Music review: Arab Women Artists Now

Article by Louis Brehony/Photos by Nadira Amrani – On 7 March, the London-based cultural organisation Arts Canteen launched AWAN (Arab Women Artists Now), a new annual festival to celebrate women artists from the Arab world. After a day of heated discussion on art and politics, and a visual art exhibition, the event came to its finale with a night of daring musical performance, with three acts challenging artistic boundaries in front of a packed out room of enthusiastic supporters. Headed by the irrepressible Palestinian vocalist Reem Kelani, we were also introduced to Christelle Madani and Reham, two very different singers with unique and undeniable talents. Together they highlighted the potential power of Arab womens’ voices in today’s world.

First to the stage was Lebanese-born singer Christelle Madani, performing a set with master oud player Najib Coutya. Christelle brings a youthful vibrance to a repertoire inspired by Lebanon’s biggest icon Fairouz. Paying homage to such a revered and revolutionary musical figure is a bold statement and reproducing Fairouz classics is not easily done, yet Christelle’s voice is entirely her own. The music to the Rahbani Brothers’ Ya Laylou al Sabbou was used decades later by Marcel Khalife to score the Mahmoud Darwish poem Fi Dimashq (In Damascus), but Christelle takes us back to its origin with a simple arrangement of the Fairouz classic.

In Ya Man Hawa, with musical roots in historic Andalusian styles, Christelle and Najib easily hold down complex rhythms, giving an urgency to impassioned lyrics on betrayal and loss:

‘Counting the stars, while you’re sleeping
I will sit on the roads and complain
and I will say that I have been tyrannized and that you are my tyrant’
Christelle’s performance seemed to visibly inspire the artists who followed and left many of us in the crowd wanting more.

Kuwaiti vocalist Reham performed with an all-female band including guitarist Nadine Khouri and keyboardist Lilia Hosn, who both also contributed harmony vocals. Reham’s return to the stage has come after a long musical hiatus but her group took to the platform naturally. Khouri’s tremolo-effected chord patterns interacted well with Hosn’s subtle keys as a platform for Reham’s English lyrics touching on homeland, belonging and the mental strength to overcome oppression. Musically, the group’s input was a departure from the classically-influenced Arab stylings of Christelle, situated in a more Western soundscape. When Rehan sung a standout track pleading for ‘revolution’, there was a clear honesty about her desire for change. The whole room believed her.

Reem Kelani is a real phenomenon of contemporary Arabic music. As a Palestinian artist constantly battling against the British recording industry’s refusal to see beyond the “P-word”, Reem has had to fight for recognition (and is even crowdfunding her next album, Live at the Tabernacle). But as her AWAN performance showed, this is music that demands attention, as Reem and pianist Bruno Heinen gave everything to a captivated London crowd. Reem’s stage presence moves beyond the category of ‘singer’, not only in her flamenco-reminiscent rhythmic stomping and call and response clapping, but also in her flamboyant sense of humour. After recalling one of her many stories about Palestinian ‘big mamas’ – this one in particular about a ‘beautiful gazelle with breasts like luscious pomegranates’ – she asked loudly, “are you listening Isis?” The audience was in stitches.

I’d recently been a bit disappointed at myself for missing out on cheap tickets to see a Brecht/Weill play, but Reem totally made up for my error of judgement with an exploration of the pioneering works of Egyptian composer Sayed Darwish (1892-1923) and his lyricist Badi’ Khairi. These anti-imperialist anthems satirised the British colonial occupation, bypassing its many censors, and it is startling that Reem’s reworkings show that the songs still have relevance a century later. With a dynamic introduction, Heinen’s piano brings virtuoso jazz into The Porters Anthem, before staccato rhythms to lyrics celebrating the role of workers in the 1919 Egyptian revolutionary struggle.

Reem’s performance brought an ecstatic encore as all the evening’s performers were brought to the stage for a totally unplanned rendition of Zarouni (Visit Me), a classic Darwish melody later performed by Fairouz. The lyrics were brought to life with improvisational vocals from Christelle Madani. ‘Visit me once every year, it’s a pity that you would forget about me completely.’ Nobody present will be forgetting this remarkable performance any time soon and it will be fascinating to see how Aser al Saqqa and the other organisers top this concert next year.

Louis Brehony is a musician and activist from Manchester, Britain. He is currently planning research for a book on Palestinian music. He is also initiator and director of the musical project ‘Let Palestine Sing‘. He submitted this review for publication by the Musical Intifada website.