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Kufiyas at University of California Protests

2009-11-23T23:14:00.009-06:00

Kufiyas were much in evidence at the University of California protests that erupted last week, against plans by the Regents to raise tuition by 32%. (Despite the protests, the Regents did the dirty deed.)

Here's a photo from the LA Times of students at UCLA on November 18, heckling two UC regents as police escort them from Covel Commons.

Al Seib / Los Angeles Times / November 19

And another one, of students at UCLA, demonstrating near Campbell Hall on 18 November, from the LA Times.

Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times / November 19

At Covel Commons, UCLA, linking arms to create a barricade between police and protesters. At least one student got tasered in this action.

AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes

Kufiyas were also in evidence in protests at UC Berkeley. At least one kufiya wearer was among those who occupied Wheeler Hall for 12 hours. Here the occupiers are catching food thrown to them, while they were barricaded on the second floor. (From the SF Chronicle.)

Michael Macor / The Chronicle

And courtesy twitpic, another shot of a kufiya-wearer in Wheeler.

Please note the diversity of the students. Note too that kufiyas have not been reduced simply to empty signifiers of hipsterdom. Don't believe the hype.

Since there will no doubt be need for additional actions like this, I hope at least some students from UC--and at other campuses where trustees are attempting to take the axe to education--will consider purchasing real Palestinian kufiyas from the last remaining factory in Palestine. Available from The Kufiyeh Project. I just got one in the mail--$12 + $6 shipping. But consider buying a kufiya-patterned tie as well for $25, with no extra shipping. Then you'll have a kufiya scarf to wear to all the protests, and a kufiya tie for professional drag.

P.S. Thanks to FB pals Jenny, Ken and Cathy for leading me to most of these items.

Yes we have more kufiyas

2009-09-18T20:16:00.012-05:00

Ayad Alkadhi is an Iraqi artist, one of many, many Arab and Muslim artists who have used Arabic calligraphy in their work, who has done some interesting pieces using calligraphy and kufiyas. These are from his "I am Baghdad" series. He says about the series: "I view the portraits as interviews, wherein Baghdad citizens express their feelings about post-occupation Iraq." What do you think this citizen is saying?

Is the kufiya here a mask? A blinder? A restraint?

And what about this one?!

In the middle of the skull are the words, عودة ذاكرة الكفاح or, "Return of the memory of the struggle," circled in red. Thoughts?

Kufiya kitsch.

Thanks to Arang Keshavarzian for these photos of kufiya bracelets, on sale right now at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York City. Chelsea! Someone please buy one and send it to me. I'll pay you back!

What the Chelsea lacks, unfortunately, are green kufiya bracelets, for wear at rallies in support of the Iranian democracy movement. Hopefully, someone will fill the gap.

Kufiya out of plastic handcuffs.

This item from Yves Gonzalex-Quijano, author of the invaluable blog, Culture et polititique arabes. (He also publishes a blog in English that translates some of the original French material.) It's a photo of an installation (?) by Rana Bishara, called Kuffiyah for Prisoners, made of out plastic handcuffs that are used for prisoners. It's part of a great exhibit of contemporary Palestinian art, currently at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris. Check out the other work too, by Kamal Boulatta and Emily Jacir, among others. I particularly like the stunning still from Sherif Waked's video, "Chic Point: Fashion for Israeli Checkpoints."

Sorry, it's a bit hard to make out the kufiya image in the Bishara piece. But you get the idea. Go here for another view.

Kofia

This is the name of a leftwing Swedish prog/folk band that released an album of Swedish folk-rock/Palestinian music in 1976, called Palestina mitt land (فلسطين بلدي) or "Palestine is my land." You can download it here. Give it a listen. I am fairly familiar with Swedish roots music and with Palestinian "folk" music, and I'm not really convinced that the mix works all that well. I like the Swedish folk instrumental bits the best. A little to earnest sounding at times.

I've not been able to find out much about Kofia, except that it was from Göteberg, and that it released 4 albums. Palestine solidarity was very big on the Swedish left, and the European left in general, during the sixties and seventies. And Palestine solidarity is of course still strong in Sweden. I was told that for Swedes, the word kofia simply and unambiguously means Palestinian scarf.

Bajah + The Dry Eye Crew: Hip-Hop from Sierra Leone

Kufiyas aren't just about hipness and/or Palestine solidarity in the US and Europe and Jamaica, it seems that they are also big in Sierra Leone. At least that's what I conclude from these photos I ran across on The Afrobeat Blog. Bajah + The Dry Eye Crew are hip-hop artists from Sierra Leone. Did they get the idea of the kufiyas from US hipsters? From Palestinian freedom fighters? From US hip-hop artists? From the Jamaican scene? All of the above?

Please check out their mixtape. And read about them here and here.

Bajah has an album reportedly coming out soon in the US, including kufiya-spotted guest ?uestlove. And Talib Kweli, who must have put one on at some point, right?

Even more on The Kominas + Pakistani rock

2009-09-16T23:09:00.003-05:00

The Kominas

Something happened to The Kominas since we last tuned in. They went on a nation-wide tour (although, for some reason, skipping Arkansas). And they got sorta...famous. Or at least created a lot of media buzz. And not because they were attracting huge audiences. Someone who knows them told me, there were maybe 50-80 people at shows per night. Interesting...not sure how to explain it. Except that the notion of Islam and punk going together continues to be a novel notion.

An article about The Kominas in the Los Angeles Times (August 12) is notable both because it comments on the rather considerable media coverage the band had received by that point, critiques it, and makes a conscious attempt to go beyond previous coverage. The Kominas state that they like getting media attention, but complain (a) that it focuses on the fact that the band is (3/4) Muslim rather than the music itself and (b) that the reports are formulaic. The formula is to note that the band was inspired by the publication of Michael Muhammad Knight's novel The Taqwacores, and then to mentions notable song titles like "Sharia Law in the USA."

At least the article points in the direction of better coverage--but it doesn't really do the job of analyzing lyrics or describing the music. The best it can muster is to quote Daniel Cavicchi, guest curator of the Grammy Museum's "Songs of Conscience" exhibit, which includes a piece of Kominas memorabilia. Says Cavicchi, "I would hate to see Taqwacore stall in public discourse as a form of exotica...Their songs are actually quite catchy, with interesting dynamics and a variety of sound textures, all of which are a testament to their musicianship." True enough.

The next day CNN published its take on The Kominas, by Azadeh Ansari. This piece more or less follows the formula identified in the LA Times report--it starts with the book, refer to song titles, and so on. Ansari does at least offer a bit of sociological analysis to account for the band's significance. He writes, "For [the Kominas], punk music is a way to rebel against their conservative cultural upbringing and the frustrations of growing up a young Muslim in America." And the article includes some observations by UC-Irvine history professor Mark Levine and author of Heavy Metal Islam, who says:

"These punk, metal and rap scenes - so-called extreme music scenes -- are addressing issues that mainstream music doesn't...[Punk] allows them to rebel against society and their own culture at the same time."

