BY: Nisreen Eadeh/Staff Writer On Sunday night, America watched an Arab American actor win one of the highest awards in the television industry’s most prestigious night. Rami Malek, star of the USA program Mr. Robot, is the first minority to win Best Actor in a Drama Series since the 1998 Emmys. He is also the … Continued
BY CHANCELLOR AGARD Entertainment Weekly First time’s the charm! At the 68th annual Emmy Awards in Los Angeles Sunday, Rami Malek won the trophy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his role as Elliot on USA Network’s Mr. Robot. “Please tell me you’re seeing this too,” said Malek, visibly shocked after winning. … Continued
The Daily Reporter
Popular Yemeni American YouTuber, Adam Saleh performed at Tibbits Opera House on Saturday. Saleh was brought to Tibbits by Aira of Coldwater in partnership with the Arab American Society of Coldwater. Most of the over 300 people in the audience were made up of teens and parents from the local Arab community, but some came as far as Virginia and Maryland just to have the chance to see him in person.
Saleh opened the show with a musical performance and continued with his unique brand of family friendly comedy and audience-integrated antics. He also had a powerful message for his young fans, many of whom because of their culture, sometimes encounter bullying and feelings of isolation. He advocated for the acceptance of others and encouraged the audience to embrace and celebrate their uniqueness.
Tamara Apmann, organizer for the event remarked, “After seeing Adam interact with our local youth, I can absolutely understand why so many people are drawn to and follow him on social media world-wide. His positivity and encouragement for Muslim youth is exactly what is needed locally and abroad in these times.”
During his performance, Saleh incorporated a segment where he presented certificates of achievement to students from the Arab American Society of Coldwater’s Arabic Language School. Saleh also met one-on-one with over 40 attendees who were lucky enough to have tickets to a meet and greet after the show.
As a fellow Yemen American, who grew up in New York City, Saleh was amazed at the number of Yemen Americans living in Coldwater. His excitement and that of his Coldwater fans was captured on video as he documented his entire experience throughout the night. The video can be seen on his Twitter feed in a post titled, “She Made me Cry.”
Saleh has been gaining popularity in Arab communities around the world since 2012 when he began his YouTube channel titled TrueStoryASA. He currently had over 1.5 million world-wide followers on the channel.
Aira of Coldwater sponsored Saleh’s performance as part of its cultural outreach to the Coldwater Community. Aira’s next event will be Saturday, Sept. 17 at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, where they will host a “Mediterranean Lunch Extravaganza” to benefit the organization and assist with purchasing office supplies. Sit-down and take-out lunches, all cooked by local women, will be provided in exchange for donations. Henna artwork will also be offered for $5 per hand. The lunch will be held from 12 to 3:30 p.m. and coincides with Coldwater’s Applefest.
Source: www.thedailyreporter.com
The Big Apple Tastes the Hummus BY: Sami Asmar/Contributing Writer There is probably nothing one cannot find in New York City, the metropolitan like no other. This includes Arab music of all forms. Over the years, several innovative bands were formed there and, until recently, the city was the home of Simon Shaheen, the world … Continued
BY: Nisreen Eadeh/Staff Writer Most of Stanley Rashid’s life has been surrounded by vinyl records, audiotapes, and CDs carrying the legendary voices of Farid Al-Atrash, Fairouz, and Wadih Safi. His father, Albert Rashid, founded Rashid Sales Company in 1934 – the first exclusively Arab music company in America. Rashid Sales Company started in Detroit during … Continued
DALIA EL ALI Stepfeed Britney Spears is a global superstar who rose to stardom back in 1999 when she released her single, “Baby One More Time.” It’s hard to imagine the pop world without her. She’s influenced a generation of young girls and artists who tried to imitate her in hopes of becoming the next … Continued
BY ALICE PFEIFFER ELLE Magazine On August 24, a group of armed police officers forced a woman to remove clothing that resembled a burkini on a beach in Nice, France. The incident not only humiliated an innocent woman, but pointed to a frightening escalation of the continued oppression of Muslim minorities in the country–all under … Continued
BY: Adriana Murray/Contributing Writer The Rio Olympics was an exciting time for the Arab countries. At the Rio games, many Arab athletes won medals for the first time for their countries, taking home 14 in total. Here are the athletes who brought medals back to their home countries after this year’s Olympic games. Ruth Jebet: … Continued
Rob Garratt
Last month, something special happened. 47Soul – a supergroup uniting four alternative-music figureheads who share roots in Palestine – performed in the West Bank.
