least here in Madison, much more likely to get into int'l music than any of the more urban-head people) do once they hear something they like? The "world" sections in most places are straight-up ASS, and even our local indie stores do a piss-poor job of being up on new music coming from anywhere except Thrill Jockey and Sub Pop.

Actually, our Borders and Circuit city stores are the best places for new Latin music.

People of all different cultures seem to stop and declare certain music acceptable and some soulless crap. I've heard salsa fans put down merengue and reggaeton, Congolese rumba fans dismiss soukous...It seems like everybody has their dividing line.
It seems too easy to me to quickly do the reverse of those authenticity purists and say Spanish language rap-rock or electro-pop is automatically more important than traditional stuff because it's more modern or real or whatever. But you recognize that.
Rockism knows no borders I guess. Writers just have to try to cover all styles I guess and hope that record companies can get the stuff into stores.

all I'm saying is, last year Thalia released two different records, each of which could have gotten as much press as [insert easy pop target here], but I didn't see really any reviews or discussion of either one of them. one of those records was in English, and had a pretty big video/radio hit. still: no blips on the radar. baby bash, a Latino rapper from Houston, has a top 10 hit; no blips on the radar. lumidee and her whole production crew are NYC latinos, Puerto Rican I think; no blips on the radar, other than "oh that song is awesome, she's a one hit wonder forget her".

so yeah, I think there's definitely a condescending attitude towards Latin pop and Latin dance music and Latin music of all kinds, and that it borders on xenophobia and/or racism. which pisses me off. why WEREN'T there more white people dancing to Peru Negro?

having said all that stuff, I'm gone for a couple of days. Keep it lively, solve all these conundrums, I'll check back to see the answers.

I don't see this as necessarily a bad thing, for some reason. People have strong feelings about genres. Salsa gives me something emotionally that's very different than merengue (or reggaeton), and I value it a lot more. It's not really my style to call things "soulless crap" but I'm not sure it's any worse than other over-the-top expression of opinions.

Maybe I am misunderstanding your last sentence, but I don't think critics should feel obliged to cover all types of Latin music, just because they are covering some tpye(s). Why should they embrace all Latin music when Latinos themselves typically do not? There are clusters and groups of genres that go together for formal or histortical/cultural reasons.

(This doesn't mean that I personally refuse to listen to anything but Afro-Cuban/Puerto Rican/NuYorican Latin musics, just that I'm personally most interested in that. Actually, I'm getting curious about Argentina (Gaby Kerpal's CD is on my to buy list), though not especially rock en espanol; and from what I've heard of Brazilian electronic dance music, I think I am going to like much of it.)

Take a look at thisdiscussion of merengue on www.dance-forums.com, to see a range of opinions coming from people who dance salsa. (This is a nice, fairly new, forum for discussing partner dancing of various sorts. It's not my favorite interface, but I've seen people make worse use of its potential for gaudiness and too many little animated smilies.)

I haven't looked at Latin Beat (I think that's the title)magazine in awhile. Have you seen it? It's a salsa and Latin-Jazz glossy partly in Spanish, partly in English. I wonder how their year-end critics poll looked? I used to skim through it or ocassionally buy it at Tower.

Just for the record: this thread is largely about black people, to the extent that so many Latin musical styles are African diaspora musical hybrids, and so many great "Latin" musicians are, you know, black. But I take Waldo's point. In fact, one of the reasons I posed this question in the first place was my feeling that all the self-righteous talk about hip-hop's critical disenfranchisement was a bit ridiculous. That argument might have made sense ten or fifteen years ago; but now, hip-hop clearly is American pop music, and anyone who doesn't get it -- any critic who doesn't listen to hip-hop/understand its beauty and power, etc. etc. -- has more or less opted out of the game. So it seems to me that Chang et. al. are preaching to the choir. Latin music, on the other hand, actually is largely ignored...

La Ley: Libertad
Bobi Cespedes: Rezos
Daniel Cepeda: Dancing the Drum
Los Soneros del Barrio: Siguiendo la Tradicion
Popo Vasquez: Carnival in San Juan
Alfredo Rodriguez y Los Acereko: Cuban Jazz
Willie Villegas & Entre Amigo: Dancer's Paradise
Orquesta Broadway: 40th Anniversary
Chris Washburn & SYOTOS: Paradise in Trouble

Soraya: Soraya
John Santos & Machete Ensemble: Brazos Abiertos
Eddie Palmieri: Ritmo Caliente (3 votes)
Yuri Buenaventura: Vagabundo
Amadito Valdes: Bajando Gervaiso
Rumbatela: Let's Go to the Rumba
Andrea Brachfield: Back with Sweet Passion

I almost said something like this myself, but I figured that the comment was just a joke anyway, and I've made this point often enough in the past. In Colombio (and to a lesser extent, Puerto Rico, I think), salsa (for example--not meaning all Latin music is salsa) has been closely associated with blackness. In the U.S. that isn't the case.

Translation?

What don't you like about them? They're really good! But then I'm a sucker for that kind of goth-metal melodrama, and moonspell have incredibly dorky words like most of dark metal bands. as might heroes del silencio, though i don't speak their language. and i've only heard one album by them, to be honest (*avalancha*). the best moonspell album is *sin/pecado,* but i've yet to hear any album by them that i didn't like, and i've heard about five or six, i think.

la ley are boring and generic as hell, near as i can tell, though. i can't believe that could be somebody's favorite album of the year; that's just bizarre.(tho i liked los prisioneros, the chilean cars/clash/police-inspired new wave band la ley evolved out of, quite a bit.)

It's weird, I've got a couple of friends who just flat out ADORE them. Never quite seen the appeal beyond a general 'oh right, that's okay I guess' reaction.

Wow. WOW. Dude won't even name himself. Impressive show of backbone, there.

Jody wrote:

Just for the record: this thread is largely about black people, to the extent that so many Latin musical styles are African diaspora musical hybrids, and so many great "Latin" musicians are, you know, black. But I take Waldo's point. In fact, one of the reasons I posed this question in the first place was my feeling that all the self-righteous talk about hip-hop's critical disenfranchisement was a bit ridiculous. That argument might have made sense ten or fifteen years ago; but now, hip-hop clearly is American pop music, and anyone who doesn't get it -- any critic who doesn't listen to hip-hop/understand its beauty and power, etc. etc. -- has more or less opted out of the game. So it seems to me that Chang et. al. are preaching to the choir. Latin music, on the other hand, actually is largely ignored...

-- Jody Rosen (jodyrose...), February 19th, 2004.

You know what Jody? I totally agree.

My point has always been: if folks can't even recognize hip-hop, then can we expect them recognize other forms of popular music-particularly non-English, non-North American forms? That point has been lost in all the above-style knee-jerkism that passes for, duh, critical "thought" these days.

For the record: I've grown up with hip-hop, so except for Hawaiian music, reggae, soul, and classic rock, most of the exposure I've gotten to other forms of music has come through hip-hop music, or hip-hop-influenced reappropriation.

I remember seeing "Fania at Yankee Stadium" in maybe like 1981 or 2 on Night Flight (on TBS, anyone remember that?) when I was a early teen and I had no way to understand that until years later with, I don't know, Malcolm McLaren playing merengue (that is, hiring a Dominican pick-up band to play it) or Urban Dance Squad sampling Ray Barretto or the Solsonics playing Cal Tjader or whatever. (I'm not saying all of these were of equal value! Just saying that's how I got here.)

My own P+J lists have slowly evolved over a decade into more global sounds; that's how many of us who grew up with hip-hop moved, outward and upward.

Are we the new hegemony? Apparently not. See friend "Waldo" above.

Preaching to the choir, well maybe. It's also possible that the same folks that aren't paying attention to hip-hop are the same people not paying attention to Latin musics. That's my gut instinct.

Feminists and Feminist Sympathizers Unite: A Bold Call for Pazz & Jop Activism

Chuck: thanks for the clarification. In fact, I did get a bit confused between Messrs. Chang and Wang for a second there, probably because both have had interesting things to say about hip-hop and rock-crit discourse. I especially appreciated Jeff's very provocative SF Bay Guardian piece of several weeks back.

Jody - you misread my other ILM comments. I wasn't suggesting that hip-hop is disenfranchised within P&J. I do think that the "critical community" that contributes to P&J doesn't value hip-hop as much as other potential communities but mine was not an indictment of P&J for that, just the observation that there is not ONE community we can speak of when it comes to critics.

Thanks for the Latin Beat magazine best-ofs. I saw Chris Washburn (spelling?) & his SYOTOS band last year, and I've seen him as a sideman with others. He's also a professor in NYC I believe. He's always involved with well-played Latin-jazz and occasionally salsa, he's a good musician and seems like a nice guy,although he's not,inmho, stretching the tradition or doing anything new with it that others haven't.

Steve (just saw your comments now), the name Chris Washburn looks familiar to me, but I don't know why.

Sergent Garcia, La Semilla Escondida (fusion of Cuban and Jamaican musics from French Spaniard, much better than I've heard him before, some damn hot fire and some slow burners)

Paulina Rubio, Pau-latina (every single Latin music in the world all melted into shiny pop singles)

these are the 2004 latin all-stars that I've heard, along with Tego Calderon, so far this year to date.

I enjoyed reading this thread yesterday. So, 18 months on, what's changed?

Obviously reggaeton, only slightly more than a rumour when this thread was started, has now crossed over and is on the verge of becoming massive. Will this likely transfer to end of year votes? Albums or just singles?

And will it help give a leg up to other Latin-American music? More generally, what are those of you who know about it excited about currently?

I think it's already done that over here! I figure "Gasolina" will get a slew of votes at the very least.

But not many folks are posting on the ILX reggaeton thread.

On the other hand, it's unfortunate that in one of the historic capitals of salsa, a weekly newspaper with a high-profile music section has paid so little attention to salsa.

I would think they could find something musical to cover in the large Dominican community in NYC. (Maybe they have done so and I've missed it?) Much of the distinctively Latin color in reggaeton (when it appears there at all) is coming from Dominican forms: bachata and merengue.

Not many folks posting on the ILX salsa 2005 thread either (or on the thread I did on the Latin Alternative Music Conference that just took place in NYC. There was a NY Times article on it).

I like the Daddy Yankee album but I've got a lot more reggaeton buying to do. Other Spanish-language stuff--I like the Los Pleneros del 21 cd(energetic traditional Puerto Rican bomba y plena). I want to get the new hybrid of everything danceable Yerba Buena cd.

RS should weigh in on salsa--which yea is just a niche genre.

Anyway, it's also sad to realize that, for all my love of Hispanic alt-rock, there has been precious little excitement this year, apart from reggaeton.

(I am reading that article in the Washington Post, and I get really tired of seeing salsa mentioned as another element in reggaeton when there is really very little of it there, and I don't think that reggaeton is able to contain the full range of salsa's multi-layered rhythmic complexity. Salsa does a better job of containing reggaeton elements than vice versa, just like it's able to contain a layer of bomba, plena, or cumbia rhythm.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/12/AR2005081200376.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/12/AR2005081200377.html

No I meant the community of contributers to "a weekly newspaper with a high-profile music section [that] has paid so little attention to salsa". But you go on to suggest someone anyway. So job done.

Would Norteno fanatics agree with that? Or bachata fans? What are you basing that on...

Oh, also, even though I'm always trashing it, how about something about contemporary Cuban timba, etc. which is off doing its own slightly different thing, and sometimes throws out something really distinctive. Lots of x-Van Van members have been releasing solo material and at least some of it is good. (Cesar Pedroso, Pedrito Calvo, Felix Baloy, and Angel Bonne are examples. At least I think they are all x-Van Van.)

Not that people don't or shouldn't care; just that this thread is oddly tepid for ILX, especially given how vehement some of the participants are elsewhere. And maybe that's the answer to Jody's question: The people in the P&J universe who give a shit can't communicate why, and therefore the others continue not to give a shit.

xpost
(But maybe the problem was in the thread title: If it had been "Why should I give a shit about Latin music?" it might have gotten its question answered.)

Well, what's happening on Mega 95.7 in Denver ("Latino and Proud: Reggaeton and Spanish hip-hop") is that you'll get a whole array of stuff that contain elements of reggaeton and hip-hop, including some Latin romantic pop songs with raps in them, sometimes salsa with rap or reggaeton elements, and all this will possibly end up under the rubric "reggaeton." The quasi-salsa stuff isn't top of the playlist, but it's there. And you'll get salsa as a non-integral signifier in some reggaeton - e.g., "Scandalous" by Cuban Link f. Don Omar starts and ends with a salsa piano fillip that you hear nothing of during the main body of the song.

(As had garage rock, once upon a time.)

I've suggested here and elsewhere that Chuck Eddy when putting together the P & J electorate should try to get more writers included who write about Spanish-Language sounds. I've encouraged him to track down writers from the Beat, the Latin Beat, as well as contributors to various newspapers. Last I heard, he said he'd have an intern track down those magazines.

Frank, folks like your writing here but your posts about reggaeton have not inspired more folks to get 'into' regggaeton here (there haven't been many follow-up posts I should say). Most folks on ILX are busy with other genres so that they don't have time to add more to their plate(that's one take---you could also say they're just insular and unadventurous but I don't agree with that). The Voice used to have Ed Morales and Enrique Fernandex writing about Latin music, now who do they or other alt-weeklies have.

Some of us who do write about such music do so after-work, after dealing with family, etc. I wish I had time to listen to more Spanish-language music(and more time to learn Spanish). There may be great blogs en espanol out there that we don't know about.

When I'm out dancing (not often enough, but it's happening again), I often hear one or two salsa-with-reggaeton songs that I like but can't identify. (Not knowing Spanish doesn't help, of course.)

And you'll get salsa as a non-integral signifier in some reggaeton

Exactly. I didn't mean it was never there in that sense, although I don't even hear too many reggaeton songs with even that much of it present. (I depend more on downloading things I've heard about than on radio, since there's no Latin radio in Philadelphia that I'm aware of. I should try out one of the streaming reggaeton shows.) I think it's a lot more common to hear bachata-like guitar or merengue-like accordion and horns.

another explanation for the 'tepidness' you perceive is that some of us are just worn down trying to explain why we value certain non-English language music, and having to face lack of interest, knee-jerk criticism(oh that NPR Public tv liberal hippie stuff for people that are too old for rock or oh that foreign language pop junk on the tv channels I flip through)...etc. If I write excitedly about something it doesn't necessarily mean I'll get heated responses. If you post a vehement thread on your laptop in the woods and nobody reads it or responds to it ...

I suspect Frank was being deliberately provocative though, in response to (more tepid) provocation from me and RS.

Natalia Lafourcade's new record (she's now fronting a band called Natalia y La Forquetina) comes out in two weeks
I'm excited about this too.

But what else is there?

(Not that the reasons for indifference and antipathy shouldn't be explored, of course. But no one is obligated to overcome his or her indifference, and no one will unless given a reason to care. As Mykel Board asked rather pointedly in the old WMS, why should anyone care about something that seems to have nothing to do with one's life?)

You (or someone) complemented Chuck Eddy for taking the affirmative step of covering country music in the Village Voice. Chuck could have just polled NYU college kids and Brooklyn rock hipsters and decided that only indie-rock has any relevency. But he didn't do that. Chuck has covered and had others cover Latin rock and pop. I just want him and other editors to try to do even more.

Also, well over a year ago, I read someone on ILX smugly assert that anything that is important in music is being covered by their favorite blogs or ILX. I responded that I was reading about music in the Beat magazine that I never read about in blogs, and that I listen to some current bluesy chitlin circuit southern soul that is also never covered in the blog world. For whatever reason, nothing seems to have changed on that.

To go back to the original post, I don't see where 70's salsa was so far removed from soul and funk, on the one hand, or classic rock on the other (less in musical terms than in terms of the intentions of some of the more album-oriented things*, especially Willie Colon's projects), so it's invisibility in P&J seems slightly puzzling to me.

*Not that soul and funk wasn't album-oriented at times.

But no one is obligated to overcome his or her indifference, and no one will unless given a reason to care.

I agree with this. (I don't like most of the music that most people here are most excited aboout, I think.) But you also have to remember that this thread was created partly in reaction to one of the annual post-P&J ILM People's Tribunals formed in order to judge whether or not certain lists, and the sensibilities they reflect, were racist or not. I think some of the Latin music fans posting on this thread were just chiming in to say: yeah, what about Latin music?

Also, although I'm not sure what more to say about this, or how it should fit in: the music I've liked over a matter of years has almost never been something I've gotten into because of what someone wrote about it. It's general been because of radio play, or exposure in the context of dancing, or occasionally it's been due to very persistent friends. (You could then ask why I should care about P&J. I don't really care that much.)

Anglo/gringo rock records I mean (since many if not most of the Latin records I voted for back then could also be classified as "rock.")

Well, actually, that particular single was one of the best Latin records of recent years, so it's GOOD that it placed in Pazz & Jop. (Ditto "Macarena." Now if only Los Ketchup had done so well.)

There may only be a couple hundred salsa songs from the past few year that are better than the Las Ketchup one though.

I didn't realize surf guitars were rooted in Mexico, so you've schooled me on that.

(More in a bit, I have to move.)

I'm not talking about absolute purity here anyway. I was just saying that something like "Livin La Vida Loca" is more like international pop with a very thin Latin gloss (mostly consisting of the fact that Ricky Martin happens to be singing it). Maybe I was wrong about that for the reasons you suggested, although I need to go listen to the song again and think about it.

You may be right that "Livin La Vida Loca" was more novel within pop music than most salsa songs from the same period were within salsa*, but I'd still say that salsa as a genre is a lot more foreign to U.S. ears in its rhythmic foundation, which seems pretty crucial to me (and which is one reason lots of people have trouble finding the beat), and often in its vocal timbres (very nasal choruses, in some cases, for example).

I'm afraid it's actually coming down more to this: I prefer Latin music from traditions that aren't as closely related (rhythmically, in particular) to music from the U.S. From what I've seen (and I've only read your reviews and so forth pretty casually), you seem to prefer rock en espanol and Latin pop, but I guess also some Latin styles (particularly from Mexico). And I suppose I can't get away with saying those don't count simply because I'm not too interested in them.

I don't know. A lot of Mexican music seems so close to rock and country (if it isn't) that it just seems like more of the same. (It really is North America! That always used to come as a shock, but musically it makes sense.)

(I do remember you liked an Omar Sosa CD, which made me kind of jealous, because I wanted to get into it but couldn't. (I like the Afro-Cuban percussion framework, but didn't liked his piano playing much.)

*That's a paraphrase, I realize.

Yeah, this is pretty close. Though I also totally love Eddie Palmieri and Jorge Ben, and I like lots of what I've heard by Los Van Van and Gilberto Gil and Tito Puente and plenty of other people from south of North America. (And I've liked every Omar Sosa CD I've heard, and he seems to put out two or three every year! Just got a 1997-2000 compilation by him in the mail yesterday; haven't put it on yet. It's called *Ballads*, for some reason. I wonder why.)

i love this discussion

i have heard less latin music this year (also brazilian) than any recent year, not sure what that means other than I no longer have MTVEspanol because we switched to Dish Network, also SiTV's music shows kinda suck a little bit

but of course you could say the same for country, or metal, or hip-hop, or punk, or pretty much anything probably. (show tunes? i dunno.)

Let us not forget, Mr. Eddy, that "Livin' La Vida Loca" was written by Ricky's ex-Menudo-mate Robi Draco Rosa, about whom we have argued most entertainingly. Also, yeah, surf music is heavily Mexican/Californian, but more to the point are those horns and chorus shouts, which have a lot to do with Cuban son and Caribbean dance music; I could make a half-million bucks by remaking that song as a dancehall / reggaeton / soca hybrid. (Think how that would sound!)

Hmmm, I don't remember it that way, but will have to listen again when I'm home.

One reason it might sound so much like generic international pop to me may simply be that once it came out everybody around the world start doing imitations of it. I've recently heard some Armenian pop that sounds somewhat similar, and there are definitely a lot of Arabic Latin pop knock-offs (which I don't particularly like) going for a Ricky Martin sound.

Intocable, Diez (X) (Texas Mex-pop)
Eddie Palmieri, Listen Here! (Salsa jazz)
Banda el Recodo, Hay Amor (Banda/norteno)
El Grupo Montez de Durango, Y Le Sigue Dando (Banda pop)
Andrea Echeverri, Andrea Echeverri (smooth Colombian EZ listening pop)
Miguel Zenon, Jibaro (P.R. folk-influenced jazz)
Kinto Sol, La Sangre Nunca Muere (Milwaukee/Mex rap)
Crooked Stilo, Retraselo (L.A. Mex/Colombian rap)
Heloisa Fernandes, Fruto

i heard about her from somewhere. any more information as to where i can pick this up, by chance?

It isn't just some coincidence or imitation that Latin elements show up in Arabic pop music. I think there is a huge amount of interest on the part of secular, internationalist Arabs (i.e., most of the ones doing pop music) in Iberia as the connection between Dar-es-Islam and Europe. Hence the fascination, initially with Andalusian flamenco (which is not so far from Arabic music to begin with) and then by extension to other types of music from the Hispanic world.

The interest runs both ways, too -- there is a fair amount of interest in Arabic culture and Arabic music in the Hispanic world, too. (El Gran Silencio! Can someone answer my effing question about EGS?)

I'm not sure why I should take it back, but I agree 100% with what you are saying, 100%.

xpost -- Tons of it in Faudel.

Haikunym: Yes. Thank you. Obviously I missed that thread, and it was v. entertaining. Of course, I knew perfectly well that they had label problems without knowing anything, but it's nice to know that they still exist and there's hope. (No one calls me el gringo chutaro, but I like 'em a lot.)