Levine goes on to say,

"It makes sense why punk has been the music of choice for young, politically active Muslims who are musical...The straight edge movement in punk which was about no drugs, no alcohol, was clean yet very intense and political. It's a way for them to rebel against their families in some extreme ways yet still be ritualistically, 'good Muslims.' "

Accompanying the article is a nice slideshow, featuring photos from Kim Badawi's book, The Taqwacores, plus commentary from Mike Knight and band members, and some music.

But alas, no discussion of the music or the lyrics.

In the interest of at least starting a discussion of The Kominas' lyrics, here's my transcription of the song, "Sharia' Law in the USA." The Kominas have just begun to put out videos of some of their songs, which feature just the lyrics, on Facebook. I don't think you necessarily have to be a FB member to see this, so here's the link.

Sharia Law in the USA

I am an Islamist
I am the Antichrist
Most squares don't make the wanted list
But my my! How I stay in style
Cops chased me out of my mother's womb
My crib was in state pen before age two
The cops had bugged my red toy phone
So I devised a plan for heads to roll...
Sharia law in the -- USA (2x)
Sharia law in the – we've had to pay
...for the white man can take with two free hands
Imagine our debts cut in half
Our wives multiplied by the number four
Why the president's daughters couldn't ask for more
One can lick my Afghan's clit
Wife three's ready to help
As I keep screaming
Penetrate me with a strap on dick
While a brother from New Orleans does you anally

Then there is some sampled commentary from a well-known 50s educational film on what to so in case of an atomic attack. "Duck and cover."

Sharia law in the -- USA (2x)
Sharia law or you'll have to pay

Duck and cover

Roll over Sex Pistols, this supersedes "God Save the Queen." The Sex Pistols were waaaay too timid to broach the subject of anal penetration. As I read the lyrics, they complain about how Muslims are demonized in the USA, and imagine sharia law as a way to take revenge. And in addition, sharia law would be a benefit to (male) Muslims, as they'd get 4 wives. Then I'm somewhat at a loss: the wives would lick each other (?) and then--where does the anal sex come from? I don't know. It's nonetheless very clever, the vocals are well-done, not hoarse screaming in the style of much contemporary punk but much more melodious. Punk more in the content of the lyrics than in the musical form. Some kind of South Asian woodwind and percussion opening the song. Nice.

For a flavor of how the recent Kominas tour went, check out this blog post on the Taqwacore Webzine, from Tanzila Ahmed, who accompanied the band and the rest of the entourage, on tour from LA to Texas. "The first time I had written about the band was over three years ago, and I’d been following the band ever since. It was a blog post where I declared my crush for the boys in The Kominas and how I would fight Ashwairya Rai in a wet sari for them."

Pakistani rock

And then there is Pakistan, ancestral home to 3 of the 4 members of The Kominas--and they've even toured there. Thanks to Shahjehan, I was led to this audio report and this written one, from The Guardian, on Pakistan's lively underground rock scene. One of the bands discussed is Bumbu Sauce, from Islamabad, and their song "Jiggernaut." It's clever and catchy and goofy/serious and you can listen to it, and see the lyrics, here. Alas, I don't get all the references. "Juggernaut" (which I guess jiggernaut is a version of) is derived from the Sanskrit "Jagganatha," one of the names for the god Vishnu. It was incorporated into the English language as a result of a falsehood propagated by (some) British colonialists, who asserted that fanatical Hindus would throw themselves under the wheels of chariots carrying statues of Jagganatha/Vishnu during an annual festival, in order to gain salvation. "Juggernaut" came to mean "unstoppable force" in English--but with a whiff of religious fanaticism. Quite a witty title for a song, then, that deals with the Taliban. Bumbu Sauce is a kind of hot flavoring that goes on packaged noodles. I don't know what the CDA is. Capital Development Authority? Why does the CDA have ninjas? "Why do you act like such a rand?" Again, no idea what "rand" means in Pakistani English. [Update, Nov. 9, 2009: Thanks to an anonymous comment, I now know that "rand" means "whore," in both India and Pakistan.] I do get that the song suggests the possibility that the US struggle with the Taliban in Pakistan might extend to Iran. As The Guardian notes, the song first talks about fighting on the side of the Taliban, and later, fighting against the Taliban.

The report also discusses a song that is rather more earnest and serious in its political critique: "Ready to Die," from the Lahore band, co-Ven. It's here, on youtube, with lyrics for you to read. I can't make out all the bits in Urdu, except for "Iraqi," "Irani," and "Pakistani." The song criticizes the military collaboration between the Pakistani government and the US (i.e., the coalition) and raises the issue of the fact that this military cooperation seems to be having the effect of making the militants multiply. The song could apply equally well to Afghanistan as to Pakistan, and if it weren't for the map of Pakistan on the video, and the fact that The Guardian told you the band was Pakistani, you might think that Afghanistan was in fact the subject.

(Robert Mackey commented on The Guardian's report on the New York Times blog, and decided, for some reason, to focus almost exclusively on the fact that both bands sing in an American accent. He does give us one bit of useful information: the Urdu chorus to "Ready to Die" translates as follows: “The game of chess begins/ And one by one/ Iraqis and Iranians/ Saudis and Afghans/ and Pakistanis.” But why, when the US is involved in such a dangerous game in Pakistan and Afghanistan, you would want to focus on the US accent issue is just beyond me.)

More in the pop vein, stylistically, but much more explicitly political and radical, is the group Laal ("red"). I learned about them, somewhat amazingly, from a report on NPR's Morning Edition. Remarkable because Laal's two leaders are militants in Pakistan's Communist Workers and Peasants party. The guitarist, Taimur Rahman, is getting a PhD at SOAS in London, while the lead singer, Shahram Azhar, is doing his PhD at Oxford. They did music as a hobby, while working on their degrees and participating in Pakistani expat protests against Musharraf. They happened to meet a Pakistani film director, Taimur Khan, who heard them play their song "Main Nay Kaha (”I said”)" at a party. The song is based on a poem by well-known leftist Urdu poet Habib Jalib, and it attacks authoritarianism and political divisiveness. Khan convinced the band to do a video, which he shot in London. The video was a sensation on youtube, and got picked up by the Urdu cable channel Geo TV, and so it was seen, and became popular, in Pakistan. Soon the band was in Karachi, recording their first album.

According to an informative article by James Crabtree in Prospect magazine that focuses on Geo TV, "Main Nay Kaha" quickly became the theme song for the lawyers' movement protests of March and April 2009, that resulted in the reinstatement of Chief Justice Chaudhary. According to Shomial Ahmad's Morning Edition report, the big Laal song of the lawyer's movement was "Umeed-E-Sehr" ("hope of a new dawn"), the title track of Laal's album. Check out the video (with English subtitles) of "Umeed-E-Sehr," whose lyrics are by renowned leftist Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, here. I particularly like this song, "Main Nay Kaha (Musheer)," with lyrics, again, from Habib Jalib.

