Album Review
The Very Best Of Amr Diab
Amr Diab
EMI Music Arabia
[The music stops. Compay Segundo and Joseito Fernandez start sentences in unison.]
Joseito Fernandez: He sounds like -
Compay Segundo: He is -
Joseito: I think we are going to say the same thing.
Compay: Ricky Martin.
J: Indeed. Very much like, but also very Arab rather than Spanish. He is an Egyptian Ricky Martin with high sales figures. He has that pop sound, very lively but friendly also, and in the photographs he looks like a forthright young man with straight, clean features.
C: 'Boy Band' I think they call that look. It is manly yet sensitive and tidy.
J: Yes, perhaps they call it 'Boy Band.'
C: Perhaps. I have been dead for a while after all. These things might have changed.
J: There is a difference in the lyrics. Isn't Martin famous for his party songs - remind me of that one - 'Livin' la vida loca?' All that crazy life and taking your shirt off? Our Amr Diab does not sing about parties. He sings about love. Look at the translations of his lyrics. "Do you know why my heart has chosen you and why I am content with the torture of your love? Do you know why I will always love you and wish to share my life with you?" The next one: "Are these two moons or your eyes? My heart asks about you. You see me thinking about you ... I am becoming infatuated with you my precious." The third one: "Oh, my sweetheart the mind's eye produces an image that remains fixed in my spirit. I have loved you for years and nobody else springs to mind." They are all like that.
C: I think of many centuries of Arab love poems.
J: Yes. In his own way he is carrying on a tradition.
C: It is harmless enough. He's no inflammatory shaabi singer like Ahmed Adaweyah who was disliked by the Egyptian government because he made music about the lower classes.
J: No, Amr Diab is pop, he is al-jil, the entertainment music for young people. Think of the importance of this, in countries where so much of the population is so young. Egyptian pop is known throughout the Arab part of the world and this Amr Diab has gone even further. He has performed in Australia, in the U.S. and Canada as well as Europe and his Nour El Ain album was a hit - well, all over the place!
C: Now you're taking your information from the CD cover.
J: I am. I am a kind man. I will not repeat the part about Celine Dion and the Backstreet Boys.
C: I wonder who writes the songs. I know these musicians usually don't do it themselves.
J: He must have a production team somewhere. He is their pleasant voice and their handsome nose.
C: He enunciates well.
J: He has been studying singing since he was a child.
C: Who's that other voice?
J: Angela Dimitriou. They are doing a duet, he in Arabic, she in Greek. It is repetitive. I don't like this one. I prefer his faster songs, with the whirling notes and the more obvious Arab influences, the shuffling, clapping rhythm. Listen, this is a remix of 'Habibi,' one of his famous ones. It's fun, isn't it?
C: 'Fun' is a good word for this album.
J: Well, you don't come to al-jil expecting high art.
C: My friend, I don't mean it as a bad thing. There is a place in this world for fun without high art and your Amr Diab suits it admirably.
J: The nice thing about listening to pop music in a foreign language you don't understand is that you can pretend you are doing something more important than listen to pop music.
C: Yes Joseito, I am sure we have contributed greatly to understanding between Arab and non-Arab peoples by listening to a man tell his girlfriend that her eyes are charming.
J: I have no doubt that this is so, Compay.