Javier Garcia, 13 (Cuban/Irish Spaniard who moved to Miami)
Superaquello, Bien Gorgeous and La Emergencia (Puerto Rican retro-futuro-pop)
Kobol, Broken Ebony (ex-Nortec guy plus drummer = IDMex)
Fax, Collaborations & Remixes (more IDMex, except dancey)

"Sounds like Ricky Martin"--I really meant that I think I've heard a bunch of Arabic things, from around the time Ricky Martin was big, that reminded me specifically of "Livin la Vida Loca" or that other song I can't remember the title of ("carnival" something?). But I didn't keep track of any of this stuff, so I can't point you to specific examples. I don't just mean: any Arabic pop music with western style production. If I find any concrete examples, I will let you know.

Heh, having listened to it once, apparently it''s called *Ballads* because it's, um....all ballads. Just total unenergetic piano snoozerama, front to back. What a weird compilation for somebody who usually strikes me as really engaging. But I dunno, maybe it will grow on me. So far, though, I have to say the first sentence above may no longer be true.

Some Meanings of the Spanish Tinge in Contemporary Egyptian music

Michael Frishkopf

[Published in Mediterranean Mosaic, edited by Goffredo Plastino ( Routledge Publishing, 2002)]

Introduction
Arab popular music from the mid 1990s onward strikingly displays the influence of Spanish and Latin music styles: the Spanish tinge. While these musical fusions are relatively straightforward (if varied) in execution, their meanings are more complex. Mere consideration of the Arabic adjectives associated with Spanish influence - Latini, Andalusi, filimanku (flamenco), gharbi (western), bahrawsati (Mediterranean), 'alami (global) -- as well as the multiple categories into which Spanish-tinged songs are sorted - shababi (youth), hadis (modern), bub (pop) - suggest the dense tangle of meanings which Spanish-tinged Arabic music presents to Arab listeners.1 The present study aims to begin the process of unraveling these meanings, as understood by Egyptians. It is neither my intention to document the Spanish tinge exhaustively, nor to explain it in “objective” historical terms. Rather, my aim is hermeneutic “ethnohistory”2: to interpret how Egyptians themselves interpret the Spanish tinge as a historical trend; how they relate it to their past, explain its salience in the present, and assess what it means for the future. It is the production of historical knowledge, rather than reconstruction of history itself, which is the point of the study: to understand how people organize their own experience of music history. This chapter thus stands in the ethnographic more than the historiographic tradition. It constitutes a “second order” interpretation, the usual epistemological condition for cultural anthropology (Geertz 1973:15), not history.

This task is triply valuable, for: (1) illuminating ongoing cultural processes by which Egyptians construct coherent patterns of historical self-representation, processes which carry additional significance as co-generators of future history; (2) producing subjective evidence, via Egyptians' reflection upon their own lived experiences through history, interpretable as a means of accessing that history; (3) illuminating objective history directly, insofar as Egyptians are (being close to it) well-poised to comprehend it (without denying or forgetting that another kind of more “etic” history, while not performed here, is also crucial).

Despite the theoretical value of (2) and (3), I cautiously do not submit this research as a piece of historical work, but rather as ethnohistorical only. But the new Spanish tinge turned out to be such a rich symbol that in attempting to explain and interpret it, Egyptians automatically revealed more general attitudes about culture and cultural change in contemporary Egypt. Thus in the final analysis, investigation of “the Spanish tinge” is perhaps most useful as a kind of Rorschach test, a catalyst for the articulation of diverse cultural thinking active in Egypt today.

The scope of the Spanish tinge in Arab music today
Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton coined the phrase “Spanish Tinge” to refer to Latin influence in jazz (Williams 1970:28). Yet Spanish influence (broadly conceived to include Latin musics) has been strong worldwide, from the early 20th century onwards, and has lately surged into the mainstream due to new fusions, and the powerful engine of the American music industry. In 1975 a “Best Latin Recording” category was added to the Grammy awards; their “Best World Music album” award (established 1991) has gone to Latin artists in five of the previous 10 years (Grammy awards 2002). Latin megastars with broad appeal, such as Ricky Martin, Carlos Santana, and Shakira, have recently been dominating mainstream pop music charts, while successive albums by the Gipsy Kings (from southern France but drawing on flamenco and Latin traditions (See Gipsy Kings 2002) have ranked high on Billboard's world music chart since its inception in 1990 (Taylor 1997:5,209ff).3 All this has been marketed worldwide as Spanish/Latin culture, but also stands as “American”, “Western”, or “modern” culture (due to centers of production and popularity, mainstream industry status, and fusions: Latin-rock, Latin-pop, Latin-jazz), “global” culture (due to scope, “non-western” origins, and syncretisms), and as a symbol of globalization itself. Within Arab culture, the Spanish tinge also carries particular cultural and historical meanings, via medieval Andalusia, the Mediterranean, Europe, North America, Latin America, each of which is susceptible to multiple interpretations and valences.

Two factors, then, motivate this study. One is the striking rise of Spanish and Latin styles in Arab popular music over the last ten years. The other is the dense layering of its potential meanings within Arab culture, as linked to the broader significances attached to geographical regions, historical periods, and cultural processes. The Spanish tinge in Arab pop presents a rich symbolic lode for anthropological investigation.

The Spanish tinge in Egyptian pop music occurs primarily in the domain of “al-musiqa al-shababiyya” (youth music, already a fusion of older Arab music with western rock and pop). Spanish influence includes instrumental, timbral, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, textural, and occasionally linguistic resources. Most often, influence is manifested in acoustic guitar styles, both rhythmic and melodic (often an ersatz 'flamenco'); in Latin grooves and percussion; or in distinctive harmonic progressions. Within a song, Spanish influence may appear vertically, in short segments: introductions, instrumental interludes, or fills (lawazim) separating vocal phrases. At the level of album, influence is likewise vertical, since in the typically only one or two (out of 8 - 12) songs contain Spanish influence (though these are often the most popular). Or influence may appear horizontally, as one sonic layer within a shababiyya texture including also Arabic, Western rock/pop, and perhaps other styles as well. Occasionally the Spanish style constitutes the primary matrix for an entire song.

Amr Diab
Amr Diab4 is the most popular music star in Egypt today, and among the three or four most consistently popular singers in the Arab world, from the 1990s to the present. Diab has consistently innovated since his first album in 1986; his great fame and financial success ensures that his artistic decisions reach a vast audience, and spawn many imitators. Since the mid-1990s, Diab's output has increasingly displayed Spanish influence. His broad influence in defining contemporary Arab pop motivated me to place him at the center of my ethnographic inquiry. A brief examination of his life, representing a microcosm of most of the trends to be discussed, is thus apropos.5

Diab was born in 1961, to a middle class family in Port Said. For Egyptians, this city carries considerable symbolic importance for modernity, nationalism, and westernization, and Diab's modern image owes something to his birthplace. Located where the Suez Canal meets the Mediterranean, Port Said was founded in 1859 as the canal's Mediterranean port. Young by Egyptian standards, cosmopolitan, industrialized, Port Said was devastated by three wars (1956, 1967, 1973), but always returned to supply a wide range of goods, local and imported; after 1973 Port Said was declared a free-trade zone to encourage investments (Hamed 1981:3).Inclining towards music at an early age, he received encouragement from his family to pursue a career in music, studying at the music faculty of the Cairo Academy of Art in the mid 1980s. His first album Ya Tariq (1986) soon followed, and was an instant success. Since then he has released sixteen albums, and garnered many awards in recent years for best-selling Arab artist.

Beyond birthplace and talent, Diab's social and generational positions were instrumental in catapulting him to the vanguard of Egyptian pop. His career has coincided with rapidly increasing media sophistication of Arab pop styles; Diab was the first Egyptian singer to make extensive use of the fidiyuklib (“videoclip”, or music video), starting around 1990, and video broadcasts (especially to Arab communities abroad) have contributed greatly to his fame. His adoption of new western fashions in clothes and hairstyle contributes to his au courant image, setting standards for millions of Egyptian youth, as well as establishing him as source (hence symbol) of Western cool. His budding film career has further disseminated his image and music.

Gradually his career has become more international. Besides touring abroad, his use of foreign musical styles has garnered international acclaim, and his fan base has increasingly extended outside the Arab world; this fact in turn reflects and necessitates continued deployment of those styles. Indeed, the most striking feature of his 1990s output is the increasing diversification of music styles, especially Spanish and Latin. Some Arabs began to refer to his as the “Mediterranean sound”. His internationally acclaimed “Nur al-'Ayn” (1996), became popular in European discos, often remixed with dance grooves. Subsequently, Diab received a World Music Award (Monaco, 1998) for best global sales (in the newly established Middle Eastern category), alongside Mariah Carey, Puff Daddy, and the Backstreet Boys; the program (hosted by Gloria Estafan among others) was broadcast to 130 countries worldwide (though non-Western musics were evidently omitted in the American version) (Dezzani 1998). Diab reportedly stated that he considers this award as a first step towards popularizing Egyptian music internationally (Egypt guide 2002). At the ceremony his performance of the title track, cast in a flamenco/Gipsy Kings mold, was broadcast to an international audience. Subsequently his music, often remixed in various grooves, became popular in European discos. All this enhanced his image at home, too, even among those who do not ordinarily listen to (or even approve of) his music, for Diab's international recognition (as for Egyptian Nobel laureates Naguib Mahfuz (1988) and Ahmed H. Zewail (1999), whose works most Egyptians do not read) constitutes an important source of cultural pride and confirmation.

Though Spanish influence is most salient, Diab has experimented with other musical hybrids as well, including Turkish, North African, Greek, electronica, and hip-hop sounds. On his 1999 album Qamarayn he collaborated with Khaled, the star of French-Algerian Rai, and the Greek pop diva Angela Dimitriou (also famous in Turkey). “Wala 'ala baluh” (from Aktar Wahid, 2001) features a mix of classical Arab melody with techno and rap. A complex of features--Spanish, Arab, Western, Mediterranean, global--is thus evident in his life history and work.

The Spanish tinge: Amr Diab, Egypt, and beyond
What is the evidence for the Spanish tinge in Egypt? As principal trendsetter, a review of Diab's 1990s ouput (also foregrounded in my ethnographic investigation) is instructive; a few other examples can be mentioned to show that Diab is by no means alone. “Leeli” (from the album Shawa'na, 1990) imitates “Lambada”. “Eeh bass illi ramaak” (Habibi, 1992) opens with Spanish-style acoustic guitar, which returns for fills. On Ayamna (1993), “Hawak hayyarni” begins with conga sounds, and “Taba' el Hayah” features a Latin groove, plus Spanish guitar and Brazilian pop harmonies. However it is on Wi yilumuni (1995) that flamenco sounds appear in force, in “Ahlif bi il-layali” and “Wi yilumuni”. Ragi'in (1996) features a Latin groove on “Balash tikallimha”. The title track on Nur al-'Ayn (1996) presents the clearest example yet of a Spanish-flamenco groove, instrumentation, and harmonic progression, displacing the usual Arab pop matrix. 'Awwiduni (1998) features a Latin/flamenco groove and progression on “Kull il-kalam” and “Wi ghalawtik”, while “Milk Ideek” highlights Spanish guitar filigree. On Amareen (1999) the Latin/flamenco sound appears in the title track. Tamalli Ma'ak (2000) contains the Latin-based “Albi ikhtarak” (often compared to Santana's 1999 “Smooth”), and four songs infused with flamenco styles: “il-'Alam Allah”, “Sinin”, “Wi hiyya 'amla eeh”, and “Tamalli ma'ak”. Finally his latest album (Aktar Wahid, 2001) contains no fewer than seven (out of ten) songs displaying deep Latin or flamenco influences, including the title track; by now one feels that for Diab the Spanish tinge has moved beyond color (loon) or novelty, to become incorporated in his musical language and identity.

However the Spanish Tinge runs broader than Diab alone. Indeed, in the late 1990s most of Egypt's most popular contemporary singers deploy the Spanish Tinge at least occasionally: Angham in “Habbeetak leeh” (Latin); Hakim in the introduction to his “Isma' ya illi” (2000); Hisham 'Abbas in “Sami' albi” (2000) and “Inti il-wahida” (1999), among many; Ihab Tawfiq in “La khatar”, “Mushta'”, and “Amar il-layali” (1999). Mustafa Qamar deploys a rich Spanish texture in “'Ayshin” (2000) (including a flamenco singer) and “'Ayneek wahshani” (1999), and a Latin groove in “Tal il-leel” (1997). In 1997 Qatar's MusicBox International marketed a very popular cassette entitled Arabica Latina, featuring Spanish Gipsy/Flamenco and Latin music with Spanish and Arabic words, through a production company in Cairo. The Gipsy Kings themselves have concertized in Egypt since the mid 1980s; today they are well known, performing on television and for weddings.

Furthermore, the Spanish tinge in Arabic music affects more than Egypt. Latin influences are hot in Lebanon, as evidenced by productions of top stars such as Nawal al-Zughbi (particularly in “Tul Umri”, 2001), or Julia Boutros (Bisaraha, 2001), or Raghib Allama, and many others. From Iraq, Ilham al-Madfa'i (e.g. Ilham Al Madfai, 1999) deploys Latin-flamenco textures. Within the wider sphere of Arab-Spanish fusions, Egypt represents an important case study, in view of the continued centrality of the Egyptian music industry to the Arab world as a whole.

Historical sources for musical ethnohistory
What is the source of this Spanish tinge in 1990s Egyptian pop? The trajectories of musical culture are never easy to locate, not only because of the mass of musical data to be examined, or the difficulty in reconstructing the musical past, but because of the difficulty in assessing which phenomena are to be connected as historically continuous. But in this section I do not aim to analyze the objective sources of the contemporary Spanish tinge in Egyptian pop, much less to trace a continuous history from those origins to present. Rather I want to illuminate three historical periods which figure heavily in Egyptian interpretations of their own musical history.

Andalusia as historical past, and contemporary symbol
From North Africa, Muslim armies loyal to the Umayyad dynasty of Damascus took the Iberian Peninsula in 711-13, defeating the weak Spanish Visigoth Kingdom, and establishing the Muslim Iberian domain of al-Andalus. After the Umayyads fell to the Abbasids in 750, 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu'awiya (one of the former) escaped to al-Andalus where he managed to unify a fractious polity, and establish the Umayyad Marwanid dynasty of Cordoba (756-912). Various Muslim dynasties followed, most notably the Berber Almoravids (1056-1147) and Almohades (1130-1296). Following centuries of conflict with forces of the Spanish Reconquista, the last Muslim kingdom (Granada) fell in 1492. By this time most Muslims and Jews had emigrated to North Africa; those who remained converted to Christianity (Moriscos) but were expelled (mainly to North Africa) from 1609 to 1614. (Levi-Provencal 1999b; Levi-Provencal 1999a; Wiegers 1999; Goldziher and Desomogyi 1966:130)

The brilliant flowering of Arabo-Islamic Andalusian culture was catalyzed by rulers, who patronized the arts and learning, and funded such architectural marvels as the Alhambra. In the late 10th century, al-Hakam II founded a great library at Cordoba containing 400,000 volumes, facilitating high achievements in philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, art and architecture, literature, and music (Goldziher and Desomogyi 1966:131-132). Abu al-Hasan 'Ali ibn Nafi', better known as Ziryab, was a student of Ishaq al-Mawsili, court musician to Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786-809). Ziryab captured Harun's fancy, thereby arousing al-Mawsili's jealousy; the latter forced him to flee. Thus did Ziryab arrive at the Andalusian court of 'Abd al-Rahman II (r. 822-852), where he soon eclipsed all other musicians of al-Andalus, developing new musical forms, and establishing an influential Music School at Cordoba (Farmer 1973:/128-130; Touma 1996:11,68-69). Andalusian culture developed two popular new poetic forms, thus breaking the dominance the qasida had formerly enjoyed: (1) the classical muwashshah; (2) the colloquial zajal. Their stanzaic forms rendered these more suitable for music than the qasida's distiches (Goldziher and Desomogyi 1966:135), and they continue to be used throughout the contemporary Arab world (al-Faruqi 1975).

The cultural efflorescence of Andalusia, situated at the interface between Islamic and Christian worlds, directly influenced the latter. Works by Andalusian scholars (such as philosopher Ibn Rushd, aka Averroës, d. 1198) were translated to Latin, and distributed throughout Christian Europe (Lapidus 1988:383-384). There is also much evidence for musical influence; thus the European lute stems morphologically and etymologically from the Arabic one (al-'ud); 'guitar' comes from Arabic 'qitar', and Arab song appears to have influenced songs of medieval Europen minstrelsie (Farmer 1970:4; Goldziher and Desomogyi 1966:135). Though its extent has been debated, the putative facticity of this influence is key to constructions of musical history among contemporary Arabs.

In North Africa, the classical forms of al-musiqa al-andalusiyya (nawba or ala in Morocco, san'a in Algiers, and ma'luf in Tunis) are valorized (by dominant ideology) as the very musical forms of Andalusian courts (and transferred by emigrants), whose contemporary stylistic differences result only from synchronic differences among various Andalusian court traditions (such as Seville, Cordoba, and Granada) (Touma 1996:70). Though this myth is sustained by anonymous ascription of musical pieces, and the symbolic value of Andalusia, musical and historical analysis suggests that Andalusian repertoires in different parts of North Africa developed quasi-independently, due to vagaries of oral tradition and contrasting regional histories. (Davis 1996a:423-4; Davis 1996b:316).

Likewise, Egyptians and Levantines associate the muwashshah (qua musical genre) with Andalusia (“al-muwashshah al-andalusiyya”), though evidence suggesting a continuous musical linkage to Andalusia is even weaker than for North African music, and there is plenty of evidence suggesting discontinuities, including differences in poetic meter, and innovations by well-known composers of Syria and Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the Syrian 'Umar Batsh (1885-1950), and the Egyptian Sayyid Darwish (1892-1923) (Touma 1996:83-84).

Five widely-cited attributes render Andalusia a potent and affective symbol in the modern Egyptian imagination: (1) Muslim military victories over Christian Europe; (2) enlightened rulers; state patronage of arts and sciences; tolerance of religious diversity; and intellectual freedom; (3) consequently: the flowering of scholarly and artistic achievements; (4) the influence of Andalusian culture in kindling the European renaissance; (5) the romantic (almost Edenic) tragedy of loss and exile, a metaphor for all lost “golden ages” and utopias.

These features combine to project Andalusia as asserting the greatness of the Arabs, inverting the contemporary power relations between the Arabs and the west, constituting proof that Western modernity is indebted to the Arabs, and suggesting that greatness is again possible. At the same time, Andalusia invokes powerful feelings of nostalgia.

While Andalusia has served as a potent literary symbol for centuries (Aboul-Ela 1999), it loomed particularly large in the ideological period of Arab nationalisms, from the 1950s onward. Andalusia resonates at many levels in literature of this period. Poems alluded to Andalusia as a symbol of lost beauty and hope (e.g. Nizar Qabbani, who saw “…in the fading glories of Alhambra the possibilities for a rebirth of the Islamic nation and Arab aesthetics” (Woffenden and Mitwalli 1998)), or exile (in poetry of Mahmoud Darwish); Yusuf Chahine's 1998 film al-Masir uses the decline of Andalusia as a means to critique contemporary Egyptian anti-liberalism.

“Egypt's liberal experiment,1922-1936” and the Spanish tinge
In the 19th c, urban Egyptian musical life centered upon varied folk and religious genres, and the more musically elaborate entertainments of popular singers with takht (Arab chamber ensemble) and choral accompaniment, incorporating much Ottoman influence. The latter, epitomized by stars such as 'Abdu al-Hamuli, Muhammad 'Uthman, and Yusuf Manyalawi, and patronized by elites, was associated with the ineffable aesthetic quality called tarab, “musical ecstasy” (Racy 1985). Performatively, the tarab style features impeccable intonation, proper treatment of the melodic modes (maqamat), improvisation and variation, unison or heterophonic textures, stately tempos, slow solo expressive singing, concentrated listening, and emotional feedback from audience to performer (See Racy 1991).

Alongside such “traditional” music were musical styles introduced from western Europe following the Napoleonic campaign of 1798, and supported by the determination of Muhammad 'Ali (r. 1805-1848) and his descendents to modernize the country along European lines. The late 19th century saw the first stirrings of Egyptian nationalism (Vatikiotis 1969:136ff; Holt 1966:211ff). Paradoxically, though turned against British oppression, such stirrings were inspired by European enlightenment ideals. Culturally, politically, and technically Europe presented the highest model for many educated Egyptians, the very definition and source of modernity. (See Hourani 1983) Broad admiration for European culture produced many attempts to emulate it. In music, these included European-style military bands, Italian opera, French-inspired theater, and Western instruments (especially violin, piano, and accordion) (Racy 1985).

The pace of change accelerated rapidly in the early 20th century, with a larger, more educated populace; urbanization; development of technical infrastructure (Hourani 1991:333ff); and the corresponding rise of commercial media mass-markets, especially phonograms (from 1904), radio (from the 1920s), and musical film (1930s) (Racy 1978; Castelo-Branco 1987:32-35). Pressured by change, the elaborate 19th c musical genres swiftly declined in the 1920s (Racy 1988:139). Flexible musical forms, improvisation, and small chamber ensembles gave way to more fixed arrangements, and larger orchestras. But the core aesthetic of tarab continued to dominate urban Egyptian music until the 1970s as what Racy calls the “neutral canvas” upon which all innovations were painted as “colors” (alwan) in the central domain of music in Cairo (Racy 1982:391-397).

Forces of nationalism sprang forth violently as the Revolution of 1919 (Sayyid-Marsot 1977:4), and Britain bestowed a nominal independence in 1922; thereafter the khedive became king, and a multiparty constitutional parliamentary democracy was installed featuring some measure of liberal political values until 1952 (but especially before 1936, when the Anglo-Egyptian treaty was signed) (Sayyid-Marsot 1977). The privileged status of Europeans, the presence of large Mediterranean expatriate community, and French-speaking Egyptian elites ensured a cosmopolitan diversity and openness to foreign influences, at least in Alexandria and Cairo. Political, social, and economic modernization proceeded rapidly to “push Egypt squarely into the modern age” (Sayyid-Marsot 1977:6). Political liberalization, combined with continued de facto British control, European economic dominance, a broad Egyptian acknowledgement of European cultural superiority, and the commercial forces of new entertainment media and industries, all encouraged incorporation of European musical styles into Arab music. But foreign influence was more free-wheeling prior to the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, after which foreigners were forced out, and Egyptian nationalism turned from European enlightenment ideals to the more rigid hegemonic forms of a military regime, including a purposive “cultural policy” (el-Shawan 1979:113-115).