I find it quite exciting that the poetry of a previous generation of revered Urdu leftist poets, which had rather gone out of fashion, is being revived by Laal. (Their music, of course, is great too.) Check out more Laal videos here. The band's official website is here. Go there for more info and to listen to clips from all the songs on their album.

And finally here's an oldie, a clip from the golden days of Urdu cinema in Pakistan. From the 1966 film Armaan, the song is called "Ko Ko Karina" (sung by Ahmed Rushdi). The song's name refers, of course, to Coca Cola. The clip features a huge plastic Coke bottle on the bar, and waiters dance around with coke on their serving trays. This delightful song is an example of the "indigenization" of "Western" rock--it deploys rock elements, especially the electric guitar riffs, but is not straight "rock" in the ways that Bumbu Sauce or co-Ven are. This sort of incorporation of Western genres of course is very familiar from the more famous Bollywood tradition.

Iftikhar Dadi, in a forthcoming article on Urdu cinema, argues that Coke is fetishized by the elite in this clip, as signs of Western modernity. Nabeel Zuberi commented (when I posted Dadi's remarks on Facebook), that "The way the coke bottles are glued to that tray and the waiter's comic gait/dance are surely 'extracting the urine'/taking the piss. At the very least, it's postcolonial mimicry, if not outright camp." I'm inclined toward the mimicry/camp interpretation. (And hopefully Nabeel won't mind me quoting him!)

This "Socio-political History of Modern Pop Music in Pakistan" calls "Ko Ko Korina" "the first ever modern Pakistani pop song." I have no idea whether that is true, but please read this history--an outline, really--more background on Pakistani pop and rock.

Y.A.S., "Arabology"

2009-09-12T00:50:00.004-05:00

Y.A.S. has been getting a fair amount of publicity for its album Arabology, which reportedly has gotten a good buzz in France and Belgium. Check out the video for the first single from the album, "Get It Right." The video features images of space travel, numerous shots of familiar sights/sites in Cairo, lots of chatting on the mobile phone, dancing in a posh Arab disco, and the statuesque singer of Y.A.S., Yasmine Hamdan, who could certainly be a fashion model if she weren't pursuing a career in music. It is really beautifully filmed, a sure sign of the fact that Universal Music is putting a lot of money into backing Y.A.S. It's directed by Stephane Sednaoui, well-known photographer, music vid director (R.E.M., Björk, Massive Attack, Tricky, Beck...), and man about town (linked romantically to Björk, Kylie Minogue and Laetitia Casta, among others).

I quite like the song, it's infectious, it's danceable--and it has Arabic vocals. It's just counting (wahad, tnayn, tlaata, arba'...i.e. 1-2-3-4...) in Arabic, and the other lyrics are in English. Otherwise there is nothing Middle Eastern sounding about it. But go to Y.A.S.'s myspace page, and you'll get a more Middle Eastern feel if you listen to the extract from the song, "Yaspop"--which has real Arabic lyrics, rather than just chanted numbers. According to Fanoos, "It somewhat denounces occupation and the presence of foreign secret agents, married with the idea of globalization and a capitalist economy." (I need to receive my CD in the mail and listen to the entire song to see whether this is the case.) And be sure to check out the remix of "Get It Right" by noted DJ Felix da Housecat. (Another sure sign that Arabology has some serious backing from its record label.)

An article about Y.A.S. appeared in the Wall Street Journal on August 20--another sign, I think, of a publicity campaign mounted by Universal. And it included this photo, from renowned fashion photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino. It shows the other member of Y.A.S., Mirwais Ahmadzaï, the Paris-based Italian-Afghan producer who has worked with Fischerspooner and Madonna. No doubt the participation of a high-profile producer like Mirwais is key to Universal's support for the YAS project.

The focus of the Wall Street Journal article, and the video that accompanies it, is the issue of Arabic--the fact that Yasmine Hamdan's former band, Soap Kills, were pioneers in the Lebanese rock scene and were responsible making singing in Arabic conventional in Lebanese rock, and the problem of trying to sell Y.A.S. records in the West when Arabic is so "foreign." Soap Kills were a terrific band, who were at the cutting edge of the Beirut "alternative" music scene from the mid-90s til 2005. They were frequently called the Lebanese trip-hop band--not an entirely inaccurate comparison. If you search for Soap Kills on youtube, you will find a number of their songs. I particularly like the song "Aranis," from the album Cheftak, whose lyrics consist of phrases you would hear street vendors and service (collective taxi) drivers yell out in Beirut.

It seems that Lebanese rock bands in fact were a bit behind the rest of the Arab world in switching from vocals in English or French to Arabic. Probably this has to do with the fact that (a) English and French are used nearly as much in urban Lebanon as Arabic and (b) that the rock scene in Lebanon was mostly non-existent from 1975-1990, the years of the civil war. Rachid et Fethi (Baba Ahmed) were releasing rock tracks in Arabic in Algeria as early as the seventies. (They later became celebrated rai producers.) And you can also hear "rock in Arabic" on an amazing album put out by Columbia records in the US in 1967, Hard Rock from the Middle East by The Devil's Anvil. The Devil's Anvil were a band that played around in the Village in New York City in the mid-sixties, were discovered by Felix Pappalardi, who started playing bass for them and got them signed to Columbia, and also included Steve Knight, who went on to form Mountain with Pappalardi. Vocals were provided by Kareem Isaaq, who handled the Arabic. Check out "Besaha"--rockin'! (I hope someday someone writes at the very least an article on rock'n'roll in the Arab world, especially from the 50s to the 70s.)

As for singing in that strange language of Arabic before a Western audience--Y.A.S. is not really in the vanguard here either. The first blow was struck--if I'm not mistaken--by rai star Khaled, with "Didi," his huge 1992 hit--all over Europe, all over the world (except North America) in fact. Since then, rai has become pretty mainstream in France, and Khaled and Cheb Mami and others have had hits sung in Arabic. Natacha Atlas has been successful in Europe as well, and don't forget Rachid Taha, especially his cover of "Ya Rayah."

I love the work of Yasmine Hamdan, in Soap Kills, and I love what I've heard of Y.A.S. I do hope that "Get It Right" is a big hit for them. (According to the Wall Street Journal, YAS is trying to rework Arabology for the US market. So all we can acquire here is an import CD. If you live in the US, you can't even download Arabology from the French Amazon.com site!) But I think Y.A.S. should be seen as part of a larger trend of the growing popularity of Arabic music in the West, not as an unprecedented phenom. (Although a hit in the dance music or rocket circuit--that would be huge.)

