Just before September 11, I interviewed one of the most popular vocal stars in the Arabic-speaking world. Hakim grew up in Cairo, and he's been a chart-topper in the synth-driven, street-wise shaabi pop style for the past decade. But his new release, The Lion Roars: Live in America, is a brisk, punchy, two-CD live set recorded in early 2001 in New York. On the phone from Cairo, Hakim said that Live in America contains a message for his Egyptian audience back home. "I'm now crossing borders," he said. "I'm big in the Arab world, and this takes it to the next step. Because remember, it's not just any Arab singer who can come to America and have success." When Hakim spoke these words, he was about to tour the U.S. again, this time on a double bill with Khaled, the grand man of Algerian rai music. That tour, which included a stop at the Orpheum on September 22, was postponed until the historic, critically acclaimed tour by Hakim and Khaled with special guest artist Simon Shaheen this February. An unprecedented period of advancement for Arab, Middle Eastern and North African music in this country is still emerging from the grey, fretful cloud of doubt, emanating from disaster sites in New York and Washington.

To understand just how good things were looking for Arab-related music, consider these facts. The summer of 2001 had already seen national tours by two rai greats. Rachid Taha, promoting his genre-bending, rai/rock album Made in Medina, had won bang-up reviews in the New York Times and elsewhere, and Cheb Mami had toured in support of Dellali, his first release since his phenomenally successful collaboration with Sting on the song "Desert Rose." Palestinian oud and violin virtuoso Simon Shaheen had unveiled his long-awaited classical/jazz fusion band, Qantara, and the group's adventurous debut, Blue Flame, and spell-binding concerts were generating Grammy talk. On August 11, Billboard splashed the headline "Arabic Music Moves West" across its front page. And during the week of the attacks, this country's most widely-circulated world music magazine, Rhythm, hit the streets with its October issue, devoted almost entirely to Arabic music.

Market savvy record labels like Putumayo World Music and Six Degrees released Arabic music samplers this past summer, but most of the credit for the Arabic music boom has to go to the California based label, Arc 21/Mondo Melodia, which produced all of the albums named in this article, as well as its own Arabic music sampler, Desert Roses and Arabian Rhythms. Mondo Melodia's CEO, Miles Copeland, managed Sting for years, but since the success of "Desert Rose," he's been concentrating on his label. In 1999, he hired a veteran world music producer and Arab-American, Dawn Elder, as the label vice president. Speaking since the Septermber 11 attacks, Elder described the label's approach this way: "We didn't just want to put records out. We wanted to introduce artists and build careers for them in the United States. We began touring bands in conjunction with the releases of their albums, and building a team that would reach out to all forms of broadcast and print media."

This was historic, as no U.S. based label has ever before shown such a commitment to Arabic music. What's more, it was working. "On September 10, we were doing extremely well," says Elder. "Finally, after 2 ½ years, we had made a substantial move into the mainstream." The Hakim/Khaled/Shaheen tour in February was a crowning moment. Hakim is a giant in the Middle East, and Khaled in North Africa. Elder says that part of her strategy has always been to unite these two traditionally separate audiences, including their American branches.

Back in the fall of 2001, this new Arabic music coalition struggled to take stock. On Septermber 20, Mondo Melodia announced the postponement of the Hakim/Khaled tour, citing safety and logistical concerns, as well as a sense that the artists' celebratory music did not suit the present mood of national mourning. This feeling came especially from the singers themselves. In the press release, Khaled wrote, "Out of respect to the American people, it would be unsuitable and inappropriate to perform on stage during this sad time."

"Even American music and jazz events were cancelled," said Simon Shaheen from his apartment in Brooklyn. Shaheen put off a major appearance in Detroit after the attacks. "Many musicians didn't want to play. It wasn't right for them. Two of the Qantara musicians said to me, 'If we have to play in Detroit, we will do it, because we are professional musicians, but down in our guts, we are not in the mood. We really want to stay in New York and meditate.'" Shaheen did perform at Riverside Church in Brooklyn at a memorial service for the New York victims. "The whole purpose of the event was to be with the people, and to express the pain, the sorrow for those who lost their lives. I hope that these things won't be repeated. I understand that people say this is a form of expressing sentiment. They call it retaliation, or whatever. But in the final analysis, whether it happens in America or in Africa or the Middle East, it is against humanity. It's against the will of the individual to survive with beauty and with peace."

In his press statement, Miles Copeland observed that, "Both the countries of Hakim, Egypt, and Khaled, Algeria, have suffered greatly from the pain of terrorism." Reporting on the cancelled tour, the L.A. Times added that many U.S.-based musicians from the Middle East and North Africa are here specifically to escape persecution and turmoil back home. This makes the perception that Americans are turning against them doubly painful. As banned Iranian singer Andy--now a U.S. resident--put it, he now feels, "burned from both sides."

But how serious is the long-term damage to Arabic music and musicians in this country? Dawn Elder is optimistic. "I feel that right now people are still reeling. I do think that there is somewhat of a short-term setback. But in the long run, I have faith in the American public, and in their need to be open-minded. Music could actually end up being the healer."

Shaheen has experienced the jitters rippling through Arab-American and other communities. He chuckled over a friend who was debating whether or not to shave off his beard. "But for the long run," he said, "I think everything will be back to normal. I don't believe that people in America, of different descents and origins, will act in a shallow fashion. Because when you talk about art and culture--music--you are talking about deep involvement in the fabric of a society, and deep exchange between different peoples. I don't think they will jeopardize such a thing."

Many who work to promote world music in the U.S. are expressing a newfound sense of mission these days. In Boston, World Music's Maure Aronson reminded me that he got his start promoting shows in South Africa amid the threat of petrol bombs. He did cancel concerts in the week after September 11, but any change the public's hunger for world music, or in his organization's will to provide it is "unthinkable." He said, "The first thing I said to my staff is that our concerts are now more important than ever before. And I have made calls through to agents of artists that I have coming up--whether they are from Spain, Brazil, or South Africa--expressing my strong feelings that they have to get on a plane, and they have to come the United States, and they have to perform."

Aronson asserts that America remains one of the safest countries on earth, and that fear must not become an obstacle to presenting world culture here. "It cannot," he said. "That means that the perpetrators of terror have won. That is the world they would like to see us living in. No, thank you!" Ever a champion for her cause, Dawn Elder argues that Americans are likely now to be more, not less, curious about the cultures of North Africa and the Middle East. "People are going to say, 'Hey, wait a minute. I really need to know more.'"

Find the music in this article in the Afropopshop


Contributed by: Banning Eyre

First published: The Boston Phoenix