Composer and singer Muhammad 'Abd al-Wahhab (1897?-1991), whose artistic personality crystallized in the atmosphere of early nationalism, modernization, the monarchy, and Europe (including travels under the tutelage of his poet-mentor Ahmad Shawqi (Danielson 1997:171; Armbrust 1996:72)), was a famous exponent of European modernism within an “eastern” matrix (Armbrust 1996:63-93). He once stated that “…most of our traditions now follow western lines, which has taken control of our life and the form of our social and artistic activities. There is no harm in this. Foreign influence, adapting to the world renaissance, is necessary for evolution. We must bring western instruments into Eastern music…and new melodies…but also hold to our eastern spirit.” But music, he said, should be a true eastern creation, even if it appears in western garb (al-Hifni 1999:54-55).

John Storm Roberts' The Latin Tinge recounts the spread of Latin musics to North America (where new fusions and hybrids emerged) and around the globe. The motive force was the unique relation between US market power, media, capital, and attraction for “exotic” musical forms just south of the border. Fads were triggered through commercial entertainment mass media. Thus a craze for Argentine tango (deriving from Spanish gypsy music via Cuba) swept the US following the success of a 1913 musical show, The Sunshine Girl, featuring dancers Vernon and Irene Castle (Roberts 1979:15,44). Interest in Latin music affected Tin Pan Alley songs in the 1920s, which were disseminated widely (Roberts 1979:50). In 1931 Don Azpiazu's hit “The Peanut Vendor” ushered in a new craze for the (Americanized) Cuban rumba (Roberts 1979:76). In the 1940s Latin musicians received more publicity; new forms such as mambo and Latin jazz emerged (Roberts 1979:100). Primarily driven by the engine of the American music industry, the popularity of Latin music soon became international (Roberts 1979:212ff).

Despite stylistic differences between tarab and Latin musics (especially the latter's use of functional harmony), early 20th c Egypt was remarkably susceptible to this trend. 'Abd al-Wahhab frequently deployed Spanish influences in the 1930s, when the Latin Tinge was so potent in Europe and North America: Spanish castanets in “Fi il-leel lamma khala”; Argentine tango in “Marreet 'ala beet il-habayib”, and “Sahrat minnu al-layali” (al-Hifni 1999:53). In the 1950s he composed “Ahibbak wa inta fakirni” (harmonized tango); and a rumba groove in “Khi khi”. Such songs were extremely popular. Yet, true to his words, 'Abd al-Wahhab's music is founded on an “eastern” tarab base, the “neutral canvas” upon which various colors, from Latin to Beethoven to tango, are layered, often obscuring but never permanently negating the tarab aesthetic (Racy 1982).

But while introduction of tango and other musical material was certainly innovative, the Western identity (as they were often heard) of such “borrowings” could also be ideologically critiqued, even as their meanings are subject to debate among Egyptians today. Along with many Arabs, 'Abd al-Wahhab believed that the West is indebted to the East. No doubt reacting to criticism, he stated that his western borrowings are “…nothing more than the Oriental art of our ancestors, which had originally made its way into the western consciousness…being returned to us” (Okasha 2000). Here is a prefiguring of the Andalusian argument, elaborated below, which continues to strongly color Arab borrowings of Spanish and Latin musics today.

Similarly, Farid al-Atrash (1910?-1974), a Syrian Druze who lived most of his life in Cairo, innovated on the tarab tradition, without abandoning it. Farid was especially famous for his brilliant solo 'ud improvisations (taqasim); a style featuring flamenco melodies, harmonies, and rhythmic techniques was widely esteemed and imitated (Zuhur 2001:271). Like 'Abd al-Wahhab, Farid used Latin music in a number of precomposed songs, including orchestrated tangos such as “Ya zahra fi khayyal” (replete with Latin harmonizations and accordion, from his 1947 film, Habib al-'Umr), and “Ana wa illi bahibbu” (from his 1950 film, Akhir kidba).

The lag between the western tango craze of the 1920s, and its appearance in Egyptian songs from the 1930s-50s, foreshadows a pattern, and contemporary criticism of Egyptian musical borrowings: that they constitute delayed reactions to world trends, inferior imitations, rather than innovations, indicative of cultural dependency and lack of self-confidence.

Despite the various overlays, the tarab style continued to flourish into the 1970s. But by then new changes were underway.

The roots of the contemporary pop explosion: 1970s to early 1980s
Following the Egyptian revolution of 1952, the development of Arab socialist nationalism by a popular and charismatic president helped restore Egyptian self-esteem. For the first time since antiquity Egypt was boldly independent, a self-directed leader among the new Arab nations. The state strictly controlled the national economy; large businesses were nationalized, and most foreigners left. 'Abd al-Nasir's ideology, while it certainly did not preclude foreign cultural influence, discouraged imports, and encouraged artistic self-confidence, self-sufficiency, and export. Already geographically and demographically central to the Arab world, under his leadership Egypt became the ideological, political, and cultural center as well. Governmental support and monopolization of the media (radio, TV, film, and phonograms), and special attention to particular singers, such as Umm Kulthum and 'Abd al-Halim Hafiz, established Egypt's musical influence throughout the Arab world (Hourani 1991:340, 393); Umm Kulthum's musical dominance is nearly a metaphor of state control: the Voice of Egypt (Danielson 1997). But by the mid 1960s, the system was faltering. Nasserism, as it came to be called, became inefficient and corrupt, and dreams of modern development, justice, and power were continually deferred (Aulas 1982:7). Some of the hypocrisies of the system were revealed by Egypt's defeat in the 1967 war with Israel, and with the death of 'Abd al-Nasir in 1970 his eponymous ideology was fatally shaken too.

After the 1973 war, Nasir's successor Anwar Sadat took a new tack with his “open door” policy (infitah), laissez-faire economics opening the economy to foreign investment and imports, and establishing free trade zones in Port Said and elsewhere, in the hopes of attracting foreign capital so that Egypt could follow in the footsteps of model nations such as Brazil (the Latin American model) and South Korea (Aulas 1982:7-8). Culturally the infitah was a move towards the West, and away from the Soviets with whom Nasir had been close.

But the result was economic chaos and social upheaval, as Egypt's statist economy was rapidly integrated into the world market (Aulas 1982:8). New economic opportunities (legal and illegal) beckoned from every direction (including commercial music ventures), and a nouveau riche of entrepreneurs emerged with new musical tastes. Those tastes would become increasingly important as the private sector music industry developed its sophistication to target lucrative markets. But inflation was rampant, while government wages were nearly fixed. Many rural areas were impoverished, and the cities swelled with rural immigrants, providing ever-greater markets for the new entrepreneurs. A rift between rich and poor opened. At the same time, the developing Gulf states were becoming rich with oil, and needed labor (Aulas 1982:14-15). During the 1970s and 80s, Egyptians worked abroad, sending home remittances and returning with new gadgets, now also available in Egypt's newly expanded import market. Most relevant to the current discussion was the widespread purchase of tape players, and television sets, which hastened musical commodification, and broadened markets. Though the infitah failed to attract much foreign capital, it did expand the internal market for imports (Aulas 1982:11,15). That market demanded capital equipment and media to fuel the cassette music revolution. Cassette blanks, recorders, and duplication equipment, cheaper than their phonodisc predecessors, became available. Musicians could more easily import musical equipment, such as amplifiers and foreign-made instruments.

Suddenly it was more feasible for small businesses to produce recordings in private studios. The government could not easily regulate production, and the new culture of infitah was well disposed to entrepreneurial ventures. Decentralized production meant development of many more market niches: rather than a dominant 'central domain' (Racy 1982:391-392), multiple competing domains emerged, reflecting the newly competitive private sector (Castelo-Branco 1987).

But the infitah was also a cultural reorientation towards the West. Under Nasir, Egyptian radio broadcast a daily program of western music called “al-Shari' al-Gharbi” (the Western Street). The Sadat years greatly increased direct Western media exposure. Two popular television programs, “Ikhtarna lak” (we chose for you) and “al-'Alam yughanni” (the world sings) brought western programming to all Egyptians with access to TV (and the percentage was rapidly increasing), including the West's culture of musical style, performance, and reception. Spanish flamenco, and Julio Iglesias, were popular on these programs. Cassettes of western popular stars, original or bootleg copies, became widely available.

The import of Western tastes and cultural products dovetailed with the import of Western modes of production and economic organization. Western popular music became more available, and more desirable. The largest market was the young generation, maturing under infitah, for whom the old tarab style was too heavy and old-fashioned. They longed for something new: shorter, faster songs, with more Western content.

Cultural influence was not only from the West, however. The rise of petro-dollars, combined with an increasing migrant worker population, increased influence from the east. Singers began to direct songs to rich Gulf (khaligi) Arabs summering in Cairo, or via media. Egyptian workers returned with a taste for khaligi musical styles. Islamism, inspired by Saudi and local preachers (and supported by Sadat for political ends), expanded rapidly in the 1980s, spearheading a new feeling of anti-Westernism.

Singers such as Warda, Nagat, and Hani Shakir continued the tarab tradition, as represented by Umm Kulthum, Farid al-Atrash, and 'Abd al-Halim Hafiz (though significantly all three passed away in the mid 1970s, and 'Abd al-Wahhab was no longer very active). Each of the younger tarab generation strove to be the khalifa (successor) of the predecessors, though none succeeded in revitalizing the tarab tradition. Correspondingly, the tarab style, until then the primary matrix for urban music, began to lose its status as the 'neutral canvas' of a 'central domain'. 6 Instead two new (not entirely separable) types arose, rejecting that canvas: musiqa sha'biyya, and musiqa shababiyya. Both inhibited tarab via short fast songs, simple melodies, and a dance-like ethos. (See also Danielson 1996:301)

Musiqa sha'biyya (“popular” music) is based in rural song, combined with urban lower class dance music, and some western instrumentation (including synthesizers). This style is the musical response to rapid ruralization of the cities: lowbrow, appealing to inhabitants of popular districts. Performers such as Ahmad 'Adawiyya, Hasan al-Asmar, and 'Abdu al-Iskandarani updated older traditions of mawwal and zagal (genres of folk song), and risque wedding songs, by modernizing the instrumentation and addressing urban life without losing a folk feel, full of improvisation and flexible interaction. Suggestive lyrics earned this material the moniker “aghani habta” (low songs) (Armbrust 1996:180-190; Danielson 1996:307).

Musiqa shababiyya (youth music) fused western popular music styles and instruments with Arab characteristics. This new “bub” (pop) music (sometimes mislabeled “jil” in the West (Werner 2000), a term Egyptians generally do not use) retains Arabic language, lyrical meanings, and elements of the tarab vocal style, thus addressing local aesthetic preferences. Arab percussion is typically retained as well. As one of my respondents put it, despite evident Westernization, there is a “Eastern spirit” in this music. But this spirit blends with the grooves of western popular musics (rock, jazz, funk, or disco), featuring trapset, keyboards, bass, and guitar, and often employs melodic and functional harmony as well. Composers and arrangers are central; performances are often multitracked; there is consequently less room for vocal interpretation or interactions. Unlike the tarab tradition, the music's social identity sometimes centers on the band rather than the singer. Shababi music is directed at educated middle-upper classes who appreciate western styles, though it can be popular at many levels.

Out of these swirls of mixing cultures, several key musicians, bands, and styles emerged in shababi music. Hani Shanuda popularized the org (Arabic synthesizer)7; the first generation of Arab-Western bands included the Blackcoats, and the Petit Chats (with Hani Shanuda on keyboard) in the early 1970s In 1977, Hani Shanuda's band, al-Masriyyin, became famous, paving the way for many of today's shababi stars (Ghazaleh 2001; Armbrust 1996:186); Another popular 1970s group was the Jets, blending western rock with Arabic lyrics and sensibilities.

Samir al-Iskandarani combined harmonic disco grooves with Arabic percussion and classical muwashshahat in his 1978 album Layali Disco. Around the same time, Muhammad Nuh combined disco with popular Sufi music. Muhammad Munir's upbeat blends of Nubian, Egyptian, and western popular music were very popular, though media recognition was slow. Working with Hani Shanuda, he startled Egypt in the late 1970s with Binitwilid, featuring rock guitar, keyboards, trapset and harmony on an Arab groove, with a non-traditional philosophical text by 'Abd al-Rahim Mansur. Jazzy and inimitable, Munir was one of the first Egyptian singers blending Arab and European styles to achieve popular acclaim in Europe (he recorded with German rock bands Embryo and Logic Animal (Swedenburg 1997:95; Gehr 1997:33)).

Their post-colonial relationships made popular music cultural connections to Europe much stronger in North Africa than in Egypt. Two Libyans were central in the development of modern Egyptian pop. One is Nasir al-Mizdawi, whose songs feature Arabic lyrics and vocal style on a sophisticated pop-jazz base. al-Mizdawi's first tape became extremely popular in Egypt in the mid 1970s, influencing Egyptian musicians. The other is Hamid al-Sha'iri, who came to Egypt in the 1970s. Building upon al-Mizdawi's name and Libyan-European aesthetics, al-Sha'iri popularized the fast upbeat song in the mid 1980s.

Many of the innovators of shababi music continue to be active, though the field is much more densely populated today. al-Mizdawi has continued to influence Egyptian musicians, having composed many songs for Egyptian pop stars, including Amr Diab's most well-known song, “Nur al-'ayn” (1996). Muhammad Munir and Hamid al-Sha'iri remain among Egypt's top singers. Besides producing his own material, al-Sha'iri composes and arranges for many other singers; including arrangements for many of Amr Diab's recent albums. Hani Shanuda composed four songs on Amr Diab's first cassette (Ya Tariq, 1985), and arranged all of them; he continues to compose and arrange for others.

In both new styles, the vocalist is a pop culture star (nigm), though not a mutrib (producer of tarab) in the strict sense. Since the broadcast media were still controlled by the state, these new types were at first largely excluded from TV and radio, and developed via the new cassette industry--especially sha'bi (Armbrust 1996:184).

The 1970s witnessed a renewal in North American Latin music. In New York a developing hot, creative style, primarily combining jazz and Cuban influences, diffused under a new label: salsa. Latin rock emerged in the early 1970s. (Roberts 1979:186-191) These trends were to color Egyptian shababi music, or even transform it entirely.

Ethnohistory: Egyptians' interpretations of the Spanish tinge
I asked a variety of thoughtful Egyptians, living in Egypt, in Europe, and in Canada, to interpret and explain the recent profusion of Spanish and Latin sounds in Arab pop (shababi) music. Why Spanish, and why now? Discussions took place in person, by telephone, by e-mail, on listservs, and Internet bulletin boards. I used the career of Amr Diab as my central example, though discussions ranged widely.

Responses are categorized below, according to the kind of arguments used. Sorting responses was not an easy task, and required considerable interpretive activity on my part. For one thing, respondents didn't always fill in the logical chain and implications of their arguments; in what follows I have attempted to elaborate each argument while remaining true to what I perceive as its spirit. Secondly, responses frequently touched on a number of logically distinct positions, which I attempted to disentangle. Third, the various enumerated arguments are often interdependent, exhibiting a network structure that I attempted (with difficulty) to linearize. My occasional comments are relegated to footnotes.

Music, history, and culture
Andalusian argument
Most respondents pointed to Andalusia as a key factor in the selection of Spanish (and Latin) music, indicating the enduring power of al-Andalus in the contemporary Egyptian imagination. Andalusian arguments for the contemporary Spanish tinge took two forms: (1) symbolic value, and (2) genealogical compatibility. Both are predicated on the notion that at root the Spanish tinge is connected to Arab culture.

Spanish (and by extension Latin) music is a symbol that invokes Andalusia, not merely due to its origins on Andalusian territory, but due to perceptions of a distant Andalusian source as well. Spanish and Latin musics are at least indebted to (or even represent the diffusion of) Arab culture. Egyptians hear flamenco, Spanish music generally, and Latin music by extension, as all pointing to the nostalgic glory of al-Andalus. They hear the 'ud in the guitar; flamenco's “ole” as a corruption of “Allah”. The sounding of Andalusian symbols makes them all the more affective; as one respondent commented, “when you hear Spanish music you feel that you contributed to its construction”. The Spanish tinge carries the positive value of Andalusia; reasserts the fact of Europe's debt to the Arabs; retrieves what was originally Arab (as 'Abd al-Wahhab emphasized); hence does not incur cultural indebtedness. All three factors are particularly important today, when many Arabs are feeling a sense of cultural despair.

Secondly, there is the argument of compatibility based on a shared genealogy. If Spanish and Arab musics flow from a common source, then it is only natural that they should produce a consonant mix. Arab constructions of music history (signaled by terms such as “muwashshahat andalusiyya” and “musiqa andalusiyya”) provide evidence of continuity, suggesting that other branches of the Andalusian genealogy should likewise be compatible. Emotionally, Arabs naturally respond to Spanish music. More generally, many Egyptians view Spanish and Arab culture as highly congruent, as if there is a distant shared bloodline extending back to Andalusia.8

Continuity of Western influence argument
The Spanish tinge of the 1990s should be identified as a continuous extension to the use of Spanish musics earlier this century, but now within the context of shababi songs. This in turn is an instance of a more general propensity for Western styles in Egyptian music, e.g. the 1960s Franco-Arab fad (including such hits as “Mustafa ya Mustafa”, sung in Arabic and French). Such electicism is long-standing, a product of Egypt's openness, reflecting a particular colonial history. Though strongly shaped by France and Britain, Egypt was never a formal colony of either (even among colonies, British indirect rule reduced cultural dominance). Large non-Egyptian populations (Greek, Armenian, Jewish, Italian) in Cairo and Alexandria ensured cultural diversity in centers of cultural production. Consequently, and most unlike North Africa, Egypt culture was open to a wide range of Western cultures, producing foreign musical influence. Even if the sound of the contemporary Spanish tinge is new, its acceptability is linked to earlier popularity of the same styles. The adoption of Spanish music also followed naturally from the adoption of the guitar as a Western instrument in the 1970s. At first used to introduce jazz and rock styles, Egyptians associated the acoustic guitar with flamenco and Latin musics, facilitating entry of those musics. At the same time, from the 1970s onwards Spanish music (with the growth of salsa, Latin rock, and Latin pop) was increasingly important in mainstream Western popular music. Egyptian musicians following Western trends thus introduced Spanish styles.

Modern Latin American argument
Since 1952, Latin America has carried a special significance to Egypt, more so than any other region of the developing world. At first there was a sense that Latin America was structurally and culturally parallel to the Arab world, comprising poor third world countries (though not the poorest of the poor), manipulated by foreign imperialists. The struggles with poverty, against dictators, to achieve freedom, justice, democracy, and economic growth, were shared. Latin American liberation figures, such as Simon Bolivar, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara (who met with Nasir) were cultural heroes to a segment of Egypt's revolutionary elites. Later, when Latin American countries achieved some measure of democracy and economic prosperity, Arabs wondered why, given their parallel conditions, they couldn't achieve the same thing. Since the 1970s, Latin American writers such as Marquez and Borges have been extremely influential in Egypt, and admired for their worldwide influence. In music (as in politics) the history of Latin America sets a standard for Egyptians to match: a “third world” music with European connections, which has become popular and influential world-wide, but especially in the West. By incorporating Latin music, Egyptians are identifying with Latin America and aspiring to what it has achieved.

Musical compatibility argument
Without necessarily invoking Andalusian genealogy, respondents frequently pointed to the compatibility of Arab and Spanish musics, as ensuring the Spanish tinge's aesthetic success. The compatibility is timbral (both musics center on similar stringed instruments), rhythmic (Arab cycles such as bamb and malfuf mesh easily with clave), and formal. Unlike traditional Arab music, Spanish music is harmonic and does not quartertones; however since the 1970s Arab music has developed harmony, and gradually reduced the use of quartertones. Furthermore, two Arabic scales lacking quartertones are central to Spanish musics: nahawand (analogous to the Western minor mode), and kurd (analogous to flamenco's Phrygian scale); furthermore, these two modes stir musical emotion quickly, an important quality for short shababi songs (in which there is no time for the longer modal developments and modulations of older tarab music).

Mediterranean argument
For some respondents the presence of Spanish (and by extension Latin) music reflects more general cultural mixing and borrowing around the Mediterranean, including also North African, French, Greek, Italian, Turkish. (For instance, Amr Diab has worked with Algerian, Greek, and Turkish musicians; Greek music of Zorba or Demis Roussos has been popular in Egypt.) Throughout history, Mediterranean peoples mixed and shared, due to proximity, and similar environments. Mediterranean cultures are “hot”, as opposed to the “colder” cultures of northern and eastern Europe. In Egypt, the Mediterranean cities, Alexandria and Port Said (birthplace of Diab), were important sites for cultural interaction, and the locus of much musical innovation. Mediterranean neighbor Libya also played a key role, since Libya maintained close ties to the west (especially Italy) until the 1969 coup, while Egypt was more closed. After 1969, when Qadhafi made conditions difficult, several Western-influenced musicians (including Nasir al-Mizdawi, Hamid al-Sha'iri) emigrated, and become influential in Egypt.

Passing of the stars argument
Umm Kulthum, 'Abd al-Halim Hafiz, and Farid al-Atrash, three of the four greatest vocal stars of Egypt's mid-century tarab tradition, passed away in the mid 1970s. Due to a shifted zeitgeist (see below), and (according to some) a paucity of equivalent vocal talent, younger singers found it impossible to take their places, though many tried. This fact created an aesthetic vacuum, which had to be filled with something new. The introduction of the Spanish tinge was a delayed reaction whose development required another fifteen years, after experiments with rock, disco, jazz and other styles had run their course.