Read more about Yasmine and Y.A.S. and Soap Kills in this article by Kaelen Wilson-Goldie in The National. Wow, Yasmine namechecks the Bandaly family! And am I right in understanding that she is romantically involved with Palestinian film director Elia Suleiman?

A final curiosity. Trax magazine claims that Peaches, in her new "Serpentine" video, is wearing the same leather outfit for a few seconds that Yasmine wears in the "Get It Right" video. Can you see it? I can't. But it's worth watching the Peaches video all the same. She hasn't lost a step.

Kufiya roundup: Fateh, DJ Rodrigo, Haifa, M-1, The Hurt Locker, Leila Khaled, DC, NYC, ties, and high fashion

2009-08-31T21:15:00.004-05:00

PNA President Mahmoud Abbas, in the middle (Haytham Othman/MaanImages)

Here is the dead, the dessicated, the sucked-of-all life kufiya, as deployed by the dreadful mass assembled at the Fateh general conference, convened in Bethlehem earlier this month. Yasir Arafat was no angel, but at least he was the leader of a liberation movement. As a whole, the movement's leadership was corrupt, but at least it had the noble goal of national liberation. This new, post-Arafat crowd, headed by the atrocious Mahmoud Abbas, are simply Israel's and the US's guards in proxy of the concentration camp, the ghetto that is the Palestine National (sic) Authority. They have turned the kufiya into a kind of symbolic fetish, that all wear draped around their shoulders. As Sousan Hamad reported in Electronic Intifada, "As Abbas waited for his turn to read from what seemed like an inevitable 60-page speech, a man walked around the aisles handing out cheaply-made, Fatah-branded kuffiyehs (the traditional checkered scarf) to delegates and journalists. He insisted everybody wear it for the cameras." Abbas' own kufiya scarf was a bit fancier, with the Palestinian flag sewn into the ends.

Of course Fateh was too cheap to make any effort to support national kufiya production, seeing as how the organization is now all about neo-liberalization and capitalist globalization as the path to liberation. Meanwhile, University of Arkansas International Studies graduate Chris Wylie, and former student of mine, made a trip to Hebron where he bought his own, authentic, national production Palestinian kufiya, from the Hirbawi factory, the last remaining kufiya producer of kufiyas in Palestine. Bravo, Chris. Hmmm, if a young man from Arkansas could get to Hebron to buy a kufiya, why couldn't Abbas & Co. find their way there?

Despite Fateh's efforts to claim ownership of this symbol of resistance, there are lots of signs that its control is resisted. Check out the photos from this PANET article (in Arabic) about a hip-hop benefit for Gaza, held in Haifa, Israel in March--kufiyas are everywhere! Among the artists who performed: Awlad al-Hara (Nazareth), DAM (Lyd), Shadia Mansour (UK), The Patriarchs (US), Bihrang Mar'i (Sweden), and Lucky (UK).

Colombian DJ Rodrigo is also down with the kufiya. Go here to check out his latest release, through Indigenous Radio (IR), and go here to get a podcast of DJ Rodrigo, live mixing for IR. (Thanks to Dave Watts for alerting me to this.)

If you've not had enough of kufiyas, you could also purchase a limited edition Leila Khaled print, by Jesus Barraza, to benefit the Indigenous Youth Delegation to Palestine, now in progress.

According Muhaafiz Khan, writing in the blog As-Sabiqun, the act of converting to Islam has now become hip among African-American youths in the roughest neighborhoods of Washington, DC. And along with taking the shehadeh, apparently, comes wearing the kufiya. Khan writes:

The trend [of conversion] is still very much alive today, and it seems to have spread all across DC. As strange as it may sound to the suburbanite believer, it has now become en vogue in inner-city DC to be a Muslim; it is "cool" to sport a colorful kufi or Palestinian-style keffiyeh. Young brothers in thobes are becoming an increasingly common sight. Scented oils are in high demand. It is not uncommon to hear the greeting of "As-salamu 'alaikum" while walking down the street (that is, if you are obviously a Muslim).

Khan goes on to say that Islam is not just a "look" and external practice, and he expresses the hope that "with their constant expoure to the message (Jumu'ah khutbahs are hardly missed), some of it is bound to sink in and take root."

And you think kufiyas are no longer cool in New York City? Check out this guy, recently photographed on the New York subway by my friend Dave, a fellow kufiyaspotter, on the #1 train, Uptown, 125th and Broadway stop. The gentleman had fake vampire fangs in his mouth too. Dave calls it Harlem Punk Kufi.

And back in Palestine, here's a hot of a very stylish kufiya tie. I love it! Thanks to Rochelle, who alerted me to it, and to Howaida Arraf (an activist in ISM), who gave me permission to reproduce it here. The tie wearer is her brother, Wadeh.

Now a postscript on The Hurt Locker, which I finally got to see. Earlier I posted a photo of the character played by Ralph Fiennes. As my friend Carolina pointed out to me before I saw the film, he is wearing full-blown kufiya, as is the rest of his crew in the film. The Explosive Ordinance Disposal squad, protagonists of the film, comes upon them in the desert. When they first spot them, they think Fiennes & co. are insurgents, since they are in kufiyas. The disposal squad describe what they are wearing as 'haji' wear. Fiennes and his crew are not regular military, they're hunting most-wanted Iraqis, and have two guys who appear in the set of playing cards the US military developed to identify them. Meanwhile--as Carolina also pointed out--the bomb squad member played by Brian Geraghty also wears a kufiya, but it's quite subtle--a khaki scarf that seems to blend into his uniform. And, given that the scarf is khaki colored and not black-and-white or red-and-white, it's also "hipster."

M-1 of Dead Prez was recently in Gaza, as part of the Viva Palestina delegation. He writes about the experience here. Kufiyas were, as you might expect, worn by many in the delegation. M-1 describes what happened as the group approached the border:

On a comfortable chartered bus I daydreamed and listened to one the head organizers, Nancy, deejay to our anxiety and excitement. One of my favorite songs is the one that demanded us to “wave our kufiyas in the air!” which many of us wore. Even though they have become a passing fashion statement, we wore the red and white ones, and I felt extremely proud when the brothers got together to wave our red, black and green Liberation flag in the immigration office as they chanted loud enough for the people to hear us on the other side in Gaza.

I wish I knew what song that was! Note that red-and-white kufiyas have now become associated with Hamas, in the Palestine context. Here's a photo of M-1 from the post; I don't know who the guy is with him.

Do you remember when the kufiya was in all the fashion shows? In case you forgot: here are some 2008 photos of models dressed in "Fashion Week Style," from the fashion blog Jak & Jil. (Thanks, Rochelle!)

Sessilee Lopez, Peter Pilotto fashion show

Maryna Linchuk, Louis Vuitton fashion show

Hanne Gaby Odiele, Chloé fashion show

Is that enough kufiyas for now?