For the musicians, it was an emotional homecoming. Despite having rocked huge crowds across Europe – including at the UK’s Glastonbury Festival and Womad (World of Music, Arts and Dance) – the group’s headline slot on July 27 at the Palestine International Festival marked the first time the four members were permitted to perform their twisted electro take on the country’s street music to a native audience.
Why? Passports. The band members share Palestinian heritage – but due to population displacement, they are scattered and none have Palestinian Authority papers.
“It’s home, it’s the home that’s been banned for us to go to, or be in certain places, to be a part of it,” says singer Walaa Sbeit.
“We are Palestinians originally, all of us, with different passports and documents – and those documents put us in a position where we cannot perform where we are originally from.”
The “glue” of the band – which was formed in Jordan in 2013 and is now based in London – is Ramzy Suleiman, better known as electronic artist Z the People. He grew up in Washington DC but decided to trace his father’s roots, moving to Palestine to learn the Arabic quarter-tone keyboard.
He began working with Jordan-based acoustic folk-rapper Tareq Abu Kwaik. Better known as El Far3i, he is a former member of renowned Middle Eastern underground rock act El Morabba3 (The Square). He shared a flat with Hamza Arnaout, guitarist with rival Amman alt-rock act Autostrad, also known as El Jehaz.
The final piece of the puzzle is Sbeit, who has a background in theatre and poetry and also brings a reggae sensibility to the fold, as a former member of Palestine’s Ministry of Dub-Key.
Despite – or, rather, because of – their distinct musical backgrounds, together these four “brothers” have brokered a borderless, genre-less sound by focusing on the one thing they have in common – repurposing the region’s traditional dabke street dance into frenzied 21st-century electronica.
On the surface, 47Soul might recall Egypt’s electro-shaabi craze, but careful listening reveals a cosmopolitan blend, peppered with elements of hip-hop, rock and reggae. Politically charged but party-starting chants and raps fly in Arabic and English.
Listeners have called it “futuristic Levant wedding music”. The band call it “shamstep”. Whatever the name, this quixotic sound has translated easily to international audiences. Lead single Intro to ShamStep has clocked more than a million views on YouTube.
But reaching those audiences live has been problematic; visa issues mean many gigs have had to go ahead at the last minute, with just two of three of the members present. Much of the globe remains inaccessible. Abu Kwaik’s and Arnaout’s parents fled Palestine in 1948 and, as refugees, became Jordanian citizens, which can complicate European travel. Suleiman is an American, while Sbeit was raised in Haifa and holds an Israeli passport, which limits his ability to travel to the Arab world.
“We are stuck like Humpty Dumpty on the wall,” says Sbeit. But his humour hides darker existential issues associated with growing up as a citizen of an alien country, with limited rights and restricted freedom of movement into Palestine.
“My parents and grandparents were displaced from their home in 1948, and forced internally into what became Israel – internal refugees,” he says.
“I’m an indigenous minority – a Palestinian with an Israeli passport. It’s not fun to be a second-class citizen, to feel disenfranchised all the time, unwanted in your own homeland – that’s something that I don’t wish for anybody.” Unafraid to stand up for what he believes, Sbeit has clashed with Israeli authorities on a number of occasions. In June 2014 he was reportedly one of three activists arrested during direct action to reclaim his family’s historical Palestinian village of Igrit, close to the Lebanon border.
“This is one of many, many encounters,” he says, recalling instead a separate incident during which he was interrogated after performing politically sensitive material at a street festival.
“Very simply, we are activists,” he says. “We fight for equality, for being a normal human – and through that you try to do socially and politically conscious work.