Rupture of history and ahistoricality of the musical sign argument
Egypt is an ancient civilization, which has always borrowed from other cultures, while maintaining continuity through a cultural grasp of its own history. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with advances in education, that grasp strengthened; the golden age occurred in the 1930s and 40s. The military-backed revolution of 1952 crushed this budding enlightenment; the educational system declined because revolutionary leaders were not themselves well educated; history was sacrificed to ideology. Blinded by the present, Egyptians lost their cultural memory, and an unprecedented rupture in historical continuity loomed.

The use of Spanish styles in post-revolutionary Egypt has nothing to do with Andalusia, or with Spanish-inflected music of the interwar period; it is rather an ahistorical musical sign designed to produce aesthetic pleasure for profit. Popularized in the 1990s, videoclip images (extending the power of musical products to dominate the visual as well as auditory field) play an important role in determining an ahistorical musical meaning, by gratifying and capturing more senses, riveting attention on the present. Watching videoclips of Spanish-tinged Arabic music, one sees white palaces, blue sky, clear water, beautiful girls dancing and singing, gorgeous sunsets. These are not signs of Andalusia, but rather ahistorical kitsch, designed to sell. Objectively the Spanish tinge may extend throughout history, but experientially one cannot connect present manifestations to that past.

The Zeitgeist of westernization, globalization, instability arguments
Several respondents postulated that music necessarily reflects cultural ethos, or zeitgeist. As the Egyptian zeitgeist became more Western, Western musical styles became more appropriate for Egyptian cultural expression, and hence are appropriated in the new shababi songs. As Latin music mixed into the Western mainstream (over the past two decades), it naturally appeared (albeit delayed) in Egyptian music as well.

A related argument holds that in the 1990s the Egyptian zeitgeist is becoming not more Western, but more global; or that the concept (if not the content) of the global and globalization is itself central to the Egyptian ethos. Latin/Spanish music's popularity in Egypt results not from its Western, but from its global popularity and meaning. Latin/Spanish music is global; furthermore (due to global spread and internal hybridity) it represents the concept of the global.

A third version holds that Egyptians feel insecure; everything is unstable in Egypt today. Egyptians don't know who they are or even what they want; rapid stylistic change reflects this uncertainty.

Music, politics, ideology
Music, politics, and post-ideology arguments
Several respondents stated or implied that Egyptian culture has been more open to foreign influence (interpreted as modernization) when its politics are more progressive. Two contrasting applications of this principle emerged.

In one interpretation, Egyptian progressiveness is associated with the pre-revolutionary period, particularly 1922-1952, when foreign musical influence was strongest in the music of 'Abd al-Wahhab and others. In this period models of modernity were drawn from European culture, through which came Latin music. During the Nasir years, socialist nationalism and statism caused Egypt to be more isolated. In the 1970s, with the infitah, and the decline of nationalism and Nasserism, Egyptian culture was again open to foreign economic, political, and cultural influence. But now diversity and globalism replaced Europe as a criterion for modernity. Throughout this experimental period a variety of musical influences appeared, to be sifted and sorted over the following decades; certain styles (including Spanish) ultimately emerged as most suitable (for any of the reasons presented earlier).

In a second interpretation, the pre-revolutionary period, as well as the mid 1960s, are viewed as progressive, in contrast to the reactionary 1970s. In the mid 60s, Egyptians were optimistic and confident about their progress towards modernity and global greatness. Though politics were not free, they were forward looking; reactionary Islamism was weak. Despite Nasir's anti-western rhetoric, western fashions were wildly popular. The 1960s thus represented a kind of cultural infitah, an acceptance of Western cultural modernity. Optimism and progressivism were extinguished by the 1967 defeat, and subsequent death of Nasir. The 1970s economic infitah was simultaneously a cultural closing (inghilaq), due to the rise in Gulf (khaligi) cultural influence, and the concomitant rise of reactionary Islamism, which did not decline until the early 1990s, by which time other ideologies were spent as well. The rise of more sophisticated musical fusions between Egyptian and compatible Western styles (including the Spanish) became more possible in the post-ideological 1990s.

Ideological uniqueness argument
Ideologically, Latin America is uniquely empowered as being both “Third world” and Western, among all musics of the world. Even today, Egyptians view Western culture as superior, yet they also seek symbols of resistance to Western dominance. Egyptian music producers want to fuse Arab music with a music fulfilling ideological criteria of “Western”, but also “global” and “Third World”, opposing the hegemony of Anglo-American pop. Latin music, associated with Spain (hence Europe), popular in the West, global in diffusion and internal syncretism, nicely fits the bill. Egyptians regard African music, for instance, as too “Third World”. (An additional advantage is the fact that Spain was not, for Egypt, a colonial oppressor.)

Ideological failures argument
Arab ideologies of unity and progress have failed. Leadership is poor; hypocrisy is everywhere. There is no democracy or political freedom; Palestine is still oppressed; there is economic distress and imbalance everywhere. The brutal 1991 US-led Gulf war against Iraq, and an increasingly hard-line Israeli regime unconditionally supported by the US, induced a turn away from American culture. Instead, the musical themes of Andalusia (ancient golden age) and Latin America (contemporary model) have come to the fore.

The maturation of the music industry
The rise of the commercial music industry argument
With the decline in historical memory after 1952, Egyptian music began to be freed from its own past. The infitah of the 1970s, in both its technological and free-market economic dimensions, provided the critical push towards a totally commercialized market-driven music industry. The motive force is profit, and the shape of the market. Market forces, in the absence of historical memory, necessarily produced radical change. Egyptian music is no longer truly Egyptian. Music is created to please foreign tastes of non-Egyptians (especially Gulf Arabs), or Egyptians alienated from their history. Poorer Egyptians maintained historical continuity, but with little financial clout they weakly influenced the market-driven system of music production. The age of unconstrained commercial music started in the 1970s, but marketing matured in the 1990s; during this period the market became less encumbered by ideological constraints. With the significant advent of the videoclip (popularized in the 1990s), musical meaning expanded to the visual sphere, to be more cunningly manipulated for a market seeking pleasure, not historical continuity. Since videoclips are intensively watched on ordinary Egyptian TV, as well as by Arab audiences living abroad, this mode of musical meaning increasingly determines musical contents.

Egypt today is increasingly globalization, full of economic and cultural linkages to the outside world, particularly the West. Because of these interconnections, any outside commercial cultural trends will quickly penetrate Egyptian markets as well, though a short delay is to be expected.

Because Spanish music is globally popular, a Spanish tinge in Arab music appeared: to sell to an international market, to sell to a local Egyptian market that has adopted foreign tastes, and to appear more international in the local market.

Maturation in musical tastes argument
A more sanguine view holds that the contemporary popularity of the Spanish tinge represents a delayed cultural selection from the infinite variety and confusion of the infitah era, when everything suddenly became possible. In the initial flush of enthusiasm, Egyptians saturated themselves with foreign cultural influences. Over the following twenty years, they gradually sifted through these influences, and selected Spanish musics as most compatible with their own.

Local marketing argument
Particularly in post-Nasserist Egypt, Egyptian audiences want to feel importantly connected to global history, as a means of reestablishing cultural self-confidence and a sense of their own relevance to the wider world. Therefore they value global musical trends outside Egypt; they value western culture (which largely controls those trends); they value that which signifies the concept of the global; and they value Egyptians who attain international stature. By blending Arab and Latin/Spanish, Egyptian music producers not only tap into an existing Egyptian fascination with Latin/Spanish music itself, but also with the very concepts of “western trend”, “global trend”, and “global fusion” which that music signifies; “global fusion” is further symbolized by the Arab/Spanish mix itself. But one respondent reports that in Egyptian villages listeners don't recognize Spanish sounds at all, identifying such music only as “western”. In this case, the value of the Spanish tinge may depend on the foreign marketing argument.

Foreign marketing argument
By incorporating global trends into Egyptian music, producers aim to capture foreign markets, or at least to give the impression (to local markets) of making Egyptian singers relevant to foreign markets. The foreign market itself comprises two essential segments: those of Arab descent seeking connections to the “home country” (expats), and the non-Arabs “world music” market. Those of Arab descent, but born abroad, seek music reflecting their dual identity: combining local aesthetic standards with Arabic language and sound. Aside from its privileged economic position and expanding population, in the 1990s the importance of the Western-Arab market has sharply increased with better distribution of Arab music CDs (largely via Internet), and widespread Western consumption of Arab music via satellite broadcasts of “videoclips”, and music programs, in which song rankings are determined by viewers. Thus to a great extent Arab music is being driven by its foreign market. The world-wide popularity of Latin music (and its perceived connections to Arab music) make it an excellent choice for increasing sales abroad.9 The non-Arab Western market seeks world music: the exotic in a familiar base; Latin/Spanish music, being both mainstream and “other”, helps bridge Arabic and Western popular musics, and consequently markets.10

Maturation of star-creation process argument
The music industry, including singers and their producers, has learned how to manufacture stardom. This ability has naturally produced a plethora of new stylistic syncretisms, as performers actively seek out visual and sonic material by which to forge a star persona, balancing continuity, imitations, and distinctiveness. The conscious control of this process naturally led Egyptian singers to incorporate the style of world-famous Latin pop stars into a shababi pop base. 'Amr Diab is a good example. Though inspired by 'Abd al-Halim Hafiz's persona, he didn't insist on imitating 'Abd al-Halim too closely. Rather he followed the principle which had made 'Abd al-Halim successful, fusing continuity, modernity, and innovation in a musical style and image. Breaking free of Egyptian traditions, he sported western dress and haircuts, benefiting as the cutting edge of fashion. More specifically, he imitated international Latin singers, such as Ricky Martin, in order to endear himself to Egyptian fans.

Arbitrary difference argument
In the foregoing arguments, Latin and Spanish music do not carry any essential significance beyond representing trends happening in the West, or globally, or at least perceived as such. But this argument was also taken to a further extreme, by arguing that Spanish influence does not carry any particular significance at all, beyond the mere presentation of difference.

In the music mix, differentiation is necessary in three dimensions: differentiation from older tarab music to imply modernity; from the local to imply the global; and from previous mixes to imply innovation. If the first two establish Egyptian pop music as contemporary and international (like “world music” in the West), the third establishes a particular product or artist as unique. As Egyptian music is increasingly driven by a sophisticated profit-seeking music industry, new albums are created and consumed more quickly. The commercial maturation of the music industry means that the music field is increasingly crowded and competitive. Each singer therefore attempts either to be unique, or to imitate others who are already successful; the latter must relentlessly seek out new musical styles. Not only cassettes, but entire styles are rapidly consumed. Whereas the tarab era favored musical craftsmanship and innovation within a stable style, today radical stylistic change has great commercial value. Marketers favor globally popular non-Egyptian styles, never previously fused with shababi music, to enable a new cassette to “burst” (yitfar'a') on the scene, since otherwise the active bootleg cassette industry will reduce sales. Spanish influence is being used only to

Some Meanings of the Spanish Tinge in Contemporary Egyptian music

Michael Frishkopf

[Published in Mediterranean Mosaic, edited by Goffredo Plastino ( Routledge Publishing, 2002)]

Introduction
Arab popular music from the mid 1990s onward strikingly displays the influence of Spanish and Latin music styles: the Spanish tinge. While these musical fusions are relatively straightforward (if varied) in execution, their meanings are more complex. Mere consideration of the Arabic adjectives associated with Spanish influence - Latini, Andalusi, filimanku (flamenco), gharbi (western), bahrawsati (Mediterranean), 'alami (global) -- as well as the multiple categories into which Spanish-tinged songs are sorted - shababi (youth), hadis (modern), bub (pop) - suggest the dense tangle of meanings which Spanish-tinged Arabic music presents to Arab listeners.1 The present study aims to begin the process of unraveling these meanings, as understood by Egyptians. It is neither my intention to document the Spanish tinge exhaustively, nor to explain it in “objective” historical terms. Rather, my aim is hermeneutic “ethnohistory”2: to interpret how Egyptians themselves interpret the Spanish tinge as a historical trend; how they relate it to their past, explain its salience in the present, and assess what it means for the future. It is the production of historical knowledge, rather than reconstruction of history itself, which is the point of the study: to understand how people organize their own experience of music history. This chapter thus stands in the ethnographic more than the historiographic tradition. It constitutes a “second order” interpretation, the usual epistemological condition for cultural anthropology (Geertz 1973:15), not history.

This task is triply valuable, for: (1) illuminating ongoing cultural processes by which Egyptians construct coherent patterns of historical self-representation, processes which carry additional significance as co-generators of future history; (2) producing subjective evidence, via Egyptians' reflection upon their own lived experiences through history, interpretable as a means of accessing that history; (3) illuminating objective history directly, insofar as Egyptians are (being close to it) well-poised to comprehend it (without denying or forgetting that another kind of more “etic” history, while not performed here, is also crucial).

Despite the theoretical value of (2) and (3), I cautiously do not submit this research as a piece of historical work, but rather as ethnohistorical only. But the new Spanish tinge turned out to be such a rich symbol that in attempting to explain and interpret it, Egyptians automatically revealed more general attitudes about culture and cultural change in contemporary Egypt. Thus in the final analysis, investigation of “the Spanish tinge” is perhaps most useful as a kind of Rorschach test, a catalyst for the articulation of diverse cultural thinking active in Egypt today.

The scope of the Spanish tinge in Arab music today
Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton coined the phrase “Spanish Tinge” to refer to Latin influence in jazz (Williams 1970:28). Yet Spanish influence (broadly conceived to include Latin musics) has been strong worldwide, from the early 20th century onwards, and has lately surged into the mainstream due to new fusions, and the powerful engine of the American music industry. In 1975 a “Best Latin Recording” category was added to the Grammy awards; their “Best World Music album” award (established 1991) has gone to Latin artists in five of the previous 10 years (Grammy awards 2002). Latin megastars with broad appeal, such as Ricky Martin, Carlos Santana, and Shakira, have recently been dominating mainstream pop music charts, while successive albums by the Gipsy Kings (from southern France but drawing on flamenco and Latin traditions (See Gipsy Kings 2002) have ranked high on Billboard's world music chart since its inception in 1990 (Taylor 1997:5,209ff).3 All this has been marketed worldwide as Spanish/Latin culture, but also stands as “American”, “Western”, or “modern” culture (due to centers of production and popularity, mainstream industry status, and fusions: Latin-rock, Latin-pop, Latin-jazz), “global” culture (due to scope, “non-western” origins, and syncretisms), and as a symbol of globalization itself. Within Arab culture, the Spanish tinge also carries particular cultural and historical meanings, via medieval Andalusia, the Mediterranean, Europe, North America, Latin America, each of which is susceptible to multiple interpretations and valences.

Two factors, then, motivate this study. One is the striking rise of Spanish and Latin styles in Arab popular music over the last ten years. The other is the dense layering of its potential meanings within Arab culture, as linked to the broader significances attached to geographical regions, historical periods, and cultural processes. The Spanish tinge in Arab pop presents a rich symbolic lode for anthropological investigation.

The Spanish tinge in Egyptian pop music occurs primarily in the domain of “al-musiqa al-shababiyya” (youth music, already a fusion of older Arab music with western rock and pop). Spanish influence includes instrumental, timbral, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, textural, and occasionally linguistic resources. Most often, influence is manifested in acoustic guitar styles, both rhythmic and melodic (often an ersatz 'flamenco'); in Latin grooves and percussion; or in distinctive harmonic progressions. Within a song, Spanish influence may appear vertically, in short segments: introductions, instrumental interludes, or fills (lawazim) separating vocal phrases. At the level of album, influence is likewise vertical, since in the typically only one or two (out of 8 - 12) songs contain Spanish influence (though these are often the most popular). Or influence may appear horizontally, as one sonic layer within a shababiyya texture including also Arabic, Western rock/pop, and perhaps other styles as well. Occasionally the Spanish style constitutes the primary matrix for an entire song.

Amr Diab
Amr Diab4 is the most popular music star in Egypt today, and among the three or four most consistently popular singers in the Arab world, from the 1990s to the present. Diab has consistently innovated since his first album in 1986; his great fame and financial success ensures that his artistic decisions reach a vast audience, and spawn many imitators. Since the mid-1990s, Diab's output has increasingly displayed Spanish influence. His broad influence in defining contemporary Arab pop motivated me to place him at the center of my ethnographic inquiry. A brief examination of his life, representing a microcosm of most of the trends to be discussed, is thus apropos.5

Diab was born in 1961, to a middle class family in Port Said. For Egyptians, this city carries considerable symbolic importance for modernity, nationalism, and westernization, and Diab's modern image owes something to his birthplace. Located where the Suez Canal meets the Mediterranean, Port Said was founded in 1859 as the canal's Mediterranean port. Young by Egyptian standards, cosmopolitan, industrialized, Port Said was devastated by three wars (1956, 1967, 1973), but always returned to supply a wide range of goods, local and imported; after 1973 Port Said was declared a free-trade zone to encourage investments (Hamed 1981:3).Inclining towards music at an early age, he received encouragement from his family to pursue a career in music, studying at the music faculty of the Cairo Academy of Art in the mid 1980s. His first album Ya Tariq (1986) soon followed, and was an instant success. Since then he has released sixteen albums, and garnered many awards in recent years for best-selling Arab artist.

Beyond birthplace and talent, Diab's social and generational positions were instrumental in catapulting him to the vanguard of Egyptian pop. His career has coincided with rapidly increasing media sophistication of Arab pop styles; Diab was the first Egyptian singer to make extensive use of the fidiyuklib (“videoclip”, or music video), starting around 1990, and video broadcasts (especially to Arab communities abroad) have contributed greatly to his fame. His adoption of new western fashions in clothes and hairstyle contributes to his au courant image, setting standards for millions of Egyptian youth, as well as establishing him as source (hence symbol) of Western cool. His budding film career has further disseminated his image and music.

Gradually his career has become more international. Besides touring abroad, his use of foreign musical styles has garnered international acclaim, and his fan base has increasingly extended outside the Arab world; this fact in turn reflects and necessitates continued deployment of those styles. Indeed, the most striking feature of his 1990s output is the increasing diversification of music styles, especially Spanish and Latin. Some Arabs began to refer to his as the “Mediterranean sound”. His internationally acclaimed “Nur al-'Ayn” (1996), became popular in European discos, often remixed with dance grooves. Subsequently, Diab received a World Music Award (Monaco, 1998) for best global sales (in the newly established Middle Eastern category), alongside Mariah Carey, Puff Daddy, and the Backstreet Boys; the program (hosted by Gloria Estafan among others) was broadcast to 130 countries worldwide (though non-Western musics were evidently omitted in the American version) (Dezzani 1998). Diab reportedly stated that he considers this award as a first step towards popularizing Egyptian music internationally (Egypt guide 2002). At the ceremony his performance of the title track, cast in a flamenco/Gipsy Kings mold, was broadcast to an international audience. Subsequently his music, often remixed in various grooves, became popular in European discos. All this enhanced his image at home, too, even among those who do not ordinarily listen to (or even approve of) his music, for Diab's international recognition (as for Egyptian Nobel laureates Naguib Mahfuz (1988) and Ahmed H. Zewail (1999), whose works most Egyptians do not read) constitutes an important source of cultural pride and confirmation.

Though Spanish influence is most salient, Diab has experimented with other musical hybrids as well, including Turkish, North African, Greek, electronica, and hip-hop sounds. On his 1999 album Qamarayn he collaborated with Khaled, the star of French-Algerian Rai, and the Greek pop diva Angela Dimitriou (also famous in Turkey). “Wala 'ala baluh” (from Aktar Wahid, 2001) features a mix of classical Arab melody with techno and rap. A complex of features--Spanish, Arab, Western, Mediterranean, global--is thus evident in his life history and work.

The Spanish tinge: Amr Diab, Egypt, and beyond
What is the evidence for the Spanish tinge in Egypt? As principal trendsetter, a review of Diab's 1990s ouput (also foregrounded in my ethnographic investigation) is instructive; a few other examples can be mentioned to show that Diab is by no means alone. “Leeli” (from the album Shawa'na, 1990) imitates “Lambada”. “Eeh bass illi ramaak” (Habibi, 1992) opens with Spanish-style acoustic guitar, which returns for fills. On Ayamna (1993), “Hawak hayyarni” begins with conga sounds, and “Taba' el Hayah” features a Latin groove, plus Spanish guitar and Brazilian pop harmonies. However it is on Wi yilumuni (1995) that flamenco sounds appear in force, in “Ahlif bi il-layali” and “Wi yilumuni”. Ragi'in (1996) features a Latin groove on “Balash tikallimha”. The title track on Nur al-'Ayn (1996) presents the clearest example yet of a Spanish-flamenco groove, instrumentation, and harmonic progression, displacing the usual Arab pop matrix. 'Awwiduni (1998) features a Latin/flamenco groove and progression on “Kull il-kalam” and “Wi ghalawtik”, while “Milk Ideek” highlights Spanish guitar filigree. On Amareen (1999) the Latin/flamenco sound appears in the title track. Tamalli Ma'ak (2000) contains the Latin-based “Albi ikhtarak” (often compared to Santana's 1999 “Smooth”), and four songs infused with flamenco styles: “il-'Alam Allah”, “Sinin”, “Wi hiyya 'amla eeh”, and “Tamalli ma'ak”. Finally his latest album (Aktar Wahid, 2001) contains no fewer than seven (out of ten) songs displaying deep Latin or flamenco influences, including the title track; by now one feels that for Diab the Spanish tinge has moved beyond color (loon) or novelty, to become incorporated in his musical language and identity.

However the Spanish Tinge runs broader than Diab alone. Indeed, in the late 1990s most of Egypt's most popular contemporary singers deploy the Spanish Tinge at least occasionally: Angham in “Habbeetak leeh” (Latin); Hakim in the introduction to his “Isma' ya illi” (2000); Hisham 'Abbas in “Sami' albi” (2000) and “Inti il-wahida” (1999), among many; Ihab Tawfiq in “La khatar”, “Mushta'”, and “Amar il-layali” (1999). Mustafa Qamar deploys a rich Spanish texture in “'Ayshin” (2000) (including a flamenco singer) and “'Ayneek wahshani” (1999), and a Latin groove in “Tal il-leel” (1997). In 1997 Qatar's MusicBox International marketed a very popular cassette entitled Arabica Latina, featuring Spanish Gipsy/Flamenco and Latin music with Spanish and Arabic words, through a production company in Cairo. The Gipsy Kings themselves have concertized in Egypt since the mid 1980s; today they are well known, performing on television and for weddings.