Performance addendum

2009-08-15T09:32:00.007-05:00

I just finished reading this very illuminating and informative account of Performance, the 1971 film starring Mick Jagger and James Fox. I wrote a post on Performance two years ago, after seeing the film a second time, some 26 years after my first viewing. I was struck, on second view, by all the Orientalist hippy themes, the decor, the Hassan-i-Sabbah references, the Persian music in the soundtrack.

I learned a lot from this review, including the rather stunning fact that the highly-regarded film critic Colin MacCabe considers Performance the best British film ever made (in his 2008 book for BFI, Performance). And that the Moroccan style set for the interior of Turner's (Mike Jagger) house was designed by the collector and antique dealer Christopher Gibbs.

Read about him here, in this article in the New York Times, and you learn that in 2000 he had four residences, two of them in Morocco (one in Tangier).

Gibb's association with Jagger, and Morocco, goes way back, as an article on Rolling Stones locations tells us:

48 CHEYNE WALK, SW10 (London)

Mick Jagger bought this fashionable Queen Anne town house in May 1968 for £50,000 and hired designer Christopher Gibbs (see 98 Cheyne Walk) to redecorate the place.

Since visiting

Morocco

in 1958, Gibbs had been an enthusiast for all things Moroccan; arguably, it was Gibbs more than anyone who initiated the late-Sixties hippie craze for Morrocan art and culture (not least, hash). It was this same style that Gibbs introduced to Jagger’s new house, turning it into a “Moroccan bazaar” of drapes, pillows, ornate, painted furniture, brass lamps and fixtures. During the course of his work, Gibbs also came up with the title for the Stones' next album, Beggars Banquet. There was nothing beggarly about Gibbs’ redecoration, however, which cost Jagger a small fortune...

Reportedly, for all its quaint, cottage-like charm from the outside, once through the front door of the house, the ambience changed dramatically. The Gibbs-designed decor evoked the lush decadence of a Turkish harem or opium den (very similar, apparently, to the interior of the Jagger character’s house in the film Performance: see Lowndes Square). The blinds were kept closed, even during the day, the vast living room with its immense, Citizen Kane-style fireplace would usually be lit by just a single table lamp. Jagger liked to pad about the place in women’s slippers, wearing heavy Arabian kohl eye make-up and – when the mood took him - one of Faithful’s frocks.

The same source tells us this about Gibbs' own house:

100 CHEYNE WALK, SW10

Location of designer Christopher Gibbs’ sprawling, wood-panelled apartment – located just a few doors down from Mick Jagger’s. (NB. Another account gives Gibbs’ address as 96.)

Originally part of Lindsay House, built in 1645, Gibbs’ apartment was the epicentre of London’s bohemian Chelsea set during the 1960s. Lindsay House itself originally comprised nos 95-101 Cheyne Walk (impressionist painter James Whistler lived briefly at 101), but was split up into apartments in 1775.

Situated on the first floor, and boasting a splendid view of a lavish back garden and ancient mulberry tree (reputedly, England’s oldest), chez Gibbs was done out like a scene from the Arabian Nights, and wild all-night drug parties were frequent. “At every turn there were Moorish lanterns, leather camel saddles and jewel-like Persian carpets – all viewed through an acrid haze of burning incense,” wrote Christopher Andersen in Jagger Unauthorized. “Guests draped in caftans or Victorian lace luxuriated on huge embroidered cushions strewn about the floor.” Jagger, the Stones and Paul McCartney were regular visitors here, along with “the select pipe-dreamers of Sixties Chelsea: poets and mystics, artists and musicians, courtesans, hustlers and hangers-on.”

Cult director Michaelangelo Antonioni used Gibbs’ house as the setting for the famous party scene in his enigmatic Sixties thriller, Blow-Up.

Until I read the article on Performance earlier this morning, I knew nothing about Gibbs and his Moroccanist influence on the British rock aristocracy. I had thought that Brion Gysin was the main vector of influence (especially via Jajouka). It turns out that Gibbs was thick with the Tangier set, that included, of course, Jane and Paul Bowles, Brion Gysin and Mohamed Hamri. I've read a lot about Tangier and its illustrious and scandalous expats and foreign visitors, but hadn't known about Gibbs and his importance. This will set me off on even more research. But I need to finish that book. And now, I need to go to the Farmer's Market and buy some arugula (gargir in Egyptian Arabic).

Footnote: The same source that tells us about Jagger's and Gibbs' houses informs us that Anita Pallenberg, Keith Richards' girlfriend, who appeared in Performance, was enamored of filmmaker Kenneth Anger, and traveled to Cairo to shoot on location for Lucifer Rising. What I remember most of the Cairo scenes of Lucifer Rising, however, is Myriam Gibril, who plays Isis.

Myriam Gibril, it turns out, was the long-time lover of Donald Cammell, the co-director (with Nicholas Roeg) of Performance. Cammell appears as Osiris in Lucifer Rising. And Cammell has said that Kenneth Anger was “the major influence at the time I made Performance”, much of which is “directly attributable” to him.

And the Turner character in Performance is thought to be based on the actual life of the Rolling Stone Bryan Jones, who was so enamored with the Master Musicians of Jajouka.

God, another avenue, or avenues, for research.

The Kominas: National Tour (+kufiya bonus)

2009-07-22T11:33:00.008-05:00

Taqwacore icons The Kominas are going on national tour! Go see them: all reports of live sightings are very positive. This is the latest, updated poster, fresh off the (virtual) press.

This is the first iteration of The Kominas tour poster. Which do you prefer? (Forgetting the fact that the second is the 'correct' version. Whichever you choose, you must admit that The Kominas really have the image thing going on.

And the kufiya thing going on. (This photo is from their Facebook page.)

Other Kominas and taqwacore-related items that I've come across of late (mostly, in fact, courtesy of The Kominas).

##A video of highlights of the 2007 Taqwatour, with The Kominas, Al-Thawra, Omar Waqar, Vote Hizballah, and The Secret Trial Five.

@@A report from The Guardian on a new book (The Taqwacores: Muslim Punk in the USA) featuring photographer Kim Badawi's images of Islamic punk bands, from 2005-07.

%% The Kominas have recorded a new track, "Blackout Beach," which was featured in a new play, "Water Board: A Play About Torture," which is being performed today at the YMCA Theater, Cambridge, MA. (Please read about it--I can hardly stomach it myself.) You can hear the song on The Kominas myspace page--or if you're a "fan," on Facebook.

^^A long trailer for the film, Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam.

&& Watch The Kominas practice. With trumpet. They keep putting out these clips, so stay tuned.

I just got hold of John Lennon's The Lost Home Tapes 1965-1969. It's cool that we can have access to The Kominas home tapes almost instantaneously. Not that The Kominas are The Beatles, but Shahjehan Khan does bear a resemblance to John Lennon.

^^Nice interview with The Kominas. The word means "scum" in Urdu. They explain their humor. And their politics. "Shariah Law in the USA." Taqwa: Terrorists Are Quite Well Adjusted.

