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Assala Nasri of Syria is a sensationally popular, highly in-demand singer throughout the Middle East.She has created more than 20 studio albums since her commercial debut in 1991, and is now moving into television and film.Despite all this, she has not performed in the United States since 2001.Not that she hasn’t had offers.It’s just that the venues have not met her standard.She does not perform while people are eating, and demands a stage worthy of her substantial status as a cultural figure.Assala is often described as the likely successor to the grandest woman of Middle Eastern song alive today, Fairuz.
For Assala’s fans in the United States, the dry spell is about to end.Assala will join Khaled (Algeria) and Rida Abdulla (Iraq) in an ambitious stage spectacle at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on November 21, 2009.The event, called Sahra, will feature a full orchestra, guest appearances by Hollywood celebrities and American music stars, dancers, and a stage designed to transport the audience to a grand soiree in the Sahara Desert.And presumably, no one will be eating during the performance.
Born in Damascus in 1969, Assala was raised in the classical tarab style, a form of art music designed to bring about sublime experiences—musical ecstasy—among listeners.Assala’s fatherMostafa Nasri was a respected composer and tarab singer, though he also performed in the more street-wise shaabi style, foreshadowing his daughter’s broad embrace of high-art and popular musical styles.Assala showed early talent and began her public career singing the theme for a popular televised cartoon program.She was seventeen when her father was killed in an automobile accident.Assala was with him in the car, and the grief she experienced afterwards nearly made her leave music.But five years later, she emerged on the scene with Law Ta’rafou (If You Know), an album that showcased her command of classical music and generated huge excitement.One of the album’s hits, “Samehtak Ketir (I Forgive You),” was a gift from the great composer SayedMakkawi, the first of many classical music luminaries to endorse her career by contributing repertoire.
Ever ambitious and restless, Assala quickly found ways to extend her audience.In 1992, she released a song called “Asnaa Sadda Soutk (I hear the echo of your sound)”It was her first foray into the demanding khaleeji, or Gulf, style of music.Khaleeji music contains echoes of the Indian and African cultures that have permeated the Persian Gulf over the years.It uses local dialect, not well understood in the larger Middle East, and importantly, it relies on highly developed poetry, far more sophisticated and probing than standard pop music lyrics in the region.Assala proved quite up to the challenge.But where many singers from places like Lebanon, Cairo, or Baghdad have nodded to the emerging khaleeji genre with a song or two, Assala has shown lasting commitment to it.She has released at least 10 khaleeji albums, including the acclaimed Sawaha Qalbi (My Heart Has Done It) in 2007.
2006 marked a major turning point for Assala.She divorced her first husband and married acclaimed Palestinian filmmaker Tarek Al Arian.“This changed my career,” she said in a recent interview from Cairo, where the couple now lives.“I became myself.I did a song called ‘Aktar,’ a light song, not classical.I usually sing with an orchestra, but the arrangement here used a light beat, and simple lyrics.People could not believe I was doing this.They saw that I was starting a new life, and they loved it.I attracted teenagers, more simple people, not just the people who listen to classical music.”
The video of "Aktar," available on You Tube, says it all: A woman’s liberation, Cairo style.But Assala’s willingness to go further into popular styles did not signal a retreat from complexity.Her 2008 Egyptian release, Nos Hala (Half Mood), breaks new stylistic ground, and includes subtle lyrics probing the angst of a woman humiliated by the love of a man she cannot really have.The album debuted at Number 1 in Egypt and Lebanon, and even made it to Number 2 on the khaleeji charts, rare for a non-khaleeji song.Speaking of Gulf music, another great Assala moment on You Tube is her serene collaboration with the grand man of khaleeji today. .Mohammed Abdu of Saudi Arabia.The two performed with Abdu’s orchestra in Istanbul in 2008.
Assala is excited to return to the US, and to share the stage with Rida Abdulla, a rising star in the Middle East, and Khaled, who is an old friend.The King of Rai has performed with Assala and her band, including a song filmed in 2007 in Paris.Assala has been working recently with a Cairo-based band called Wust Elbalad (Downtown).They recently drew 80,000 people for a performance outside the Cairo Opera House.“These are the musicians I will bring to Las Vegas,” said Assala.“I’m going to change my sound.”For those who have followed her remarkable career, this should come as no surprise at all.
