Thursday, November 10, 2011

Revolutionary Arab Rap: The Blog

A new blog has been started, which focuses on Arab rap and its relation to the "Arab Spring." While I have been critical of journalists who have over-stated the importance of Arab rap in the insurrectionary events of the last month, that does not all mean that I think rap is unimportant, uninteresting, and, in many cases, excellent. A very important and useful new blog has been started, which I recommend highly, called Revolutionary Arab Rap. It has two features: (1) an series of in-depth analyses of important artists and tracks. As of this date, one very good one has been published, on Tunisia's El Général, of "Rayes Lebled" fame. Here's the link. Keep checking back, there is more to come. (2) An archive of videos with transcriptions of the lyrics in Arabic and translations in Arabic. This is a very, very useful resource, and I really wish more people with good knowledge of the language were doing more translations of Arabic song lyrics.

Bravo, Mr./Ms. Revolutionary Arab Rap blogger!

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