Again, be sure to go see The Kominas if they are playing anywhere near you. Hopefully their next tour will swing by NW Ark.

M1 of Dead Prez in Gaza (and Kufiyaspotting #50)

2009-07-17T20:03:00.007-05:00

Those familiar with the work of the rapper Dead Prez will not be surprised that he is now in Gaza, as part of a 200 person delegation, including former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and New York City Councilman Charles Barron, bringing in humanitarian aid under the auspices of Viva Palestina.

Hopefully he will have a chance to perform in Gaza in the company of Palestinian rappers, as he did back in April in Chicago:

M1 is one of those kufiya wearing rappers who are knowledgeable about Palestine and who is active on behalf of Palestine.

Here's what he told Youth Radio about Gaza in March:

At the seat at every one of these motions that happen in the Middle East is the instability that's brought on by the oppression that's been in that region forever. Since 1948, there, the interjection of the same type of imperialism that shakes the world everywhere around in Africa, in the U.S. The reason I act the way I act is the same reason why the Palestinian people are being attacked. And I think there's one way out, there's one way towards peace and that's the same thing as Peter Tosh say, equal rights and justice.

Here's M1 in kufiya, kicking it Kenya in 2007 (courtesy lukas).

Here he is at the 2008 Slamdance Housewarming Party in Park City, Utah (the alternative to Sundance).

M1 was also present at the 2008 Sundance for the screening of Slingshot Hiphop, but I haven't found any pictures of him garbed in kufiya there.

Cheb Mami sentenced to 5-year prison sentence

2009-07-06T20:28:00.005-05:00

Unbelievable! The Prince of Rai, dethroned. Here's a report from the New York Times on July 4 (p. A5):

France: Singer Sentenced to Prison
By STEVEN ERLANGER

A French court sentenced the popular Algerian singer known as Cheb Mami to five years in prison for abducting a former lover in 2005 and forcing her to undergo an abortion, which was mishandled. The singer, whose real name is Muhammad Khalifati, had denied the charges but expressed remorse, saying he had been manipulated by his entourage and had panicked when he found out the woman was pregnant. The woman gave birth to a healthy daughter, now 3. The singer has had several hits in France and sang on Sting’s 2001 record “Desert Rose.”

The only reason, of course, that this made the news is because of Mami's appearance as a sideman with Sting. Cheb Mami has not only had hits in France, but prior to moving there in 1985, lots of hits in Algeria.

If you read French, check out this report by Daoudi Bouziane in Libération, which reports on a bizarre interview Mami gave to the Algerian newspaper, le Quotidien d'Oran. Mami blames his Jewish manager, Michel Lévy, for giving him bad advice. And also he takes pains to mention that the woman in question, the photographer Isabelle Simon, is a French Jew. He claims to be a victim of a media plot, due to the fact that he's a successful Arab star.

According to the BBC, Mami's manager (also known as Michel Lecorre) was sentenced to four years for plotting and organizing the assault, and two of Mami's aides, Hicham Lazaar and Abdelkader Lallali, were convicted in absentia. Prosecutors claimed that Levy lured Simon to Algiers in August 2005, under the pretext of a business trip.

Here are more details on the crime Mami was accused, and then convicted of, from contactmusic.com:

Mami is accused of trying to force an abortion on his former girlfriend, a magazine photographer, during a trip to Algeria in 2005. It is claimed his alleged victim was locked in a house belonging to one of the singer's friends, where two doctors attempted to perform an abortion. She later realised the foetus was still alive and decided to keep the child....Mami has reportedly accused his manager of organising the abortion plan.

(Thanks to Lisa and Arun.)

Kufiyas are all over "The Hurt Locker"

2009-07-06T10:00:00.005-05:00

To my great regret, The Hurt Locker has not yet opened here. Maybe, if NW Arkansas fans of Kathryn Bigelow are lucky, it will open later this month. Carolina, who is fortunate enough to live in NYC, has already seen it, and informed me that she spotted what looked like a kufiya on one of the characters. This prompted me, naturally, to get on the case, and a search of publicity stills turned up a number of kufiyas. Here's one of Ralph Fiennes as Contractor Team Leader.

There is of course, a long tradition, of Western fighters in the Middle East putting on kufiya. The guards of the early Zionist colonies and TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), for instance. Kufiyas were part of the uniform issued to British forces posted throughout the Middle East after the First World War, and called shemaghs. And here's what wikipedia says about their current use by US forces in the Middle East:

Since the beginning of the War on Terror, these keffiyeh, usually cotton and in military olive drab or khaki with black stitching, have been adopted by US troops as well. Their practicality in an arid environment, as in Iraq, explains their enduring popularity with soldiers. Soldiers often wear the keffiyeh folded in half into a triangle and wrapped around the face, with the halfway point being placed over the mouth and nose, sometimes coupled with goggles, to keep sand out of the face. This is also commonly done by armored, mechanised and other vehicle-borne troops who use it as a scarf in temperate climates to ward off wind chill caused by being in moving vehicles. British soldiers deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan are now issued with a tan-colored shemagh.

The wikipedia entry captures the material practicality of the kufiya, but misses its symbolism. The fact that the kufiya is associated with the "terrorists," with the "bad guys," is also a key element of its attraction. Wearing it seems to capture, in some way, the "evil" power associated with the enemy.

But what about this publicity still, which shows director Kathryn Bigelow and an unidentified assistant in kufiyas? (See kufiyaspotting #48.) Bigelow's is a "local" kufiya, but her assistant's is in "hipster" colors. Mixed messages...Associating with the soldiers...with the locals...with the US hipsters...

Elia Suleiman's movie, "The Time That Remains": released in August

2009-07-05T12:42:00.003-05:00

Here's a trailer for The Time That Remains, the latest film from highly-regarded Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman. It opens in France on August 12, after screening as an Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival in May. God knows if and when it will open in the US.

Here is a catalog of some reviews from US sources, the majority very favorable. David Hudson calls it a "deadpan Palestinian comedy," which sounds about right, based on my familiarity with Suleiman's previous work. (Thanks to Kamran for alerting me to the trailer.)

Novelist Claire Messud on Palestine

2009-07-03T09:53:00.004-05:00

Novelist Claire Messud recently attended the Palestine Festival of Literature in the West Bank, and she just published a wonderful essay about her experiences here. She captures beautifully the dreadful reality of daily life--which I experienced last summer during my two weeks there as well. (I found this thanks to Angry Arab.) Please read the entire piece. I reproduce an excerpt below:

The Ramallah-based architect and writer Suad Amiry put it best when she explained that to be Palestinian now means never to feel at home, because you have no control over time or space. You can live a lifetime in one place and yet not master its geography: routes long-familiar will suddenly be blocked off by barriers or checkpoints; while open spaces in the middle-distance will sprout settlements almost overnight, vast urban conglomerations that change the landscape altogether. You can live a lifetime in one place and yet never know how long it takes to get anywhere: a mere 20-mile journey might consume a whole day, depending on the checkpoints and the whim of the soldiers you encounter. You might never get there at all: you could well be turned back.