“The Israeli system does not accept that, and you can easily be arrested, be accused of attacking officers, waging terror or violence – just by using lyrics and art and performance. This is something that every artist deals with as long as he wants to be not in the mainstream.”
Despite their often charged lyrics – the subject of checkpoints crop up more than once – 47Soul are wary of being defined by their individual politics. United, they do not want any single message to eclipse the infectious power of their music.
“A solo song by any one of us would be talking about the reason these checkpoints exist – and how we should rise up to make them not exist anymore,” says Abu Kwaik neatly.
“A 47Soul song would be about someone trying to meet a girl at a party – and getting stuck because of the checkpoint.
“We just want the world to dance to our sound – and then have a good political discussion after the show with the people you dance next to.”
“My goal for 47Soul,” adds Sbeit, with a laugh, “is to teach the world some new moves besides the Macarena.”
Source: www.thenational.ae
BY MAGGIE MALLON Glamour BENJO ARWAS Quantico actress Yasmine Al Massri’s life has been extraordinary in every sense of the word. Over the past decade, Al Massri has dominated the indie film circuit, won numerous awards, and landed a starring role as identical twin sisters Nimah and Raina Amin on ABC’s breakout drama. However, through all … Continued
Haifa Wehbe’s music video left them… confused! (YouTube) Al-Bawaba Last night while browsing YouTube, we discovered some hilarious videos by “Fomo Daily,” which show regular Americans reacting to pictures of female Lebanese singers and male Arab artists, and to Lebanese superstar Haifa Wehbe’s music video “Breathing You In.” When shown a picture of each Arab … Continued
Reuters
KIRKUK – Bleeding eyes and gushing wounds — these are not the typical images that would go viral online, but for one special effects artist in Iraq, they are gaining her a large following.
Sally al-Bayati, a law student from the northern city of Kirkuk, developed an interest in Special Effects (SFX) make-up last year and started to create theatrical prosthetics.
“I started doing SFX one year ago. In the beginning there was no support and no encouragement because it is a strange art, quite unfamiliar to people in Iraq. Also my family did not like the idea because of the sight of blood,” the 21-year-old told Reuters.
Bayati decided to turn to social media for feedback.
“I continued and started to post my works on my social media page and I succeeded in gaining a large following,” she said.
The life of Iraqi people is like a horror movie, Bayati said, with near daily bombings that make gory images an everyday occurrence.
Her social media page is full of images of eerily realistic works, including hands with ripped off fingers, faces full of deep-cuts and exposed brains.
Fake blood is an essential element in her creations. She mixes white honey, red dye and cocoa powder to create the effect, but it has not been easy sourcing the materials needed for her work.
“I made all the materials at home. In the beginning I did not have anything, but now I have, although they are very simple compared to materials available abroad. I try to find their equivalent in materials available in Iraq. I try to look for the ingredients of the original material and then I try to make it in a way that fits my work,” said Bayati.
As SFX make-up is still a relatively new concept in Iraq, Bayati hopes her work can raise the profile of the art form and eventually attract filmmakers’ attention.
After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s movie archives and equipment were looted, and later sectarian violence drained the country of artistic talents. Film production in Iraq slowed to a crawl and the infrastructure of the industry deteriorated. Laboratories and cameras fell into disrepair and cinemas were shuttered.
But Bayati still dreams of being part of a make-up team on an Iraqi thriller movie, worthy enough to represent her country at international film festivals and in Hollywood.
“My ambition is to work in a horror movie that can make its way to Hollywood, an Iraqi film that can go to Hollywood. A good movie that attracts support and attention from people who are capable financially to provide us with the materials needed to make something nice to compete with other movies,” Bayati said.
“All the countries have movies that take part in international festivals, except Iraq. We too, thanks to God, have capabilities and talents even better than in any other countries and though the materials we use are simple, yet we can compete with other works, even in Hollywood,” she added.
Iraqi independent film production houses have tried to pick up the pieces, with some notable successes such as the privately funded war film, “Son of Babylon”. The film won a number of international awards and was selected as Iraq’s official entry for the 2011 Academy Awards.
Source: www.nrttv.com
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