Furthermore, the Spanish tinge in Arabic music affects more than Egypt. Latin influences are hot in Lebanon, as evidenced by productions of top stars such as Nawal al-Zughbi (particularly in “Tul Umri”, 2001), or Julia Boutros (Bisaraha, 2001), or Raghib Allama, and many others. From Iraq, Ilham al-Madfa'i (e.g. Ilham Al Madfai, 1999) deploys Latin-flamenco textures. Within the wider sphere of Arab-Spanish fusions, Egypt represents an important case study, in view of the continued centrality of the Egyptian music industry to the Arab world as a whole.

Historical sources for musical ethnohistory
What is the source of this Spanish tinge in 1990s Egyptian pop? The trajectories of musical culture are never easy to locate, not only because of the mass of musical data to be examined, or the difficulty in reconstructing the musical past, but because of the difficulty in assessing which phenomena are to be connected as historically continuous. But in this section I do not aim to analyze the objective sources of the contemporary Spanish tinge in Egyptian pop, much less to trace a continuous history from those origins to present. Rather I want to illuminate three historical periods which figure heavily in Egyptian interpretations of their own musical history.

Andalusia as historical past, and contemporary symbol
From North Africa, Muslim armies loyal to the Umayyad dynasty of Damascus took the Iberian Peninsula in 711-13, defeating the weak Spanish Visigoth Kingdom, and establishing the Muslim Iberian domain of al-Andalus. After the Umayyads fell to the Abbasids in 750, 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu'awiya (one of the former) escaped to al-Andalus where he managed to unify a fractious polity, and establish the Umayyad Marwanid dynasty of Cordoba (756-912). Various Muslim dynasties followed, most notably the Berber Almoravids (1056-1147) and Almohades (1130-1296). Following centuries of conflict with forces of the Spanish Reconquista, the last Muslim kingdom (Granada) fell in 1492. By this time most Muslims and Jews had emigrated to North Africa; those who remained converted to Christianity (Moriscos) but were expelled (mainly to North Africa) from 1609 to 1614. (Levi-Provencal 1999b; Levi-Provencal 1999a; Wiegers 1999; Goldziher and Desomogyi 1966:130)

The brilliant flowering of Arabo-Islamic Andalusian culture was catalyzed by rulers, who patronized the arts and learning, and funded such architectural marvels as the Alhambra. In the late 10th century, al-Hakam II founded a great library at Cordoba containing 400,000 volumes, facilitating high achievements in philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, art and architecture, literature, and music (Goldziher and Desomogyi 1966:131-132). Abu al-Hasan 'Ali ibn Nafi', better known as Ziryab, was a student of Ishaq al-Mawsili, court musician to Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786-809). Ziryab captured Harun's fancy, thereby arousing al-Mawsili's jealousy; the latter forced him to flee. Thus did Ziryab arrive at the Andalusian court of 'Abd al-Rahman II (r. 822-852), where he soon eclipsed all other musicians of al-Andalus, developing new musical forms, and establishing an influential Music School at Cordoba (Farmer 1973:/128-130; Touma 1996:11,68-69). Andalusian culture developed two popular new poetic forms, thus breaking the dominance the qasida had formerly enjoyed: (1) the classical muwashshah; (2) the colloquial zajal. Their stanzaic forms rendered these more suitable for music than the qasida's distiches (Goldziher and Desomogyi 1966:135), and they continue to be used throughout the contemporary Arab world (al-Faruqi 1975).

The cultural efflorescence of Andalusia, situated at the interface between Islamic and Christian worlds, directly influenced the latter. Works by Andalusian scholars (such as philosopher Ibn Rushd, aka Averroës, d. 1198) were translated to Latin, and distributed throughout Christian Europe (Lapidus 1988:383-384). There is also much evidence for musical influence; thus the European lute stems morphologically and etymologically from the Arabic one (al-'ud); 'guitar' comes from Arabic 'qitar', and Arab song appears to have influenced songs of medieval Europen minstrelsie (Farmer 1970:4; Goldziher and Desomogyi 1966:135). Though its extent has been debated, the putative facticity of this influence is key to constructions of musical history among contemporary Arabs.

In North Africa, the classical forms of al-musiqa al-andalusiyya (nawba or ala in Morocco, san'a in Algiers, and ma'luf in Tunis) are valorized (by dominant ideology) as the very musical forms of Andalusian courts (and transferred by emigrants), whose contemporary stylistic differences result only from synchronic differences among various Andalusian court traditions (such as Seville, Cordoba, and Granada) (Touma 1996:70). Though this myth is sustained by anonymous ascription of musical pieces, and the symbolic value of Andalusia, musical and historical analysis suggests that Andalusian repertoires in different parts of North Africa developed quasi-independently, due to vagaries of oral tradition and contrasting regional histories. (Davis 1996a:423-4; Davis 1996b:316).

Likewise, Egyptians and Levantines associate the muwashshah (qua musical genre) with Andalusia (“al-muwashshah al-andalusiyya”), though evidence suggesting a continuous musical linkage to Andalusia is even weaker than for North African music, and there is plenty of evidence suggesting discontinuities, including differences in poetic meter, and innovations by well-known composers of Syria and Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the Syrian 'Umar Batsh (1885-1950), and the Egyptian Sayyid Darwish (1892-1923) (Touma 1996:83-84).

Five widely-cited attributes render Andalusia a potent and affective symbol in the modern Egyptian imagination: (1) Muslim military victories over Christian Europe; (2) enlightened rulers; state patronage of arts and sciences; tolerance of religious diversity; and intellectual freedom; (3) consequently: the flowering of scholarly and artistic achievements; (4) the influence of Andalusian culture in kindling the European renaissance; (5) the romantic (almost Edenic) tragedy of loss and exile, a metaphor for all lost “golden ages” and utopias.

These features combine to project Andalusia as asserting the greatness of the Arabs, inverting the contemporary power relations between the Arabs and the west, constituting proof that Western modernity is indebted to the Arabs, and suggesting that greatness is again possible. At the same time, Andalusia invokes powerful feelings of nostalgia.

While Andalusia has served as a potent literary symbol for centuries (Aboul-Ela 1999), it loomed particularly large in the ideological period of Arab nationalisms, from the 1950s onward. Andalusia resonates at many levels in literature of this period. Poems alluded to Andalusia as a symbol of lost beauty and hope (e.g. Nizar Qabbani, who saw “…in the fading glories of Alhambra the possibilities for a rebirth of the Islamic nation and Arab aesthetics” (Woffenden and Mitwalli 1998)), or exile (in poetry of Mahmoud Darwish); Yusuf Chahine's 1998 film al-Masir uses the decline of Andalusia as a means to critique contemporary Egyptian anti-liberalism.

“Egypt's liberal experiment,1922-1936” and the Spanish tinge
In the 19th c, urban Egyptian musical life centered upon varied folk and religious genres, and the more musically elaborate entertainments of popular singers with takht (Arab chamber ensemble) and choral accompaniment, incorporating much Ottoman influence. The latter, epitomized by stars such as 'Abdu al-Hamuli, Muhammad 'Uthman, and Yusuf Manyalawi, and patronized by elites, was associated with the ineffable aesthetic quality called tarab, “musical ecstasy” (Racy 1985). Performatively, the tarab style features impeccable intonation, proper treatment of the melodic modes (maqamat), improvisation and variation, unison or heterophonic textures, stately tempos, slow solo expressive singing, concentrated listening, and emotional feedback from audience to performer (See Racy 1991).

Alongside such “traditional” music were musical styles introduced from western Europe following the Napoleonic campaign of 1798, and supported by the determination of Muhammad 'Ali (r. 1805-1848) and his descendents to modernize the country along European lines. The late 19th century saw the first stirrings of Egyptian nationalism (Vatikiotis 1969:136ff; Holt 1966:211ff). Paradoxically, though turned against British oppression, such stirrings were inspired by European enlightenment ideals. Culturally, politically, and technically Europe presented the highest model for many educated Egyptians, the very definition and source of modernity. (See Hourani 1983) Broad admiration for European culture produced many attempts to emulate it. In music, these included European-style military bands, Italian opera, French-inspired theater, and Western instruments (especially violin, piano, and accordion) (Racy 1985).

The pace of change accelerated rapidly in the early 20th century, with a larger, more educated populace; urbanization; development of technical infrastructure (Hourani 1991:333ff); and the corresponding rise of commercial media mass-markets, especially phonograms (from 1904), radio (from the 1920s), and musical film (1930s) (Racy 1978; Castelo-Branco 1987:32-35). Pressured by change, the elaborate 19th c musical genres swiftly declined in the 1920s (Racy 1988:139). Flexible musical forms, improvisation, and small chamber ensembles gave way to more fixed arrangements, and larger orchestras. But the core aesthetic of tarab continued to dominate urban Egyptian music until the 1970s as what Racy calls the “neutral canvas” upon which all innovations were painted as “colors” (alwan) in the central domain of music in Cairo (Racy 1982:391-397).

Forces of nationalism sprang forth violently as the Revolution of 1919 (Sayyid-Marsot 1977:4), and Britain bestowed a nominal independence in 1922; thereafter the khedive became king, and a multiparty constitutional parliamentary democracy was installed featuring some measure of liberal political values until 1952 (but especially before 1936, when the Anglo-Egyptian treaty was signed) (Sayyid-Marsot 1977). The privileged status of Europeans, the presence of large Mediterranean expatriate community, and French-speaking Egyptian elites ensured a cosmopolitan diversity and openness to foreign influences, at least in Alexandria and Cairo. Political, social, and economic modernization proceeded rapidly to “push Egypt squarely into the modern age” (Sayyid-Marsot 1977:6). Political liberalization, combined with continued de facto British control, European economic dominance, a broad Egyptian acknowledgement of European cultural superiority, and the commercial forces of new entertainment media and industries, all encouraged incorporation of European musical styles into Arab music. But foreign influence was more free-wheeling prior to the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, after which foreigners were forced out, and Egyptian nationalism turned from European enlightenment ideals to the more rigid hegemonic forms of a military regime, including a purposive “cultural policy” (el-Shawan 1979:113-115).

Composer and singer Muhammad 'Abd al-Wahhab (1897?-1991), whose artistic personality crystallized in the atmosphere of early nationalism, modernization, the monarchy, and Europe (including travels under the tutelage of his poet-mentor Ahmad Shawqi (Danielson 1997:171; Armbrust 1996:72)), was a famous exponent of European modernism within an “eastern” matrix (Armbrust 1996:63-93). He once stated that “…most of our traditions now follow western lines, which has taken control of our life and the form of our social and artistic activities. There is no harm in this. Foreign influence, adapting to the world renaissance, is necessary for evolution. We must bring western instruments into Eastern music…and new melodies…but also hold to our eastern spirit.” But music, he said, should be a true eastern creation, even if it appears in western garb (al-Hifni 1999:54-55).

John Storm Roberts' The Latin Tinge recounts the spread of Latin musics to North America (where new fusions and hybrids emerged) and around the globe. The motive force was the unique relation between US market power, media, capital, and attraction for “exotic” musical forms just south of the border. Fads were triggered through commercial entertainment mass media. Thus a craze for Argentine tango (deriving from Spanish gypsy music via Cuba) swept the US following the success of a 1913 musical show, The Sunshine Girl, featuring dancers Vernon and Irene Castle (Roberts 1979:15,44). Interest in Latin music affected Tin Pan Alley songs in the 1920s, which were disseminated widely (Roberts 1979:50). In 1931 Don Azpiazu's hit “The Peanut Vendor” ushered in a new craze for the (Americanized) Cuban rumba (Roberts 1979:76). In the 1940s Latin musicians received more publicity; new forms such as mambo and Latin jazz emerged (Roberts 1979:100). Primarily driven by the engine of the American music industry, the popularity of Latin music soon became international (Roberts 1979:212ff).

Despite stylistic differences between tarab and Latin musics (especially the latter's use of functional harmony), early 20th c Egypt was remarkably susceptible to this trend. 'Abd al-Wahhab frequently deployed Spanish influences in the 1930s, when the Latin Tinge was so potent in Europe and North America: Spanish castanets in “Fi il-leel lamma khala”; Argentine tango in “Marreet 'ala beet il-habayib”, and “Sahrat minnu al-layali” (al-Hifni 1999:53). In the 1950s he composed “Ahibbak wa inta fakirni” (harmonized tango); and a rumba groove in “Khi khi”. Such songs were extremely popular. Yet, true to his words, 'Abd al-Wahhab's music is founded on an “eastern” tarab base, the “neutral canvas” upon which various colors, from Latin to Beethoven to tango, are layered, often obscuring but never permanently negating the tarab aesthetic (Racy 1982).

But while introduction of tango and other musical material was certainly innovative, the Western identity (as they were often heard) of such “borrowings” could also be ideologically critiqued, even as their meanings are subject to debate among Egyptians today. Along with many Arabs, 'Abd al-Wahhab believed that the West is indebted to the East. No doubt reacting to criticism, he stated that his western borrowings are “…nothing more than the Oriental art of our ancestors, which had originally made its way into the western consciousness…being returned to us” (Okasha 2000). Here is a prefiguring of the Andalusian argument, elaborated below, which continues to strongly color Arab borrowings of Spanish and Latin musics today.

Similarly, Farid al-Atrash (1910?-1974), a Syrian Druze who lived most of his life in Cairo, innovated on the tarab tradition, without abandoning it. Farid was especially famous for his brilliant solo 'ud improvisations (taqasim); a style featuring flamenco melodies, harmonies, and rhythmic techniques was widely esteemed and imitated (Zuhur 2001:271). Like 'Abd al-Wahhab, Farid used Latin music in a number of precomposed songs, including orchestrated tangos such as “Ya zahra fi khayyal” (replete with Latin harmonizations and accordion, from his 1947 film, Habib al-'Umr), and “Ana wa illi bahibbu” (from his 1950 film, Akhir kidba).

The lag between the western tango craze of the 1920s, and its appearance in Egyptian songs from the 1930s-50s, foreshadows a pattern, and contemporary criticism of Egyptian musical borrowings: that they constitute delayed reactions to world trends, inferior imitations, rather than innovations, indicative of cultural dependency and lack of self-confidence.

Despite the various overlays, the tarab style continued to flourish into the 1970s. But by then new changes were underway.

The roots of the contemporary pop explosion: 1970s to early 1980s
Following the Egyptian revolution of 1952, the development of Arab socialist nationalism by a popular and charismatic president helped restore Egyptian self-esteem. For the first time since antiquity Egypt was boldly independent, a self-directed leader among the new Arab nations. The state strictly controlled the national economy; large businesses were nationalized, and most foreigners left. 'Abd al-Nasir's ideology, while it certainly did not preclude foreign cultural influence, discouraged imports, and encouraged artistic self-confidence, self-sufficiency, and export. Already geographically and demographically central to the Arab world, under his leadership Egypt became the ideological, political, and cultural center as well. Governmental support and monopolization of the media (radio, TV, film, and phonograms), and special attention to particular singers, such as Umm Kulthum and 'Abd al-Halim Hafiz, established Egypt's musical influence throughout the Arab world (Hourani 1991:340, 393); Umm Kulthum's musical dominance is nearly a metaphor of state control: the Voice of Egypt (Danielson 1997). But by the mid 1960s, the system was faltering. Nasserism, as it came to be called, became inefficient and corrupt, and dreams of modern development, justice, and power were continually deferred (Aulas 1982:7). Some of the hypocrisies of the system were revealed by Egypt's defeat in the 1967 war with Israel, and with the death of 'Abd al-Nasir in 1970 his eponymous ideology was fatally shaken too.

After the 1973 war, Nasir's successor Anwar Sadat took a new tack with his “open door” policy (infitah), laissez-faire economics opening the economy to foreign investment and imports, and establishing free trade zones in Port Said and elsewhere, in the hopes of attracting foreign capital so that Egypt could follow in the footsteps of model nations such as Brazil (the Latin American model) and South Korea (Aulas 1982:7-8). Culturally the infitah was a move towards the West, and away from the Soviets with whom Nasir had been close.

But the result was economic chaos and social upheaval, as Egypt's statist economy was rapidly integrated into the world market (Aulas 1982:8). New economic opportunities (legal and illegal) beckoned from every direction (including commercial music ventures), and a nouveau riche of entrepreneurs emerged with new musical tastes. Those tastes would become increasingly important as the private sector music industry developed its sophistication to target lucrative markets. But inflation was rampant, while government wages were nearly fixed. Many rural areas were impoverished, and the cities swelled with rural immigrants, providing ever-greater markets for the new entrepreneurs. A rift between rich and poor opened. At the same time, the developing Gulf states were becoming rich with oil, and needed labor (Aulas 1982:14-15). During the 1970s and 80s, Egyptians worked abroad, sending home remittances and returning with new gadgets, now also available in Egypt's newly expanded import market. Most relevant to the current discussion was the widespread purchase of tape players, and television sets, which hastened musical commodification, and broadened markets. Though the infitah failed to attract much foreign capital, it did expand the internal market for imports (Aulas 1982:11,15). That market demanded capital equipment and media to fuel the cassette music revolution. Cassette blanks, recorders, and duplication equipment, cheaper than their phonodisc predecessors, became available. Musicians could more easily import musical equipment, such as amplifiers and foreign-made instruments.

Suddenly it was more feasible for small businesses to produce recordings in private studios. The government could not easily regulate production, and the new culture of infitah was well disposed to entrepreneurial ventures. Decentralized production meant development of many more market niches: rather than a dominant 'central domain' (Racy 1982:391-392), multiple competing domains emerged, reflecting the newly competitive private sector (Castelo-Branco 1987).

But the infitah was also a cultural reorientation towards the West. Under Nasir, Egyptian radio broadcast a daily program of western music called “al-Shari' al-Gharbi” (the Western Street). The Sadat years greatly increased direct Western media exposure. Two popular television programs, “Ikhtarna lak” (we chose for you) and “al-'Alam yughanni” (the world sings) brought western programming to all Egyptians with access to TV (and the percentage was rapidly increasing), including the West's culture of musical style, performance, and reception. Spanish flamenco, and Julio Iglesias, were popular on these programs. Cassettes of western popular stars, original or bootleg copies, became widely available.

The import of Western tastes and cultural products dovetailed with the import of Western modes of production and economic organization. Western popular music became more available, and more desirable. The largest market was the young generation, maturing under infitah, for whom the old tarab style was too heavy and old-fashioned. They longed for something new: shorter, faster songs, with more Western content.

Cultural influence was not only from the West, however. The rise of petro-dollars, combined with an increasing migrant worker population, increased influence from the east. Singers began to direct songs to rich Gulf (khaligi) Arabs summering in Cairo, or via media. Egyptian workers returned with a taste for khaligi musical styles. Islamism, inspired by Saudi and local preachers (and supported by Sadat for political ends), expanded rapidly in the 1980s, spearheading a new feeling of anti-Westernism.

Singers such as Warda, Nagat, and Hani Shakir continued the tarab tradition, as represented by Umm Kulthum, Farid al-Atrash, and 'Abd al-Halim Hafiz (though significantly all three passed away in the mid 1970s, and 'Abd al-Wahhab was no longer very active). Each of the younger tarab generation strove to be the khalifa (successor) of the predecessors, though none succeeded in revitalizing the tarab tradition. Correspondingly, the tarab style, until then the primary matrix for urban music, began to lose its status as the 'neutral canvas' of a 'central domain'. 6 Instead two new (not entirely separable) types arose, rejecting that canvas: musiqa sha'biyya, and musiqa shababiyya. Both inhibited tarab via short fast songs, simple melodies, and a dance-like ethos. (See also Danielson 1996:301)

Musiqa sha'biyya (“popular” music) is based in rural song, combined with urban lower class dance music, and some western instrumentation (including synthesizers). This style is the musical response to rapid ruralization of the cities: lowbrow, appealing to inhabitants of popular districts. Performers such as Ahmad 'Adawiyya, Hasan al-Asmar, and 'Abdu al-Iskandarani updated older traditions of mawwal and zagal (genres of folk song), and risque wedding songs, by modernizing the instrumentation and addressing urban life without losing a folk feel, full of improvisation and flexible interaction. Suggestive lyrics earned this material the moniker “aghani habta” (low songs) (Armbrust 1996:180-190; Danielson 1996:307).

Musiqa shababiyya (youth music) fused western popular music styles and instruments with Arab characteristics. This new “bub” (pop) music (sometimes mislabeled “jil” in the West (Werner 2000), a term Egyptians generally do not use) retains Arabic language, lyrical meanings, and elements of the tarab vocal style, thus addressing local aesthetic preferences. Arab percussion is typically retained as well. As one of my respondents put it, despite evident Westernization, there is a “Eastern spirit” in this music. But this spirit blends with the grooves of western popular musics (rock, jazz, funk, or disco), featuring trapset, keyboards, bass, and guitar, and often employs melodic and functional harmony as well. Composers and arrangers are central; performances are often multitracked; there is consequently less room for vocal interpretation or interactions. Unlike the tarab tradition, the music's social identity sometimes centers on the band rather than the singer. Shababi music is directed at educated middle-upper classes who appreciate western styles, though it can be popular at many levels.

Out of these swirls of mixing cultures, several key musicians, bands, and styles emerged in shababi music. Hani Shanuda popularized the org (Arabic synthesizer)7; the first generation of Arab-Western bands included the Blackcoats, and the Petit Chats (with Hani Shanuda on keyboard) in the early 1970s In 1977, Hani Shanuda's band, al-Masriyyin, became famous, paving the way for many of today's shababi stars (Ghazaleh 2001; Armbrust 1996:186); Another popular 1970s group was the Jets, blending western rock with Arabic lyrics and sensibilities.