I read Claire Messud's 1999 novel, The Last Life, which is about a French pied noir family. (Messud's father was one, a French settler in Algeria.) I didn't much care for it because I felt it really didn't grapple seriously with the French colonial past in Algeria. Based on this essay, I'm going to have to revise my opinion, and maybe check out The Emperor's Children (soon to come out as a movie directed by Ron Howard).

Essential reading on Iran from MERIP + arrest of Iranian researcher Bijan Khajehpour

2009-07-02T09:51:00.005-05:00

This press release was issued today:

NEWS RELEASE July 2, 2009

Middle East Research and Information Project
1500 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Suite 119
Washington, DC 20005
www.merip.org

Another Iranian Researcher Jailed

The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) condemns the arbitrary arrest and detention of the economist Bijan Khajehpour by authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Khajehpour was snatched from the Tehran airport on June 27 upon arrival from Britain. His whereabouts are thus far unknown to his wife, two young children, family, friends and colleagues.

His arrest fits into the deeply disturbing pattern on display since the Islamic Republic moved to quash popular dissent from the official "result" of the June 12 presidential election. On June 30 the Guardian Council, an unelected and unaccountable clerical body, "certified" that "result" on the basis of an internal review of only 10 percent of the ballots. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Iranian citizens are in jail because they have spoken out for more transparent democratic procedures and the rule of law in Iran.

Khajehpour is chief executive officer of Atieh Bahar Consulting, a highly respected firm based in Tehran, and author of tens of articles on Iranian political economy. He suffers from diabetes, and MERIP is very concerned about his health while in detention.

"It's impossible to know what is happening in the hardliners' 'black sites,'" remarked Kaveh Ehsani, an editor of Middle East Report, where Khajehpour's work has been published. Reports of torture during the post-election crackdown are so numerous as to be impossible to dismiss. The Islamic Republic has an execrable record of maltreatment of prisoners, one no better than that of the regime it replaced.

MERIP points to articles of the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran which prohibit such maltreatment, outlaw the persecution of individuals for their beliefs, protect freedom of speech and the press and permit the free holding of public gatherings. These articles correspond to legal protections enshrined in the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a signatory.

"Unfortunately, the powers that be in today's Islamic Republic seem bent on flouting the constitution, with a brazenness unseen in recent years," continued Arang Keshavarzian, another Middle East Report editor who was in Iran during the June 12 voting. The Guardian Council's opaque and incomplete review of ballots is the most recent signal to this effect.

"Anyone who is still attuned to the hardliners' 'anti-imperialist' siren song should ask themselves why so many principled Iranians are in jail for closing their ears to it," added Chris Toensing, executive director of MERIP.

MERIP calls upon all defenders of human rights to press for an immediate halt to the crackdown on the Iranian dissenters and the prompt release of all persons unjustly detained.

*************

"Protest and Regime Resilience in Iran," Khajehpour's analysis of a previous episode of pro-democracy dissent (Dec. 2002), is available on the MERIP website at: http://www.merip.org/mero/mero121102.html

For background on Iran, see the spring 2009 issue of Middle East Report, "The Islamic Revolution at 30." (This should be required reading for all reporters covering the latest events in Iran.)

For an absolutely essential analysis of Iran's latest events:

Kaveh Ehsani, Arang Keshavarzian and Norma Claire Moruzzi, "Tehran, June 2009," Middle East Report Online, June 28, 2009.

Kufiyaspotting #49: Alex of "Isa TKM"

2009-06-28T11:59:00.004-05:00

Isa TKM is a teenage telenovela from Nickelodeon Latin America, which has been broadcast in several latin American countries, and premiered last week on MTV Tr3s. (I was alerted to the music for the show by Jon Caramica in today's NYT--but for some reason I can't find the link.)

Check out the video for the song "Ven a Bailar," a delightful bit of bubblegum pop, which is just the thing for fans of The Archies and all their successors. (It's available on the show's soundtrack.) In it, Alex (Reinaldo Zavarce), the guitarist, can be seen bopping around, wearing one of those "kufiya print" t-shirts. (Otherwise known as trompe d'oeil.) The first season was filmed in Venezuela--was Hugo Chavez an influence in the style choices made in the vid?

Culture Notes on #iranelection 3.7 + MJ

2009-06-27T09:10:00.009-05:00

1. Hich Kas, who is perhaps Iran's best known rapper, showed up recently on The Daily Show--in Jason Jones' three-part account of his recent trip to Iran. We get to witness Hich Kas' remarkable skills, and he proceeds to tell Jones that he raps about street issues, social issues, moral issues. What about the guns, hos, bitches? says Jones. Jones then "teaches" Hich Kas about rap by performing a hilariously shallow rap. Hich Kas laughs but says that Jones' "meter was not good."

Jason Jones' Iran series, btw, was the best work JJ has done ever.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Jason Jones: Behind the Veil - The Kids Are Allah Right

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Jason Jones in Iran

For more Hich Kas music, go here. And search for him on youtube: lots of vids.

2. Alexander made a comment on my previous post, with regard to Mohsen Nimjoo:

...one thing to keep in mind about Namjoo is that unlike Bob Marley and Fela Kuti (who are pretty unanimously revered in their home countries, as far as I'm aware), he has not reached that level of popularity and is not uniformly loved. I was surprised to see Mousavi use a Namjoo song in his campaign advertising, mostly because a lot of the older generation (the ones who have heard of him, anyway) don't like Namjoo and feel that he butchers traditional Iranian music. I am sure that Mousavi wanted to reach out to the young, but he could have used a less divisive figure.

Thanks for that information, Alexander--I heavily depend on Iranian friends and informants, because I am no Iran expert. To clarify, the reason I prefer to compare Namjoo to Marley and Fela rather than to Bob Dylan is that the former all mix "Western" and "non-Western" forms of music in amazing ways. Namjoo, however, reall goes all over the place with his borrowing of Western genres. Check out "Jorah-Baz" from his Toranj album, for instance. It opens with the riff based on Muddy Waters' "I'm A Man," complete with blues harmonica and slide guitar. And then takes the song somewhere else.

Listen to it here:

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Here is the clip made for Mousavi's campaign, Namjoo's remix of Mohamed Reza Shajarian's "Hamrah Sho Aziz." Namjoo was one of many Iranian artists who came out in support of Mousavi's campaign for president.

3. Now for MJ. And there are some Iran connections. As many have noted, Michael Jackson was truly a global star. Some of my Iranian friends recall that MJ provided their soundtrack during the early years of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). And here's some evidence, from Marhane Satrapi's acclaimed graphic novel, Persepolis. (Thanks to Hegar for providing this.)

