{"id":336,"date":"2007-02-07T13:48:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-07T20:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/?p=336"},"modified":"2023-02-11T18:54:48","modified_gmt":"2023-02-12T01:54:48","slug":"shams-rock-casbah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/shams-rock-casbah.html","title":{"rendered":"SHAMS: Rock the Casbah"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shams (Arabic for “Sun”) is a popular female Kuwaiti singer who has just released a controversial song titled, Ahlan Ezayak<\/em> (or “Hi! How are you!”) Accompanied by a slick MTV-like video that lambastes George W. Bush and his occupation of Iraq, the song has become all the rage in the Middle East. Shams croons in the Khaliji style, one of the most intoxicating and seductive genres in pop music today, and yet most Americans have not heard of it, even as U.S. soldiers sink ever deeper into Arab sands. Clearly, it\u2019s time for what The Clash<\/a> used to call, “a public service announcement… with guitar!” Well o.k., make that “with oud.”<\/p>\n

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Shams & George, an impossible affair. All screen captures from Shams\u2019 video, Ahlan Ezayak – or “Hi! How are you!”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Arabic for “From the Gulf,” Khaliji is a musical genre that has come to represent the cultures of the Arab and Persian Gulf area. Set apart by its use of traditional instruments like the pear-shaped stringed instrument, the Oud, and the Tar and Bendir framed drums<\/a>, today’s Khaliji has changed with the times.<\/p>\n

Synthesizers and modern digital recording studios have modernized the sound of this intrinsically Arab music, characterized by driving compound Gulf rhythms and intricate sequences of hand clapping. The fact that Shams is Kuwaiti, a people who have been the biggest<\/em> supporters of American policy in the Arab world, makes her video all the more inflammatory – an indication that the Kuwaiti\/U.S. romance is over. And indeed Ahlan Ezayak<\/em> is a song about love gone sour, “Hi! How are you? – You think you\u2019re so great, I never want to see you again!”<\/p>\n

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After her break-up with the big cheese, Shams sings from atop a wall composed of letters that spell out, “GUANTANAMO.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The video opens with Shams singing to a moronic looking digitized George W. Bush at a press conference held on the White House lawn.<\/div>\n

The gathering quickly becomes an opportunity for the singer to publicly announce, “I\u2019m not your relative, I\u2019m not your sweetheart.”<\/p>\n

The video then dissolves into a subversive montage involving the singer, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, as Shams sings her song of broken love – “Whether you hurt my heart or adore it, I refuse you. Go buy yourself and get away from me.” The surreal video depicts Shams confronting her veiled self in a police line-up, lying down in front of the White House on a wall made of letters that spell “GUANTANAMO,” cutting the strings of powerful marionettes (there\u2019s Tony Blair!), and boxing in the ring with Condoleezza.<\/p>\n

Even the Statue of Liberty can\u2019t help but dance to that funky Khaliji beat. There\u2019s more, dare I say, “feminist” sentiment and rebel rage in this video, than in all of the current rock and hip-hop video\u2019s of today put together.<\/p>\n

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“And in this corner!” – Shams in the boxing ring with Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Shams saves plenty of ire for her fellow Arabs. The video mocks an aging Arab journalist who wears a ridiculous blond wig in an attempt to be more like a Western reporter – Shams dances along and blows the absurd toupee off the CNN wannabe\u2019s head. Then there\u2019s the scene of a teenage Arab girl excessively influenced by Western standards of beauty, whose own self-loathing transforms her into a plastic surgery disaster – replete with enormous breasts and a Michael Jackson-like nose.<\/div>\n
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Shams confronts herself in a line-up after a police clampdown. One of her personas being a “Westernized” singer, the other, a veiled traditionalist. The message, all rebellious Arabs go to jail.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\u00a0<\/span>The final scene of the video shows the singer wearing a beautiful white wedding dress and walking off into a blazing red sunset, holding hands with “Hanzala,” the scruffy cartoon character created by legendary Palestinian artist, Naji al-Ali. To Westerners, this running off with a cartoon boy may seem an odd ending, but a bit of research reveals the finale as intensely poignant to the Arab eye, for Hanzala represents the Palestinian people\u2019s thirst for freedom and independence.<\/div>\n
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Shams and Hanzala walk hand-in-hand into a blazing red sunset – true love at last.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Naji al-Ali the artist lived in exile from his native Palestine for his entire life, and while a refugee he created over forty thousand satirical drawings that were published in newspapers and journals all across the Arab world and beyond. His disheveled pint-sized Hanzala character, quasi-biographical, and representing the homeless refugee, was first published in a Kuwaiti newspaper. Naji\u2019s drawings railed against the pervasive corruption in the Arab world and its lack of democracy, as well as voicing opposition to the Israeli occupation of his homeland, but he paid the ultimate price for antagonizing the powerful with his editorial cartoons. In 1987, while working in London for the Kuwaiti Al-Qabas newspaper, Naji al-Ali was shot and killed<\/a> on the street by unknown assailants, he was 51. Naji once said of Hanzala:<\/div>\n

“This child, as you can see is neither beautiful, spoilt, nor even well-fed. He is barefoot like many children in refugee camps. He is actually ugly and no woman would wish to have a child like him. However, those who came to know ‘Hanzala’, as I discovered and later adopted him because he is affectionate, honest, outspoken, and a bum. He is an icon that stands to watch me from slipping. And his hands behind his back are a symbol of rejection of all the present negative tides in our region.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The implications in the emotional ending of Shams\u2019 video are clear. She has turned her back on all of the “present negative tides” to marry Hanzala, who it turns out, is not<\/em> the physically stunted and victimized child we see – but a sagacious and heroic spirit as old as the “refugee problem” itself. Shams has married the resistance. If you want to know what Arabs are thinking and how Arab artists are responding to the conflagration in their neighborhood, turn off FOX and NPR, toss out your dog-eared copy of Newsweek… and watch the video<\/em>.<\/p>\n