Samir al-Iskandarani combined harmonic disco grooves with Arabic percussion and classical muwashshahat in his 1978 album Layali Disco. Around the same time, Muhammad Nuh combined disco with popular Sufi music. Muhammad Munir's upbeat blends of Nubian, Egyptian, and western popular music were very popular, though media recognition was slow. Working with Hani Shanuda, he startled Egypt in the late 1970s with Binitwilid, featuring rock guitar, keyboards, trapset and harmony on an Arab groove, with a non-traditional philosophical text by 'Abd al-Rahim Mansur. Jazzy and inimitable, Munir was one of the first Egyptian singers blending Arab and European styles to achieve popular acclaim in Europe (he recorded with German rock bands Embryo and Logic Animal (Swedenburg 1997:95; Gehr 1997:33)).

Their post-colonial relationships made popular music cultural connections to Europe much stronger in North Africa than in Egypt. Two Libyans were central in the development of modern Egyptian pop. One is Nasir al-Mizdawi, whose songs feature Arabic lyrics and vocal style on a sophisticated pop-jazz base. al-Mizdawi's first tape became extremely popular in Egypt in the mid 1970s, influencing Egyptian musicians. The other is Hamid al-Sha'iri, who came to Egypt in the 1970s. Building upon al-Mizdawi's name and Libyan-European aesthetics, al-Sha'iri popularized the fast upbeat song in the mid 1980s.

Many of the innovators of shababi music continue to be active, though the field is much more densely populated today. al-Mizdawi has continued to influence Egyptian musicians, having composed many songs for Egyptian pop stars, including Amr Diab's most well-known song, “Nur al-'ayn” (1996). Muhammad Munir and Hamid al-Sha'iri remain among Egypt's top singers. Besides producing his own material, al-Sha'iri composes and arranges for many other singers; including arrangements for many of Amr Diab's recent albums. Hani Shanuda composed four songs on Amr Diab's first cassette (Ya Tariq, 1985), and arranged all of them; he continues to compose and arrange for others.

In both new styles, the vocalist is a pop culture star (nigm), though not a mutrib (producer of tarab) in the strict sense. Since the broadcast media were still controlled by the state, these new types were at first largely excluded from TV and radio, and developed via the new cassette industry--especially sha'bi (Armbrust 1996:184).

The 1970s witnessed a renewal in North American Latin music. In New York a developing hot, creative style, primarily combining jazz and Cuban influences, diffused under a new label: salsa. Latin rock emerged in the early 1970s. (Roberts 1979:186-191) These trends were to color Egyptian shababi music, or even transform it entirely.

Ethnohistory: Egyptians' interpretations of the Spanish tinge
I asked a variety of thoughtful Egyptians, living in Egypt, in Europe, and in Canada, to interpret and explain the recent profusion of Spanish and Latin sounds in Arab pop (shababi) music. Why Spanish, and why now? Discussions took place in person, by telephone, by e-mail, on listservs, and Internet bulletin boards. I used the career of Amr Diab as my central example, though discussions ranged widely.

Responses are categorized below, according to the kind of arguments used. Sorting responses was not an easy task, and required considerable interpretive activity on my part. For one thing, respondents didn't always fill in the logical chain and implications of their arguments; in what follows I have attempted to elaborate each argument while remaining true to what I perceive as its spirit. Secondly, responses frequently touched on a number of logically distinct positions, which I attempted to disentangle. Third, the various enumerated arguments are often interdependent, exhibiting a network structure that I attempted (with difficulty) to linearize. My occasional comments are relegated to footnotes.

Music, history, and culture
Andalusian argument
Most respondents pointed to Andalusia as a key factor in the selection of Spanish (and Latin) music, indicating the enduring power of al-Andalus in the contemporary Egyptian imagination. Andalusian arguments for the contemporary Spanish tinge took two forms: (1) symbolic value, and (2) genealogical compatibility. Both are predicated on the notion that at root the Spanish tinge is connected to Arab culture.

Spanish (and by extension Latin) music is a symbol that invokes Andalusia, not merely due to its origins on Andalusian territory, but due to perceptions of a distant Andalusian source as well. Spanish and Latin musics are at least indebted to (or even represent the diffusion of) Arab culture. Egyptians hear flamenco, Spanish music generally, and Latin music by extension, as all pointing to the nostalgic glory of al-Andalus. They hear the 'ud in the guitar; flamenco's “ole” as a corruption of “Allah”. The sounding of Andalusian symbols makes them all the more affective; as one respondent commented, “when you hear Spanish music you feel that you contributed to its construction”. The Spanish tinge carries the positive value of Andalusia; reasserts the fact of Europe's debt to the Arabs; retrieves what was originally Arab (as 'Abd al-Wahhab emphasized); hence does not incur cultural indebtedness. All three factors are particularly important today, when many Arabs are feeling a sense of cultural despair.

Secondly, there is the argument of compatibility based on a shared genealogy. If Spanish and Arab musics flow from a common source, then it is only natural that they should produce a consonant mix. Arab constructions of music history (signaled by terms such as “muwashshahat andalusiyya” and “musiqa andalusiyya”) provide evidence of continuity, suggesting that other branches of the Andalusian genealogy should likewise be compatible. Emotionally, Arabs naturally respond to Spanish music. More generally, many Egyptians view Spanish and Arab culture as highly congruent, as if there is a distant shared bloodline extending back to Andalusia.8

Continuity of Western influence argument
The Spanish tinge of the 1990s should be identified as a continuous extension to the use of Spanish musics earlier this century, but now within the context of shababi songs. This in turn is an instance of a more general propensity for Western styles in Egyptian music, e.g. the 1960s Franco-Arab fad (including such hits as “Mustafa ya Mustafa”, sung in Arabic and French). Such electicism is long-standing, a product of Egypt's openness, reflecting a particular colonial history. Though strongly shaped by France and Britain, Egypt was never a formal colony of either (even among colonies, British indirect rule reduced cultural dominance). Large non-Egyptian populations (Greek, Armenian, Jewish, Italian) in Cairo and Alexandria ensured cultural diversity in centers of cultural production. Consequently, and most unlike North Africa, Egypt culture was open to a wide range of Western cultures, producing foreign musical influence. Even if the sound of the contemporary Spanish tinge is new, its acceptability is linked to earlier popularity of the same styles. The adoption of Spanish music also followed naturally from the adoption of the guitar as a Western instrument in the 1970s. At first used to introduce jazz and rock styles, Egyptians associated the acoustic guitar with flamenco and Latin musics, facilitating entry of those musics. At the same time, from the 1970s onwards Spanish music (with the growth of salsa, Latin rock, and Latin pop) was increasingly important in mainstream Western popular music. Egyptian musicians following Western trends thus introduced Spanish styles.

Modern Latin American argument
Since 1952, Latin America has carried a special significance to Egypt, more so than any other region of the developing world. At first there was a sense that Latin America was structurally and culturally parallel to the Arab world, comprising poor third world countries (though not the poorest of the poor), manipulated by foreign imperialists. The struggles with poverty, against dictators, to achieve freedom, justice, democracy, and economic growth, were shared. Latin American liberation figures, such as Simon Bolivar, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara (who met with Nasir) were cultural heroes to a segment of Egypt's revolutionary elites. Later, when Latin American countries achieved some measure of democracy and economic prosperity, Arabs wondered why, given their parallel conditions, they couldn't achieve the same thing. Since the 1970s, Latin American writers such as Marquez and Borges have been extremely influential in Egypt, and admired for their worldwide influence. In music (as in politics) the history of Latin America sets a standard for Egyptians to match: a “third world” music with European connections, which has become popular and influential world-wide, but especially in the West. By incorporating Latin music, Egyptians are identifying with Latin America and aspiring to what it has achieved.

Musical compatibility argument
Without necessarily invoking Andalusian genealogy, respondents frequently pointed to the compatibility of Arab and Spanish musics, as ensuring the Spanish tinge's aesthetic success. The compatibility is timbral (both musics center on similar stringed instruments), rhythmic (Arab cycles such as bamb and malfuf mesh easily with clave), and formal. Unlike traditional Arab music, Spanish music is harmonic and does not quartertones; however since the 1970s Arab music has developed harmony, and gradually reduced the use of quartertones. Furthermore, two Arabic scales lacking quartertones are central to Spanish musics: nahawand (analogous to the Western minor mode), and kurd (analogous to flamenco's Phrygian scale); furthermore, these two modes stir musical emotion quickly, an important quality for short shababi songs (in which there is no time for the longer modal developments and modulations of older tarab music).

Mediterranean argument
For some respondents the presence of Spanish (and by extension Latin) music reflects more general cultural mixing and borrowing around the Mediterranean, including also North African, French, Greek, Italian, Turkish. (For instance, Amr Diab has worked with Algerian, Greek, and Turkish musicians; Greek music of Zorba or Demis Roussos has been popular in Egypt.) Throughout history, Mediterranean peoples mixed and shared, due to proximity, and similar environments. Mediterranean cultures are “hot”, as opposed to the “colder” cultures of northern and eastern Europe. In Egypt, the Mediterranean cities, Alexandria and Port Said (birthplace of Diab), were important sites for cultural interaction, and the locus of much musical innovation. Mediterranean neighbor Libya also played a key role, since Libya maintained close ties to the west (especially Italy) until the 1969 coup, while Egypt was more closed. After 1969, when Qadhafi made conditions difficult, several Western-influenced musicians (including Nasir al-Mizdawi, Hamid al-Sha'iri) emigrated, and become influential in Egypt.

Passing of the stars argument
Umm Kulthum, 'Abd al-Halim Hafiz, and Farid al-Atrash, three of the four greatest vocal stars of Egypt's mid-century tarab tradition, passed away in the mid 1970s. Due to a shifted zeitgeist (see below), and (according to some) a paucity of equivalent vocal talent, younger singers found it impossible to take their places, though many tried. This fact created an aesthetic vacuum, which had to be filled with something new. The introduction of the Spanish tinge was a delayed reaction whose development required another fifteen years, after experiments with rock, disco, jazz and other styles had run their course.

Rupture of history and ahistoricality of the musical sign argument
Egypt is an ancient civilization, which has always borrowed from other cultures, while maintaining continuity through a cultural grasp of its own history. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with advances in education, that grasp strengthened; the golden age occurred in the 1930s and 40s. The military-backed revolution of 1952 crushed this budding enlightenment; the educational system declined because revolutionary leaders were not themselves well educated; history was sacrificed to ideology. Blinded by the present, Egyptians lost their cultural memory, and an unprecedented rupture in historical continuity loomed.

The use of Spanish styles in post-revolutionary Egypt has nothing to do with Andalusia, or with Spanish-inflected music of the interwar period; it is rather an ahistorical musical sign designed to produce aesthetic pleasure for profit. Popularized in the 1990s, videoclip images (extending the power of musical products to dominate the visual as well as auditory field) play an important role in determining an ahistorical musical meaning, by gratifying and capturing more senses, riveting attention on the present. Watching videoclips of Spanish-tinged Arabic music, one sees white palaces, blue sky, clear water, beautiful girls dancing and singing, gorgeous sunsets. These are not signs of Andalusia, but rather ahistorical kitsch, designed to sell. Objectively the Spanish tinge may extend throughout history, but experientially one cannot connect present manifestations to that past.

The Zeitgeist of westernization, globalization, instability arguments
Several respondents postulated that music necessarily reflects cultural ethos, or zeitgeist. As the Egyptian zeitgeist became more Western, Western musical styles became more appropriate for Egyptian cultural expression, and hence are appropriated in the new shababi songs. As Latin music mixed into the Western mainstream (over the past two decades), it naturally appeared (albeit delayed) in Egyptian music as well.

A related argument holds that in the 1990s the Egyptian zeitgeist is becoming not more Western, but more global; or that the concept (if not the content) of the global and globalization is itself central to the Egyptian ethos. Latin/Spanish music's popularity in Egypt results not from its Western, but from its global popularity and meaning. Latin/Spanish music is global; furthermore (due to global spread and internal hybridity) it represents the concept of the global.

A third version holds that Egyptians feel insecure; everything is unstable in Egypt today. Egyptians don't know who they are or even what they want; rapid stylistic change reflects this uncertainty.

Music, politics, ideology
Music, politics, and post-ideology arguments
Several respondents stated or implied that Egyptian culture has been more open to foreign influence (interpreted as modernization) when its politics are more progressive. Two contrasting applications of this principle emerged.

In one interpretation, Egyptian progressiveness is associated with the pre-revolutionary period, particularly 1922-1952, when foreign musical influence was strongest in the music of 'Abd al-Wahhab and others. In this period models of modernity were drawn from European culture, through which came Latin music. During the Nasir years, socialist nationalism and statism caused Egypt to be more isolated. In the 1970s, with the infitah, and the decline of nationalism and Nasserism, Egyptian culture was again open to foreign economic, political, and cultural influence. But now diversity and globalism replaced Europe as a criterion for modernity. Throughout this experimental period a variety of musical influences appeared, to be sifted and sorted over the following decades; certain styles (including Spanish) ultimately emerged as most suitable (for any of the reasons presented earlier).

In a second interpretation, the pre-revolutionary period, as well as the mid 1960s, are viewed as progressive, in contrast to the reactionary 1970s. In the mid 60s, Egyptians were optimistic and confident about their progress towards modernity and global greatness. Though politics were not free, they were forward looking; reactionary Islamism was weak. Despite Nasir's anti-western rhetoric, western fashions were wildly popular. The 1960s thus represented a kind of cultural infitah, an acceptance of Western cultural modernity. Optimism and progressivism were extinguished by the 1967 defeat, and subsequent death of Nasir. The 1970s economic infitah was simultaneously a cultural closing (inghilaq), due to the rise in Gulf (khaligi) cultural influence, and the concomitant rise of reactionary Islamism, which did not decline until the early 1990s, by which time other ideologies were spent as well. The rise of more sophisticated musical fusions between Egyptian and compatible Western styles (including the Spanish) became more possible in the post-ideological 1990s.

Ideological uniqueness argument
Ideologically, Latin America is uniquely empowered as being both “Third world” and Western, among all musics of the world. Even today, Egyptians view Western culture as superior, yet they also seek symbols of resistance to Western dominance. Egyptian music producers want to fuse Arab music with a music fulfilling ideological criteria of “Western”, but also “global” and “Third World”, opposing the hegemony of Anglo-American pop. Latin music, associated with Spain (hence Europe), popular in the West, global in diffusion and internal syncretism, nicely fits the bill. Egyptians regard African music, for instance, as too “Third World”. (An additional advantage is the fact that Spain was not, for Egypt, a colonial oppressor.)

Ideological failures argument
Arab ideologies of unity and progress have failed. Leadership is poor; hypocrisy is everywhere. There is no democracy or political freedom; Palestine is still oppressed; there is economic distress and imbalance everywhere. The brutal 1991 US-led Gulf war against Iraq, and an increasingly hard-line Israeli regime unconditionally supported by the US, induced a turn away from American culture. Instead, the musical themes of Andalusia (ancient golden age) and Latin America (contemporary model) have come to the fore.

The maturation of the music industry
The rise of the commercial music industry argument
With the decline in historical memory after 1952, Egyptian music began to be freed from its own past. The infitah of the 1970s, in both its technological and free-market economic dimensions, provided the critical push towards a totally commercialized market-driven music industry. The motive force is profit, and the shape of the market. Market forces, in the absence of historical memory, necessarily produced radical change. Egyptian music is no longer truly Egyptian. Music is created to please foreign tastes of non-Egyptians (especially Gulf Arabs), or Egyptians alienated from their history. Poorer Egyptians maintained historical continuity, but with little financial clout they weakly influenced the market-driven system of music production. The age of unconstrained commercial music started in the 1970s, but marketing matured in the 1990s; during this period the market became less encumbered by ideological constraints. With the significant advent of the videoclip (popularized in the 1990s), musical meaning expanded to the visual sphere, to be more cunningly manipulated for a market seeking pleasure, not historical continuity. Since videoclips are intensively watched on ordinary Egyptian TV, as well as by Arab audiences living abroad, this mode of musical meaning increasingly determines musical contents.

Egypt today is increasingly globalization, full of economic and cultural linkages to the outside world, particularly the West. Because of these interconnections, any outside commercial cultural trends will quickly penetrate Egyptian markets as well, though a short delay is to be expected.

Because Spanish music is globally popular, a Spanish tinge in Arab music appeared: to sell to an international market, to sell to a local Egyptian market that has adopted foreign tastes, and to appear more international in the local market.

Maturation in musical tastes argument
A more sanguine view holds that the contemporary popularity of the Spanish tinge represents a delayed cultural selection from the infinite variety and confusion of the infitah era, when everything suddenly became possible. In the initial flush of enthusiasm, Egyptians saturated themselves with foreign cultural influences. Over the following twenty years, they gradually sifted through these influences, and selected Spanish musics as most compatible with their own.

Local marketing argument
Particularly in post-Nasserist Egypt, Egyptian audiences want to feel importantly connected to global history, as a means of reestablishing cultural self-confidence and a sense of their own relevance to the wider world. Therefore they value global musical trends outside Egypt; they value western culture (which largely controls those trends); they value that which signifies the concept of the global; and they value Egyptians who attain international stature. By blending Arab and Latin/Spanish, Egyptian music producers not only tap into an existing Egyptian fascination with Latin/Spanish music itself, but also with the very concepts of “western trend”, “global trend”, and “global fusion” which that music signifies; “global fusion” is further symbolized by the Arab/Spanish mix itself. But one respondent reports that in Egyptian villages listeners don't recognize Spanish sounds at all, identifying such music only as “western”. In this case, the value of the Spanish tinge may depend on the foreign marketing argument.

Foreign marketing argument
By incorporating global trends into Egyptian music, producers aim to capture foreign markets, or at least to give the impression (to local markets) of making Egyptian singers relevant to foreign markets. The foreign market itself comprises two essential segments: those of Arab descent seeking connections to the “home country” (expats), and the non-Arabs “world music” market. Those of Arab descent, but born abroad, seek music reflecting their dual identity: combining local aesthetic standards with Arabic language and sound. Aside from its privileged economic position and expanding population, in the 1990s the importance of the Western-Arab market has sharply increased with better distribution of Arab music CDs (largely via Internet), and widespread Western consumption of Arab music via satellite broadcasts of “videoclips”, and music programs, in which song rankings are determined by viewers. Thus to a great extent Arab music is being driven by its foreign market. The world-wide popularity of Latin music (and its perceived connections to Arab music) make it an excellent choice for increasing sales abroad.9 The non-Arab Western market seeks world music: the exotic in a familiar base; Latin/Spanish music, being both mainstream and “other”, helps bridge Arabic and Western popular musics, and consequently markets.10

Maturation of star-creation process argument
The music industry, including singers and their producers, has learned how to manufacture stardom. This ability has naturally produced a plethora of new stylistic syncretisms, as performers actively seek out visual and sonic material by which to forge a star persona, balancing continuity, imitations, and distinctiveness. The conscious control of this process naturally led Egyptian singers to incorporate the style of world-famous Latin pop stars into a shababi pop base. 'Amr Diab is a good example. Though inspired by 'Abd al-Halim Hafiz's persona, he didn't insist on imitating 'Abd al-Halim too closely. Rather he followed the principle which had made 'Abd al-Halim successful, fusing continuity, modernity, and innovation in a musical style and image. Breaking free of Egyptian traditions, he sported western dress and haircuts, benefiting as the cutting edge of fashion. More specifically, he imitated international Latin singers, such as Ricky Martin, in order to endear himself to Egyptian fans.

Arbitrary difference argument
In the foregoing arguments, Latin and Spanish music do not carry any essential significance beyond representing trends happening in the West, or globally, or at least perceived as such. But this argument was also taken to a further extreme, by arguing that Spanish influence does not carry any particular significance at all, beyond the mere presentation of difference.

In the music mix, differentiation is necessary in three dimensions: differentiation from older tarab music to imply modernity; from the local to imply the global; and from previous mixes to imply innovation. If the first two establish Egyptian pop music as contemporary and international (like “world music” in the West), the third establishes a particular product or artist as unique. As Egyptian music is increasingly driven by a sophisticated profit-seeking music industry, new albums are created and consumed more quickly. The commercial maturation of the music industry means that the music field is increasingly crowded and competitive. Each singer therefore attempts either to be unique, or to imitate others who are already successful; the latter must relentlessly seek out new musical styles. Not only cassettes, but entire styles are rapidly consumed. Whereas the tarab era favored musical craftsmanship and innovation within a stable style, today radical stylistic change has great commercial value. Marketers favor globally popular non-Egyptian styles, never previously fused with shababi music, to enable a new cassette to “burst” (yitfar'a') on the scene, since otherwise the active bootleg cassette industry will reduce sales. Spanish influence is being used only to

I hadn't known this! Who were the players? Up to now I'd considered surf guitar a variation on 1950s hillbilly guitar boogie, as (I'd assumed) was the James Bond theme and related int'l-thriller guitar twang. Of course there's no reason that surf music can't be multi-sourced. And come to think of it, some elements of psychedelic guitar probably derive from playing "flamenco" lines up from Mexico in h-billy guitar-boogie spy-surf style. (Bo Diddley sort of did this once on a track called "Aztec.")

But contemporary "world" music (meaning music not-in-English, of the last twenty years) scares me to death. I love the older salsa artists I've heard, but my knowledge doesn't span past Celia Cruz and a few critically approved, well-packaged compilations from familiar labels.

Part of the problem is definitely a language barrier. When I studied Japanese in college, the alphabet was so foreign to me that I had to concoct these ridiculous scenarios to remember them. I needed to equate them to a visual identifier ("a yo-yo, a chair, etc."). When I listen to gamelan, my experience is rather imperialist... it reminds me of movies about exotic climes, or the spare percussion of early electronic music.

Salsa in the 70s worked similarly for me. The latin jazz phenomenon brought a lot of funk and swing to the sound, and I latched on to these aspects of the sound. I got a little overinterested in the songs Willie Bobo sang in English and "appreciated" the rest of them.

