Megastars of The Arabic Song:
Halim - Farid

Overall Rating: (on a scale of 1 to 5 stars)

An alternate title for this review could have been When Bad Things Happen To Good Music. I hated this CD.

When I bought Megastars Of The Arabic Song, I did so on the strength that I generally like music composed by Farid Al-Atrache, and this CD claimed to feature 14 of his songs. There were also 15 songs by Abdel Halim Hafez included--another excellent Arabic composer. I wasn't familiar with all of the songs listed on the CD, but I liked the songs whose titles I did recognize and I welcomed the opportunity to become familiar with additional songs by those composers. Composers I like? Several song titles I like? It seemed like a safe bet. Wrong. It was bland, monotonous, and boring.

What I Liked:

• Nothing, really.

What I Didn't Like:

• I wished there would have been track separators between the songs, making it easy for me to go to a particular song if I wanted to.
• The choice of vocal style was bland, banal, and boring.
• Individual songs were very, very short--usually less than a minute each.
• The lack of variation in vocal style, song rhythm, tempo, and instrumentation made it very monotonous.

You will probably like this CD/tape if:

• You like the style of arrangement used for elevator music.
• You're so passionate about the music of Abdel Halim Hafez and/or Farid Al-Atrache that you enjoy even a bad arrangement of it.
• You want something that's convenient to use as background music for telephone on-hold music, a restaurant, or similar environment.

You probably won't care for this CD/tape if:

• You're not a fan of 20th-century Egyptian music.
• You dislike the type of vocal style used for elevator music.
• You prefer to have your favorite songs be more than a minute long when you listen to them.
• You're looking for dynamic music to use for performance.

To me, it sounded like Arabic elevator music. I've never liked American elevator music, and the music on "Megastars" was just as banal, bland, and mediocre as the American stuff I've heard. The format of this CD was that of two medleys. One medley incorporated the Farid Al-Atrache songs, and the other incorporated the Abdel Halim Hafez songs. The arrangement of each medley was a continuous stream of female choral vocals, with almost no variation in rhythm, tempo, or instrumental arrangement for almost 15 minutes straight.

Even if you like the musical arrangement better than I did, this music would still be a nuisance to use for dance performance because of the continuous 13-14 minute medley:

• For a 15-minute show, there's not enough stylistic variation of fast music, slow music, rhythms, instrumental vs. vocal, and drum breaks to provide variety. Although occasionally there was a brief drum interlude between songs, these tended to be solely for the purpose of maintaining the rhythm until the next song started, without trying to be interesting. An audience watching someone perform to this music would get easily bored unless it's composed primarily of Arabs that are very passionate about the music of these particular composers.
• It would be difficult to extract a shorter clip from the medley to paste together with other songs into a performance because the medley really is continuous. There are very few good breaks that lend themselves well to cutting.

Upon realizing that I disliked the style so intensely that I would never use it for either dance practice or performance, I then considered whether this collection might be a suitable tool for an Iowa farmer's daughter like me to learn more about Arabic music. I'm always eager to become more familiar with well-known Arabic composers and their popular songs. So I started evaluating this CD from that angle, and I found it wasn't suitable for that, either.

One problem is that this entire CD is broken into only 2 tracks: one track of Abdel Halim Hafez's music, and the other of Farid Al-Atrache. I assume the original was probably released on cassette tape, and then each side of the tape was copied in its entirety into a single CD track. Each track is a medley of 14-15 songs that run from one directly into another. There is no apparent break at all from one song to the next. So, when a song I was unfamiliar with transitioned into another that I didn't know either, I had great difficulty figuring out whether the next song had started yet. Except for when a song I knew came on, I usually wasn't sure just which song I was listening to at any given moment. Even when I could identify which song was starting, each song clip was so short (a minute or less each) that it didn't provide much insight into what the song as a whole might sound like.

I suppose this could be used as background music at a restaurant or similar venue, but because I dislike the arrangement so much, I probably wouldn't even consider using it for that.

Song Title

Length

Nationality

RealAudio Clip?

Translation?

The contact information given for the producer is:

Digital Press Hellas, S.A.
275, Mesogion Avenue
152 31 Athens
Greece

Phone: (01) 6726104 or 6726605
Telex: 226272 DPH GR
Fax: (01) 6726258

It would probably be available from most vendors who specialize in selling Arabic music.

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