But with contemporary salsa, and much of contemporary latin music as a whole, I can't seem to find similar connections. When I think of how much good spanish music I've come across from the '70s, I can't help but think that there must be a similar wealth of contemporary spanish music. I've been introduced to a few singers through the cinema (Lila Downs, Jorge Drexler, Seu Jorge), or because they made a splash in the indie press (Lhasa de Sala, Cafe Tacuba).

The problem is: how do I find the good stuff? So many times some well-meaning spanish-speaking friend has introduced me to newer stuff and I'm disappointed — I fail to connect with the music on any level, and more often than not, the music just sounds awful to me.

So what can I conclude from this? I don't really know, I just wanted to get that off my chest.

I'm not sure I understand this. Actually, what happened is that apparently I wasn't able to paste the whole article in to the message space. Maybe there is a character limit. But there is a link to the full article.

(In the course of a paragraph on the huge Latin influence on '50s through '70s rock:)

"...surf music, whose entire guitar style--the raison d'etre of the form--can be said to derive from 'Malenguena' and similar Mexican-American standards..."

-- Dave Marsh, "Rock & Roll's Latin Tinge," *The First Rock & Roll Confidential Report*, 1985

The problem is: how do I find the good stuff?

The same way you do it with anything else, I guess, though the language barrier obviously creates some obstacles: just dig in and start sifting through.

Also, on further review, that Banda el Recodo record is far and away the most exciting Latin (or maybe lose the qualifier) album of the year. It's banda music taken to its highest pointillist level, a true surrealistic pillar of sound, although still sublime pop music. Open yr mind to 18 musicians playing 10 different melodic lines.....

http://s48.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=34U293LKZAHQW12DQ29EFUKFE5

How about the other direction? Do you have something up your sleeve about the fascination with Arab music and culture in Latin America (or, at least, Mexico)?

Actually I found it serendipitously while searching for recordings of zajal music (a style I'm trying to find more information about--but apparently it involves singers improvising their songs, often, or maybe always, in competitions--probably not something that will carry over well to a non-Arabic speaker like me, but I'm still curious).

*polkas de oro: conjunto! texas-mexican border music* (rounder, 1994)
*pachuco boogie featuring don tosti: historic mexian american music volume 10* (arhoolie, 2002)
*the roots of the narcocorrido* (arhoolie, 2004)
*tejano picante: tex-mex classics* (rhino, 2001)

there was also a really cool one-disc banda comp that came out last year, but i can't' find it; must be stacked up in the top of the closet somewhere.

matt/haiku, you should check out La Numero 1 Banda Jerez's new *Billete Verde*.

four more south-of-north-america guys i wish i would have given shout-outs to upthread: Carlinhos Brown, Omar Sosa, Millo Torres, Djavan. All of whom seem pretty good to my ears.

this is one of my favorite CDs ever!

Also, Chuck, Billete Verde is a great record, absolutely fun and cool. They cover Cafe Tacuba's "Ingrata" from Re as the last song, which is funny because a lot of Monterrey musicians (including El Gran Silencio) assumed that CT was making fun of norteño music with that song!

Shit, man, alzheimer's is truly setting in early. Obviously I mentioned Omar upthread plenty. Anyway, there's somebody else I'm thinking of who I keep meaning to mention. Just can't think of who it is.

That said, the regional Mexican stations probably have a higher percentage of just weird, arresting, wild shit happening than any other format. Incredible "tuba" lines, two-minute accordion solos, not to mention every Duranguense song where percussion is the lead instrument. (Matt C, I enjoyed your Montez reveiw in Stylus, by the way.) And the more I hear, the more I love all the extra little goodies that come with the polkas-that-all-sound-the-same.

So I've got two questions for you experts: How do you tell if a tuba's real or not? And what's the sociological origen of that annoying falsetto laugh that male singers break into about once an album? I wanna smack 'em and shout "Nobody's having THAT good a time!"

Wow, I hated this -- just total kitsch shtick, near as I could tell.

August 24, 2005 Wednesday

SECTION: CALENDAR; Calendar Desk; Part E; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 3121 words

HEADLINE: NEW NAMES RULE AT LATIN GRAMMYS; Rising artists are saluted while several major stars are shortchanged in nominations. Cuban music takes a back seat.

BYLINE: Agustin Gurza, Times Staff Writer

Bebe, a Spanish singer-songwriter who's relatively unknown in the U.S., made a surprise showing Tuesday with five nominations in the sixth annual Latin Grammy Awards, making her the only performer to be recognized in all the major categories.

No other artist received more than three nominations in the awards, which were announced Tuesday at a star-filled news conference at the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood that was attended by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Bebe garnered nominations for album of the year for her quietly forceful debut collection, "Pafuera Telaranas," or "Out With the Cobwebs," as well as song and record of the year for "Malo," an understated but devastating critique of abusive men. She also was nominated in the female pop vocal and best new artist categories.

Bebe's showing continues the Latin Grammy tradition of eschewing familiar candidates in favor of talented new discoveries. Bebe, the daughter of Spanish folk singers, now has a chance to follow in the footsteps of fellow singer-songwriter Juanes, who was unknown outside his native Colombia four years ago when he was catapulted to stardom with seven nominations in the awards.

Juanes continued his own Latin Grammy streak Tuesday with three nominations for his hit album "Mi Sangre." That collection was also cited among the eclectic work of Los Angeles-based producer Gustavo Santaolalla in his nomination for producer of the year. The Argentine-born Santaolalla also wrote the soundtrack to "The Motorcycle Diairies," an adventure film about the young Che Guevara. The film also yielded a song-of the-year nod for Jorge Drexler's Oscar-winning original song, "Al Otro Lado del Rio."

Other artists with three nominations each were pop-salsa singer Marc Anthony, Miami-based teenage rocker JD Natasha, New York-based singer-songwriter Obie Bermudez and Mexican pop-rock singer Aleks Syntek.

The disappointment for U.S. Latin music fans may be the relatively weak showing by reggaeton star Daddy Yankee, the biggest name in the hybrid Latin hip-hop genre that represents the hottest domestic trend in Latin music since Ricky Martin and the Latin explosion of 1999.

Yankee was nominated in only one major category, record of the year, for his catchy dance hit "Gasolina," a nomination shared by the crack reggaeton producing duo Luny Tunes. "Barrio Fino," Yankee's critically acclaimed album, received only a single nomination, in the urban music category.

The slight to reggaeton underscores the fact that the Latin Grammys, though U.S.-based, are not an American franchise. In the last five years, the Latin Recording Academy has conducted a concerted membership drive in the
Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world. Today the organization's international makeup is reflected in the diverse array of nominated artists from many genres and many nations.

"I always find that democracy is very unpredictable," said Gabriel Abaroa, president of the Latin Recording Academy. "What is clear is that members vote very much not on trends but on whatever they feel is worthy, without any external influence."

This year, academy members are also more likely to get an awards show that reflects their musical values, not those of the U.S.

For the first time, the ceremony will not be televised by CBS. The network was frequently criticized for its attempt to promote primarily Spanish music to a mainstream English-speaking audience, a strategy that yielded duets with Anglo performers who were recruited for ratings rather than artistry.

The 2005 awards show is scheduled to air Nov. 3 from Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium on the Spanish-language Univision network. The move frees the producers from the need to seek hosts and presenters who speak English and who may be familiar to U.S. television viewers. It also allows the show to grow from two to three hours, making more time for performances.

When the awards debuted at Staples Center five years ago, the lineup of performers consciously included names well known to the non-Latino public, such as Ricky Martin, Gloria Estefan and Tito Puente, all from the East Coast.

At the time, Mexican artists popular on the West Coast complained that they were not fairly represented in the show, even though they account for a majority of Latin record sales in the U.S.

This year for the first time, says Abaroa, a Mexican music act has won a nomination in a major category. Intocable, a group from Texas, is nominated for album of the year for "Diez" ("Ten"), which is also up for best
\o7norteno\f7 album.

Other Mexican music acts getting two nominations each are \o7ranchero \f7crooner Pepe Aguilar, Long Beach rabble-rouser Lupillo Rivera and Mexico's mariachi king Vicente Fernandez and his son Alejandro Fernandez.

By contrast, Cuban artists have taken a back seat in the awards this year.
From the beginning of the awards, Cubans were the focus of protests by anti-Castro forces opposed to their appearance at the Latin Grammy ceremony. This year, they are only modestly represented in the nominations, reflecting a cooling off of the Cuban music scene.

Voters also shortchanged the latest work by modern \o7vallenato\f7 star Carlos Vives, one of the most popular and engaging artists from Colombia.
Vives was nominated in two categories, contemporary tropical album for "El Rock de Mi Pueblo" and best tropical song for "Como Tu."

Mayor Villaraigosa kicked off the nomination announcements with the best new artist category, in which women were well represented. Besides Bebe and Natasha, the field includes Diana Navarro and Ilona, a singer-songwriter who began her career performing on buses in her native Colombia.

In addition to Bebe and Intocable, the album of the year field includes Bermudez for "Todo el Ano" ("All Year"), Brazilian Ivan Lins for "Cantando Historias" ("Singing Stories") and Argentine Diego Torres for "MTV Unplugged."

Rounding out the nominations for record of the year are "Amor del Bueno"
("Good Loving") by Mexico's Reyli, "Duele el Amor" ("Love Hurts") by Syntek con Ana Torroja and "Tu No Tienes Alma" ("You Have No Soul") by Spain's perennial Grammy winner Alejandro Sanz.

The awards are determined by the 4,000 voting members of the Latin Recording Academy. Records that are at least 50% in Spanish or Portuguese and were released between April 1, 2004, and March 31, 2005, are eligible.

Latin Grammys

Where: Shrine Auditorium,

665 W. Jefferson Blvd., L.A.; (213) 749-5123

When: 8 p.m. Nov. 3

Broadcast: Live on Univision

Running time: 3 hours

*

List of nominees

GENERAL FIELD

\o7Record of the year

\f7"Malo," Bebe (Carlos Jean, producer; Jose Luis Crespo & Raul Quilez, engineers-mixers); "Gasolina," Daddy Yankee (Luny Tunes, producers; Echo, Hyde & Luny Tunes, engineers-mixers); "Amor del Bueno," Reyli (Mario Domm & Reyli, producers; Gabriel Castanon, Luis Cortez, Mario Domm, Humberto Gatica, Luis Gil & Alex Rodriguez, engineers-mixers); "Tu No Tienes Alma,"
Alejandro Sanz (Lulo Perez & Alejandro Sanz, producers; Carlos Alvarez, Rafa Sardina & Oscar Vinader, engineers-mixers); "Duele el Amor," Aleks Syntek con Ana Torroja (Aleks Syntek, producer; Armando Avila, Aureo Baqueiro, Miguel Castro, Luis Gil, Juan Carlos Moguel, Carlos Murgia & Aleks Syntek, engineers-mixers)

\o7Album of the year

\f7"Pafuera Telaranas," Bebe (Carlos Jean, producer; Jose Luis Crespo & Raul Quilez, engineers-mixers; Jose Luis Crespo, mastering engineer); "Todo el Ano," Obie Bermudez (Sebastian Krys & Joel Someillan, producers; Mike Couzzi, Javier Garza, Sebastian Krys & Joel Someillan, engineers-mixers; Antonio Baglio, mastering engineer); "Diez," Intocable (Pepe Aguilar, Carlos Cabral Jr., Jason Cano, Alex Espinoza, Chuy Flores, Kinky, Jorge Lares Amaro, Rene Martinez, Ricardo Munoz & Sacha Triujeque, producers; Isaias G. Asbun, Seth Horan Atkins, Carlos Castro, Gilberto Elguezabal, Chuy Flores, Rene Garza, Norberto Islas, Jorge Lares Amaro, Justin Leah, Marco Ramirez, Jack Saenz III & Sacha Triujeque, engineers-mixers; Don Tyler, mastering engineer); "Cantando Historias," Ivan Lins (Moogie Canazio, producer; Moogie Canazio, engineer-mixer; Moogie Canazio & Luiz Tornaghi, mastering engineers); "MTV Unplugged," Diego Torres (Diego Torres & Afo Verde, producers; Gustavo Borner, engineer-mixer; Gustavo Borner, mastering engineer)

\o7Song of the year

\f7"Al Otro Lado del Rio," Jorge Drexler, songwriter (Jorge Drexler); "Duele el Amor," Aleks Syntek, songwriter (Aleks Syntek con Ana Torroja); "Malo," Bebe, songwriter (Bebe); "Todo el Ano," Obie Bermudez & Elsten C.
Torres, songwriters (Obie Bermudez); "Tu no Tienes Alma," Alejandro Sanz, songwriter (Alejandro Sanz)

\o7Best new artist

\f7Bebe; Ilona; JD Natasha; Diana Navarro; Reik

POP

\o7Best female pop vocal album

\f7"Pafuera Telaranas," Bebe; "Andrea Echeverri," Andrea Echeverri; "La Fuerza del Destino," Fey; "Escucha," Laura Pausini; "El Otro Lado de Mi,"
Soraya

\o7Best male pop vocal album

\f7"Amar Sin Mentiras," Marc Anthony; "Todo el Ano," Obie Bermudez; "Stop,"
Franco de Vita; "A Corazon Abierto," Alejandro Fernandez; "Razon de Sobra,"
Marco Antonio Solis

\o7Best pop album by a duo

or group with vocal

\f7"Pajaros en la Cabeza," Amaral; "Desde Mi Barrio," Andy & Lucas; "Sinverguenza," Bacilos; "Elefante," Elefante; "Postales," Presuntos Implicados

URBAN

\o7Best urban music album

\f7"Barrio Fino," Daddy Yankee; "The Last Don -- Live," Don Omar; "The Kings of the Beats," Luny Tunes; "El Kilo," Orishas; "Desahogo," Vico C

ROCK

\o7Best rock solo vocal album

\f7"El Viaje a Ninguna Parte," Bunbury; "Imperfecta-Imperfect," JD Natasha; "Mi Sangre," Juanes; "Mi Vida con Ellas," Fito Paez; "Mestizo," Revolver

\o7Best rock album by a Duo

or Group With Vocal

\f7"En Vivo," Enanitos Verdes; "Un Metro Cuadrado," Jarabe de Palo; "Musica Pa'l Pueblo," Locos por Juana; "Con Todo Respeto," Molotov; "Estelar,"
Volumen Cero

\o7Best alternative music album

\f7"En el Cielo de Tu Boca," Circo; "Sweet & Sour, Hot y Spicy," Ely Guerra; "The Venezuelan Zinga Son Vol. 1," Los Amigos Invisibles; "Street Signs," Ozomatli; "Ecolecua," Rabanes

\o7Best rock song

\f7"Bienvenido al Anochecer," Beto Cuevas, songwriter (La Ley); "Lagrimas,"
Martin Chan & JD Natasha, songwriters (JD Natasha); "Nada Valgo Sin tu Amor," Juanes, songwriter (Juanes); "Polaroid de Ordinaria Locura," Fito Paez, songwriter (Fito Paez); "Un Accidente," J. L. Abreu & Egui Santiago, songwriters (Circo)

\o7Best salsa album

\f7"Valio la Pena," Marc Anthony; "Asi Soy...," Oscar D'Leon; "Aqui Estamos y... ¡De Verdad!," El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico; "Autentico," Gilberto Santa Rosa; "Across 110th Street," Spanish Harlem Orchestra

\o7Best merengue album

\f7"Saborealo," Elvis Crespo; "En Vivo 2004," Los Toros Band; "Celebra Conmigo," Kinito Mendez; "Generaciones," Ramon Orlando; "Resistire," Tono Rosario

\o7Best contemporary tropical album

\f7"Bacha," Bacha; "Chapeando," Juan Formell y Los Van Van; "Hasta el Fin,"
Monchy & Alexandra; "Sin Miedo," Michael Stuart; "Cuba le Canta a Serrat,"
various artists (Vivian Armenteros Rodriguez & Joan Surribas, producers); "El Rock de Mi Pueblo," Carlos Vives

\o7Best traditional tropical album

\f7"¡Ahora Si!," Cachao; "Nostalgia," Manny Manuel; "Buena Vista Social Club Presents: Manuel Guajiro Mirabal," Manuel "El Guajiro" Mirabal; "Flor de Amor," Omara Portuondo; "Tradicion," Tropicana All Stars

\o7Best tropical song

\f7"Ahora Si," Cachao, songwriter (Cachao); "Bandolero," Jose Luis Morin A.
& Olga Tanon, songwriters (Olga Tanon); "Como Tu," Carlos I. Medina & Carlos Vives, songwriters (Carlos Vives); "Las Avispas," Juan Luis Guerra, songwriter (Juan Luis Guerra 4 40); "Valio la Pena," Marc Anthony & Estefano, songwriters (Marc Anthony)

SINGER-SONGWRITER

\o7Best singer-songwriter album

\f7"Vaidade," Djavan; "Bolsillos," Pedro Guerra; "City Zen," Kevin Johansen; "Resucitar," Gian Marco; "Los Rayos," Vicentico

REGIONAL MEXICAN

\o7Best ranchero album

\f7"No Soy de Nadie," Pepe Aguilar; "Alma Ranchera," Rocio Durcal; "Vicente Fernandez y Sus Corridos Consentidos," Vicente Fernandez; "Tradicional,"
Ana Gabriel; "Mexico en la Piel," Luis Miguel

\o7Best banda album

\f7"En Vivo," Banda El Recodo de Cruz Lizarraga; "Los Numero Uno del Pasito Duranguense," Conjunto Atardecer; "Pensando en Ti," K-Paz de la Sierra; "Locos de Amor," Los Horoscopos de Durango; "Con Mis Propias Manos,"
Lupillo Rivera

\o7Best grupero album

\f7"Loca de Amar," Ana Barbara; "Sin Riendas," Bronco / El Gigante de America; "Para el Pueblo," Oscar De La Rosa y La Mafia; "Olvidarte Nunca,"
Guardianes del Amor; "Sigo Pensando en Ti," Volumen X

\o7Best Tejano album

\f7"Polkas, Gritos y Acordeones," David Lee Garza, Joel Guzman & Sunny Sauceda; "Solo Contigo," David Lee Garza y Los Musicales; "Para Mi Gente,"
Jimmy Gonzalez y Grupo Mazz; "Milagro," La Tropa F; "Vive," Bobby Pulido

\o7Best norteno album

\f7"Hoy Como Ayer," Conjunto Primavera; "Diez," Intocable; "Atrevete," Los Palominos; "Directo al Corazon," Los Tigres del Norte; "El Zurdo de Oro,"
Michael Salgado

\o7Best regional Mexican song

\f7"Aire," Josue Contreras & Johnny Lee Rosas, songwriters (Intocable); "Corazon Dormido," Freddie Martinez Sr., songwriter (Jimmy Gonzalez y Grupo Mazz); "Me Vuelvo Loco," Edel Ramirez, songwriter (Los Palominos); "Na Na Na (Dulce Nina)," Luigi Giraldo, Cruz "ck" Martinez & A.B. Quintanilla III, songwriters (A.B. Quintanilla III Presents Kumbia Kings)

\o7Best instrumental album

\f7"Nuevos Caminos," Manuel Alejandro; "Ed Calle Plays Santana," Ed Calle; "Tiple Jazz," Pedro Guzman; "Paseo," Gonzalo Rubalcaba & New Cuban Quartet; "Coral," David Sanchez

TRADITIONAL

\o7Best folk album

\f7"Misa Criolla -- Navidad Nuestra de Ariel Ramirez," Camerata Coral y Grupo Tepeu; "One Blood Una Sangre," Lila Downs; "Noche Amiga Mia," Los Nocheros; "Para Ellos," John Santos y El Coro Folklorico Kindembo; "Homenaje a Luis Miranda 'El Pico de Oro'," Varios Artistas (Quique Domenech, producer).

\o7Best tango album

\f7"Hybrid Tango," Hybrid Tango; "De Tango Somos," Nicolas Ledesma Cuarteto; "Buenos Aires, Viaje / Buenos Aires Journey," Adriana Nano; "Solo Para Dos," Trelles & Cirigliano; "Bajo Cero," Pablo Ziegler, Quique Sinesi & Walter Castro

\o7Best flamenco album

\f7"Mi ADN Flamenco," Diego Carrasco; "Confi de Fua," Jose Merce; "Andando el Tiempo," Gerardo Nunez con Paolo Fresu, Perico Sambeat y Mariano Diaz; "No Hay Quinto Malo," Nina Pastori; "Aguadulce," Tomatito

JAZZ

\o7Best latin jazz album

\f7"Mi Tambor," Paoli Mejias; "The Body Acoustic," Bob Mintzer, Giovanni Hidalgo, Andy Gonzalez, David Chesky & Randy Brecker; "Piano / Drums / Bass," Negroni's Trio; "Poncho at Montreux," Poncho Sanchez; "Bebo de Cuba
-- Suite Cubana -- el Solar de Bebo -- Cuadernos de Nueva York," Bebo Valdes

CHRISTIAN

\o7Best Christian album

(Spanish language)

\f7"Viento Mas Fuego," Marco Barrientos; "Para Ti," Juan Luis Guerra 4 40; "Luz en Mi Vida," Pablo Olivares; "Dia de Independencia," Rojo; "Tiempo de Navidad," Marcos Witt

\o7Best Christian album

(Portuguese language)

\f7"Som de Adoradores -- Ao Vivo," Aline Barros; "Terremoto -- Ao Vivo,"
Eyshila; "Para Orar e Adorar 3 -- Ouco Deus Me Chamar," Ludmila Ferber; "Deixa o Teu Rio Me Levar -- ao Vivo," Soraya Moraes; "Para o Mundo Ouvir,"
Rose Nascimento; "Alem do Que os Olhos Podem Ver," Oficina G3; "Cantando, Dancando e Louvando!," Alexandre Soul

BRAZILIAN

\o7Best Brazilian contemporary pop album

\f7\o7

\f7"El Milagro de Candeal," Carlinhos Brown; "MTV ao Vivo," Rita Lee; "Incite," Lenine; "Estudando o Pagode -- Na Opereta Segregamulher e Amor,"
Tom Ze

\o7Best Brazilian rock album

\f7"Barao Vermelho," Barao Vermelho; "Tamo Ai Na Atividade," Charlie Brown Jr.; "Leela," Leela; "Tianastacia ao Vivo," Tianastacia

\o7Best samba / pagode album

\f7"Ao Vivo 3," Jorge Aragao; "A Madrinha do Samba / Ao Vivo Convida," Beth Carvalho; "Brasilatinidade," Martinho da Vila; "Brasao de Orfeu," Wilson das Neves; "Partido ao Cubo," Nei Lopes; "A Vera," Zeca Pagodinho

\o7Best MPB (musica popular

Brasileira) album

\f7"Eletracustico," Gilberto Gil; "Joao Gilberto in Tokyo," Joao Gilberto; "Com o Pe no Forro," Toninho Horta; "Banda Maluca," Joyce; "Cantando Historias," Ivan Lins

\o7Best romantic music album

\f7\o7

\f7"Pra Sempre ao Vivo no Pacaembu," Roberto Carlos; "Donos do Brasil,"
Raimundo Fagner; "Leonardo Canta Grandes Sucessos," Leonardo; "Alma Sertaneja," Roberta Miranda; "Alto Falante," Alexandre Pires

\o7Best Brazilian roots / regional album

\f7"Gaitapontocom," Renato Borghetti; "Recado a Sao Paulo," Caju & Castanha; "Cada Um Belisca Um Pouco," Dominguinhos, Sivuca & Oswaldinho; "Os Maiores Sucessos de Sao Joao," Forrocacana; "O Canto da Sereia," Gil; "Baiao de Dois," Elba Ramalho e Dominguinhos; "MTV ao Vivo," Ivete Sangalo

\o7Best Brazilian song

(Portuguese language)

\f7"Cancao Transparente," Francis Hime & Olivia Hime, songwriters (Olivia Hime); "Ninguem Faz Ideia," Lenine & Ivan Santos, songwriters (Lenine); "Ponte Aerea," Jose Miguel Wisnik, songwriter (Eveline Hecker); "Sao Sebastiao," Totonho Villeroy, songwriter (Totonho Villeroy)

CHILDREN'S

\o7Best Latin children's album

\f7\o7

\f7"La Fiesta Continua!!!," Christell; "Floricienta y Su Banda,"
Floricienta; "Ke Zafados," Ke Zafados; "Poder Payasonico," Los Payasonicos; "Lina Luna," Lina Luna; "Aventura y Amor," Mision S.O.S.

CLASSICAL

\o7Best classical album

\f7"Fantasia Brasileira," Orquestra de Camara Rio Strings; David Chew & Andre Oliveira, producers; "Glazunov Symphony Nº 5 / The Seasons," Jose Serebrier; Tim Oldham, producer; "Homo Ludens," Leo Brouwer; Leo Brouwer & Isabelle Hernandez, producers; "Riberas," Cuarteto de Cuerdas Buenos Aires & Paquito D'Rivera; Andrea Merenzon, producer; "Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez / Villa Lobos: Concerto for Guitar / Ponce: Concierto del Sur,"
Sharon Isbin; Tobias Lehmann, producer

PRODUCTION

\o7Best engineered album

\f7"Diez," Chuy Flores & Jack Saenz III, engineers (Intocable); "Fuego,"
Seth Atkins, Javier Garza, Cruz "ck" Martinez & Robert "Bobbo" Martinez, engineers (A.B. Quintanilla III Presents Kumbia Kings); "MTV Unplugged,"
Gustavo Borner, engineer (Diego Torres); "Street Signs," Robert Carranza, Serban Ghenea & Anton Pukshansky, engineers (Ozomatli); "Velvetina,"
Antonio Cortes, engineer (Miguel Bose).

\o7Producer of the year

\f7\o7

\f7Paco de Lucia; Sergio George; Sebastian Krys; Gustavo Santaolalla; Afo Verde

MUSIC VIDEO

\o7Best music video (one song only)

\f7"Volverte a Ver," Juanes (Gustavo Garzon, video director; Cecilia Sagredo, video producer); "Mirate," La Ley (Gustavo Garzon, video director; Sweet Dreams, video producer); "Amateur," Molotov (Rogelio Sikander, video director; The Maestros, video producer); "A Veces Fui," Aleks Syntek (Esteban Madrazo, video director; Mediamates, video producer); "Los Caminos de la Vida," Vicentico (Pucho Mentasti, video director; Pucho Mentasti, video producer)

Fijación Oral didn't come out until June. The Latin Grammy "year" is odd. Is it the same with the Grammys?

Frank, is Belinda "blatantly appealing" in a way that Grammy nominated "Miami-based teenage rocker JD Natasha" (whom I don't know--but I'm just asking) is not? Daddy Yankee got a token nod I see.

And yeah, Shakira's album will be all nominated and stuff next year. In the meantime, glad but not surprised to see that Intocable got some nods, that is a great album.

Oh and let's play analogies: Lenine is the Juanes of Brazil. JD Natasha is the Avril Lavigne of young Latinas. Bebe is...man, I ain't never heard no Bebe's Songs. ("We don't die, we multiply!)

In merengue, I like some of what I've heard by Krisspy and Amarfis who I think have both put out albums in the time frame covered (though I'm not positive). Haven't heard any of the merengue that's nominated.

norteño is smaller-band, simpler, and very often focused on corridos and/or narcocorridos.

tejano is more americanized (as you might imagine from the name), pop with elements rather than elements with pop, if you catch my drift.

Carlos Vives was pretty impressive the other night outside DC. The '80s style arena rock guitar solos were a tad disconcerting, but his pop melodies and the speedy rhythms from the acoustic members of the band(accordion, congas, andean flutes, a bamboo tube thing that's scraped) were top-notch. Vives and Juan Luis Guerra (who was mahvelous live earlier this year) deserve more crossover attention.

Regarding reggaeton mainly being a North American and Caribbean thing, I believe I just read that Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina" is now in the UK charts. DJ Rupture/aka blogger Jace Mudd Up Clayton lives in Spain now and he likes reggaeton, but I don't recall whether he's said that he hears it around Espana.

I think Vives does get crossover attention, and he certainly has the Estefan Seal of Approval. But to some extent I think it is hard for him to find a niche precisely because his music doesn't sound like any other Hispanic music and doesn't fit into the most popular categories (salsa, various types of Mexican music, ska-punk) or seem folkloric enough for those who want that straight.

I actually own 6 or 7 Vives records, but I haven't bought the last one (yet: I may still get around to it). His best albums are, in developmental order, Classicos de Provincia (all rocked-up classic vallenatos), La Tierra Del Olvido (half rocky traditional vallenatos, half wholly original material, this album is really the golden mean), and El Amor De Mi Tierra (much like Tierra Del Olvido, but with a lot more production, more original material, and a lot more salsa touches.

Juan Luis Guerra, who by rights I should be more familiar with than Vives, since merengue and bachata are a bigger presence in my world than cumbia and vallenato, has never left much of an impression, but I do have a couple albums a friend ripped for me, so this is a good reason to give them a listen. But from what I have heard, he's mellow in a way that bores me.

got this, at last! this is really amazing, haikunym.

surprisingly enough, i actually wound up liking that omar sosa ballads CD. whattaya know?

I would like to hear that. I sometimes wonder if I have supported Lebanese organized crime (or worse?) by buying black market Arabic music cassettes.

What's Hakini like? Is Iskandar a singer?

Yes, Iskandar is a singer. I should really be putting this on my Arabic music thread instead of everywhere else. What I was trying to suggest above is that I doubt there is anything really stand-out about this particular recording, for someone who knows this type of material. I just happen to really like this style. It has really rhythmic, sometimes rapid, runs on an electric bouzouk (I think it is--unless it's just an electric guitar, but it sounds very bouzouk like), like a lot of Greek music. There are periodic moments when the singer goes off on a non-metered improvisation (mawal). That tends to be a somewhat harsh sound, but it's fine with me. The rhythms are incredible. There is also that sort of string section accent that comes into a lot Arabic music, and I would guess that's derived more from Egyptian popular music rather being as ultra-Lebanese as the rhythms. And the melodies do nice, typical, little dips and whatnot. The most objectionable thing is that excessively assertive, martial sounding, male chorus, much like what you hear in Fairouz, along with intermittent celebratory shouts in the background (on what is a studio recording), but those things pretty much come with the territory. (The last track is something different, closer to an interntaional pop music sound.)

Did the Voice send anyone to cover the 30th New York Salsa Festival that took place Saturday night Sept. 10th at Madison Square Garden with Victor Manuelle, India, Tito Rojas,Oscar D'leon, La Sonora Poncena, and N'Klabe...???

Here's what the NY Times said:

September 12, 2005
Classic and Future Latin Sounds Along With Glimpses of the Past
By BEN RATLIFF, NY Times
"In 1975, during the peak era of salsa music's popularity in New York, Ralph Mercado put on the first New York Salsa Festival at Madison Square Garden. Mr. Mercado is one of the full-utility movers in American music, comparable to Norman Granz or George Wein in the jazz world; through management, promotion, nightclub managing and record producing, he has had an enormous influence in the international spread of New York's Latin music.

It seems that he also ordered a lot of backstage filming at the Garden through the years, and evidence of that ran on screens through most of the 30th edition of the concert on Saturday. It's not enough, at this event, to appreciate the music being played onstage, through clockwork rotations of multiple bands. Mr. Mercado usually tries to give you some larger picture, to make the bands' performances substantially different from an ordinary club gig. So beyond the stage appearances of Oscar D'Leon, La India, Tito Rojas, La Sonora Ponceña and N'Klabe - all with excellent bands - there were nearly constant video loops of eminent figures from Mr. Mercado's old client list (Celia Cruz, Tito Puente and Marc Anthony), mostly with Mr. Mercado looming somewhere in the frame.

N'Klabe, a salsa orchestra led by three young male singers, is like a boy band with integrity. Given the reason for their existence - bringing much-needed youth market to an aging genre with slogans like "I Love Salsa!" - they're better than you expect. Reggaetón has nearly eclipsed salsa on the radio, and for N'Klabe not to switch into reggaetón mode for any of its set seemed almost a radical act. It turned out to be an older, more charmingly diffident performer, Mr. Rojas, who nodded toward the revolution, bringing out a young reggaetonero to growl in rhythm at the end of his set.

Sonora Ponceña was founded in 1954 by the guitarist and singer Quique Lucca, and Mr. Lucca was onstage at the Garden in an honorary role, singing along with the choruses in a white suit at the back of the blue-suited band. But it is his son, the pianist Papo Lucca, who directs the band and drives its deep, bewitching midtempo swing. On the old hit "Hachero Pa' un Palo," the younger Mr. Lucca took a masterly solo, the night's one moment of real instrumental genius, expanding the song's harmony and then narrowing it back, expressing autonomy from the groove and then fealty to it.

La India, who came into Latin music in the 80's through the pop-and-hip-hop version of Latin music known as freestyle, came in large part to salute Celia Cruz. She's known as La Princesa de la Salsa, as opposed to Cruz's title of queen, and she has an enormous voice, given to soaring and melismatic note-bending rather than the percussive staccato of much salsa singing. Overdoing it is just what she does: she walloped everything she sang, including the old Celia Cruz numbers "Bemba Colora" and "Quimbara"; the musical climaxes were carefully plotted, four of them arranged equidistantly through the set.

The big disappointment of the night was that Victor Manuelle, the great sonero, or improvising lead vocalist, and the last great link in a disappearing chain, didn't make his promised appearance at the top of the bill. But the show ended with a "batalla de los soneros" anyway, with a cast of Mr. D'Leon, Ismael Miranda, Domingo Quiñones and José Alberto "El Canario" improvising over vamps about one another, about New York and about salsa history. By the end of a fairly uncompetitive half-hour, it was the laserlike tenor of the night's last-minute substitute, Mr. Miranda, who won out."

She's known as La Princesa de la Salsa

A disputed title. Not so much that there is anyone else people think should be given that label, just that La India doesn't deserve it.

Nope, not that particular show. It's possible we may have shortlisted it in the choices section, though. (Obviously there are tons of shows, in every genre, that I wish we had more room to cover.)

That Cococunt FM comp is great, Philip! (And everybody!) And Philip is right; it has nothing in common whatsoever with his icky Kraftwerk covers.

Has anyone else heard Liquits?

Fox Pan American Sports LLC is an international sports programming and production entity jointly owned by Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst and News Corporation's (NYSE:NWS) Fox Sports International.

(Why am I promoting a Fox Network event?)

So I keep seeing Duranguense cds in my local Target and Best Buy. I think that's Mexican music from the Durango region. I see that "Dr. Phil" posted about it here on Aug. 22, 2005 and elsewhere. I need to check out some samples. One artist/cd he recommended was described elsewhere as follows:

"Diana Reyes is a rarity-a female solo artist in the male-dominated duranguense area of regional Mexican music. Reyes isn't the only woman singing duranguense; Armando Terrazas, founder of Chicago's long-running los Horóscopos de Durango, made a daring and commercially successful move when-after years of overseeing male-oriented lineups-he decided to put his daughers Vicky and Marisol Terrazas right up front. But it is safe to say that historically, las mujeres (women) have been the exception instead of the rule in durganguense, which receives a very pop-minded treatment from Reyes on "La Reina del Pasito Duranguense" ("The Queen of Duranguense"). The Mexican singer, for the most part, doesn't use duranguense for traditionally ranchera purposes on this 2005 release; Reyes caters to those who like their duranguense laced with a big dose of Latin pop. Try to envision a duranguense interpretation of Selena, Ana Bárbara or Priscila y sus Balas de Plata; that is essentially where Reyes is coming from on hooky, infectious, pop-drenched tracks like "Que Me Ame Mas" ("May He Love Me More"), "Como Una Mariposa" ("Like A Butterfly"), "Mentiras" ("Lies") and "El Me Mintio" ("He Lied To Me"). Some might describe this type of regional Mexican ear candy as a "guility pleasure," but then, there's no reason to feel guility about enjoying ear candy as long as it's well done-and Reyes, like Bárbara, definitely provides above-average ear candy (although unlike Bárbara, she isn't working in the grupero realm). "La Reina del Pasito Duranguense" isn't as eclectic or far-reaching as albums by los Horóscopos de Durango; nonetheless, this memorable, pleasing disc is well worth obtaining if one is seeking something fresh from duranguense." ~ Alex Henderson, All Music Guide

That said, Curmudgeon, listen to whatever Banda Lamento Show you can! Those guys are energetic and weird. And a good comp is 15 Duranguneses de Corazon (I think), which has a cover of "Chiquitita" and a song that lifts the melody of "Under the Boardwalk" without actually being same, I don't think; and there's a nice stretch in the middle where the bands' textures and approaches to Duranguense vary noticably.

103.1 has been playing the shit out of it, but I still love it.

"my parents – I'd been hungry to see Mexico City, and they decided we'd take a spring break vacation of a week in , but mostly Mexico City . So we arrive, and they're tired from the plane, and my sister's tired. They crash. I couldn't wait to savor this teeming center of Latin American culture, so I just walked right out of the hotel, turned right on Avenida Juárez, and walked and walked till I got to Zócalo. And there was this huge building that intrigued me -- I had no idea what it was -- across the plaza. And there was a man standing by the door. I said, "Cuál es este edificio?" – What's this building? And he said, "Es el Palacio Nacional!" – It's the National Palace . "Y si tienes suerte podrás verlo adentro." I said, wow. He's saying, if you're lucky and go in, you may see him. And I thought, him? So I went right in, mounted the stairs, and there was Diego Rivera painting. Just like the scene in the movie on his wife. Painting up there on a scaffolding, painting Aztec cities emerging from the waters of Lake Texcoco . And I was blown away. And then he noticed me staring at him, and he shot me this "¿Y usted qué ve?" What are you lookin' at, kid? look. So I answered with a smile that I hoped translated [as] "Algo sublime, señor!" Something sublime, sir!

I staggered back to the hotel, get in the elevator. And I'm alone in the elevator with Anthony Quinn. And he starts rapping, and I said, "Mr. Quinn, what are you here for?" And he said, "I'm doin' The Brave Bulls – it's a movie about bullfighting." Boom, he disappeared. Then I staggered back to my room and I realized I've seen two celebrities in 45 minutes. I wandered down to the dining hall. The Muzak was going strong and it was [sings bass line]. I asked this woman, "What's that?" She said: "Mambo!"

And that was it. I was locked in. As soon as I got back to El Paso I crossed the Río Bravo, went to Ciudad Juárez, stoked up on 78 shellacs by Pérez Prado, and I have been chasing the mambo beat ever since. There was just something about seeing Diego Rivera, and then having a chat with Anthony Quinn, and then hearing my first mambo, all within the first hour. And then later, when I was drafted into the United States Army, I had a buddy photograph me on Mexican soil, between the Juárez mountains and the Franklin mountains. And I'm on a Mexican hill, and I have three LPs in my hand, with the black face of Pérez Prado. And somehow I just wanted to be remembered with those LPs, but what I was doing unconsciously was swearing fealty forever to the cause of Latino music, black Latino music."

Farris Thompson and Sublette know so much about Spanish-language music it's scary. They also relate it in such an entertaining manner. I read a bunch of bloggers raving about Sublette's presentation at the EMP. In this afropop.org thing, he mostly just sits back and lets Thompson enthuse and explain.

Do you know anything about the Sonero Allstars-Dime Nague cd? Here's a review by Omar Walker at salsapower.com

"K.O. in the first round! That’s how this brand new release makes you feel after one listen. A group of musicians (band members from Los Van Van, Issac Delgado, Elio Revé, Jr., etc.) got together to pay homage to Elio Revé and the result is perhaps the best Changüi CD since Elio Revé and su Charangón in their prime.

Former Revé singer, Pascual Matos Aguirre ‘Sinsonte’ is the main vocalist, and damn, this kid can blow! With his nasal vocals, similar to ‘El Indio’ (another Charangón singer) he stands out among today soneros. "Nagüe" and "Explotó la rumba" are pure adrenaline rushes. Then there’s the trombone section, ripping though the CD with such force, that it seems their purpose is to knock your walls down.

"Dime Nagüe" feels like a tribute to Revé (there’s even a song in his memory) but sounds original at the same time. The best way to describe this recording is to imagine if La Charangón, Conjunto Libre, Los Van Van and La Perfecta had a child, this would be it. Man, Timba had better look out, because if this catches on …Ñó."

There was one track I heard from Oderquis Reve's solo album that I liked for a while, but I burned out on it. The only thing I really like was the coros in the latter third of the song. I didn't like the lead vocalist's voice or style. I don't even like the approach to melody, or something. It just seems jumbled to me. (My Puerto Rican salsera friend likes that album, though, and she generally doesn't like timba/contemporary Cuban music.)

Here's descarga.com's description of the Soneros All Stars album:

Wow! With the power of an unexpected slap in the face, ¡Dime Nagüe! just may be the hottest Cuban salsa-son release of the year. Seared with the stamp of Changüi, this hard-driving project is catapulted by the dynamic and superbly executed vocals of Pascual Matos Aguirre 'Sinsote' (Orquesta Revé) and a cast that includes timbaleros Samuel Formell (son of Van Van's Juan Formell) and Oderquis Revé, as well as treseros 'Papi' Oviedo, Miklos Bogdan 'Yanesito' and Jorge Luis Villa, this hard-to-find import CD is simply not to be missed. Non-stop panic inducing arrangements by bassist Arnaldo Jimenez... the rising star of modern Cuban dance music.

Producer Janne Miklos Bogdan has clearly assembled some of Cubas brightest musicians — they have been pulled from Los Van Van, Sierra Maestra, Elio Revé Jr., Isaac Delgado, and Cubanismo.
Do not hesitate, this one, folks, is a total Must-Have. It's just what is needed to make your summer sizzle; a reminder that the wells of Cuban music are always deeper than previously thought. If you have any doubts go ahead and listen to "Explotó La Rumba" penned by Andres Soza Revé.

What are some of your fave NY or Puerto Rican 2005 efforts other than that Miguel Diaz Echu Mingua one, which seems more Latin-Jazz than I thought for something that you like?

Otherwise, I could name individual songs, but I already sent you some of them (but mixed with some '04 things).

I mean, geez, what '05 songs really made an impression on me this summer? The Johnny Pacheco tribute to Celia Cruz (though a little too long), N'Klabe's "I Love Salsa" and "La Salsa de Puerto Rico," and? . . . I can't even think of any others off-hand.

You're right, Echu Mingua is definitely not salsa, but it's not mainstream Latin jazz either. It's closer to the end of jazz I like (e.g., Sun Ra, Sun Ra, and Sun Ra).

Also I might be underestimating that Puerto Rican All Stars album a little, another one I haven't listen to much. But it's hard not to compare these versions to the Marvin Santiago originals (where I'm familiar with them). I was just listening a little to the second disc though, and Oscar D'Leon sounds pretty good on that.

(Why does everybody have to be "All Stars" though?!)

Let me change the subject.

I took Matt/Haikunym's advice and am listening to Tejano band Intocable. I think, I that's what they are. I cannot keep all those genres down there straight--norteno, banda, etc. Gorgeous pop melodies, subtle accordion...

Gypsy:

Did you see that interview/feature piece on Luny Tunes by Jon Caramanica in the Sunday 12-5 NY Times? I thought I had linked to that somewhere. Maybe not. Real interesting discussion of their production approach.

RS:

Either in that article or elsewhere I read that a bunch of reggaeton rappers who performed together at an award show (Latin Grammys maybe) were all wearing t-shirts with old-school salsa soneros on them. Plus I keep seeing Fat Joe in a Hector Lavoe shirt.

I LOVE THIS! THIS WAS MY MAIN JAM FROM LAST YEAR:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQysX5mE3I4

not that it came out last year, but it was my summer soundtrack.

Afro-Latin Music Thread 2010: La Resurrección (salsa, merengue, bachata, reggaeton, cumbia, etc.)