4. MJ was popular in Iraq too. Among prisoners incarcerated by the US military, post-2003. Jonathan Pieslak, author of Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War, is featured in the latest New Yorker's Talk of the Town. He tells Lauren Collins that US "soldiers would use [heavy metal band Drowning Pool's song "Bodies"] both to get pumped up for battle and 'to induce irritation and frustration among detainees.' (The detainees, apparently, preferred ’N Sync and Michael Jackson.)"

And, if we can credit the film The Three Kings, Michael Jackson was also favored by Saddam's interrogators. Check out this unforgettable scene from the movie, where Iraqi interrogator Captain Said (played by Said Taghmaoui) educates Sgt. Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg) about why Michael Jackson disfigured his face. (Thanks, Elliott.)

5. Pakistan, too. Check out this scene from Pakistani comedy show "Fifty Fifty." (Thanks, Iftikhar and Nila.)

6. And then there are the rumors about Michael Jackson being a Muslim, which run rampant in the Muslim world. For some reason, such rumors spread about certain Westerners. Two I think of off-hand are Neil Armstrong and Jacques Cousteau (untrue in both cases). When it comes to Michael, of course, the rumors are fueled in part by the fact that (a) he took up residency in Bahrain in 2005 and (b) that his brother Jermaine did convert to Islam in 1989.

Ali Eteraz does a good rundown of the rumors, which he puts to rest, inshallah, here.

Whatever god(s) you did or didn't worship, Michael, RIP.

More on culture/#iran election

2009-06-25T16:18:00.005-05:00

First up, a youtube video from Iranian rapper Salome, whom I learned about courtesy of Mark Levine's Heavy Metal Islam. And thank God I did, for she is a terrific rapper. I embedded the video in my earlier post about my Interzone Radio "All Iran" show, but I wanted to say more about it.

The song, "Dad Bezan Sedat Berese (Scream to Let Your Voice Be Heard)," was written in response to, and in criticism of, Israel's recent assault on Gaza (December '08-January '09). It provides evidence that the young people of Iran, who are the main social force sustaining the current political mobilization, are not simply Westernized elitists. There is no reason to expect that love for Israel will be unleashed if the forces represented by the Opposition movement comes to power.

It occurred to me a few days ago that supporters of Palestinian and Iranian rights should start wearing green kufiyas to express solidarity with both movements. I posted this random thought on Facebook, and guess what? My niece, who lives in New York City, posted me a few hours later that she was at an Iran rally (June 21), and had spotted a green kufiya. A bit later she posted on Facebook that she had seen another. Let's get this trend going!

More anecdotal information: A friend who recently returned from Iran wrote me this:

On Saturday (the day after the election), I was at a demonstration and when the riot police showed up on their motor bikes, someone in the crowd yelled "the Israelis are here, run!" Also, two different people mentioned to me that "they [the authorities] have turned Iran into Palestine."

2. Here's another music video, brand new, from the Iranian group Abjeez and Congo Man Crew (thanks, Negar).

The song, "Biyaa," features footage of the recent demonstrations in Iran. "A song dedicated to the courageous people of Iran, in support of freedom and Unity!", Abjeez writes on their Facebook page.

Abjeez ("sister" in Persian slang) are, surprise, two Iranian sisters, Safoura and Melody Safavi, based in Sweden. More info is available here. I've posted about them previously. Check out their other videos, on youtube and elsewhere, they are very clever and the music is terrific. Download the song here. I hope that an English translation is forthcoming.

3. For those looking for more Iranian music in a modern vein, I highly recommend Mohsen Namjoo's album Toranj, which is available from emusic. A good article about Namjoo is here. But I cringe at the Bob Dylan comparison--too easy--and think he should be more properly thought of as Iran's Bob Marley or Fela Kuti.

Namjoo's official homepage is here.

And you can even become a Namjoo 'fan on' Facebook, if you like.

4. Some short notes:

Four of Iran's soccer players have now been "retired" from the sport, after they wore green in their match last Wednesday with South Korea.

Renowned Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf recently released a statement on Iran. Watch it here (with an English translation).

We have found each other again. Even with all the violence happening in Iran, the Iranian people are more kind to each other now. For example, some put their motorcylces on fire, destroy their vehicles, so the fuels of their vehicles suppress the effects of the tear gas. They are defending each other. Around the world, we see that people have put their differences aside.

MERIP issued a news release yesterday protesting the arrests of writer and filmmaker Maziar Bahari and reformist intellectual Saeed Hajjarian. (It's not available online.)

Bahari is a veteran reporter who has covered Iran for the BBC and Newsweek. Hajjarian was formerly a top adviser to former President Mohammad Khatami. As he was shot by right-wing vigilantes in 2000 and has been physically disabled since then, MERIP is deeply concerned about his health while in detention.

"Bahari and Hajjarian would be the first to note that their arrests are only two among hundreds, if not more," commented Shiva Balaghi, an editor of Middle East Report, where the work of the two writers has appeared. There are several reliable reports of torture and other maltreatment in Iranian prisons.

Bahari's film "Football, Iranian Style" was reviewed by Shiva Balaghi in Middle East Report 229 (Winter 2003). The review is available online at: http://merip.org/mer/mer229/balaghi.html

Hajjarian was interviewed in 2000 about Iran's "reformist moment" by Kaveh Ehsani. The text of the interview is accessible online at: http://www.merip.org/mero/mero031300.html.

More to follow...Stay tuned.

Mother Jones blames hipsters for decline of Palestine kufiya industry. Plus, Colin Farrell & Isabel Marant

2009-06-25T15:34:00.004-05:00

The Mother Jones blog published an article about kufiyas this week, by Sonja Sharp, and entitled "Your Intifada: Now Made in China!" For the most part, Sharp goes over material that hawgblawg has covered obsessively over the last year or so. (My first post on the demise of Palestinian-manufactured kufiyas is here.) But here is the key argument:

...why is the the last keffiyeh factory in Palestine about to go out of business?

That's because the one you're wearing (and, increasingly, the ones Palestinians are wearing) are now made in China.

Here's how it happened: Back in '87, during the first intifada, intifadniks couldn't get enough of Palestinian-made $25 scarves. Looser export restrictions meant that Israelis could rep them too, and slowly but surely the scarf and its emblematic pattern began appearing in the West. By the time the second intifada happened in 2000, hardcore activists and the super cool already had them. Then the keffiyeh trend reached its tipping point, and hipsters' insatiable lust for the scarf lured Chinese manufactures into the gig. Fast forward a decade, and Chinese keffiyehs are the norm.

Ironically, global support for Palestinian-statehood-as-fashion-accessory has put yet another nail in the coffin of the Occupied Territories' beleaguered economy. What's next?

So, hipsters are to blame for the decline of Palestinian industry? Ah, they are so easy to blame, aren't they?

But as more responsible reporting suggests, it probably makes more sense to blame the "peace process," which caused the West Bank to open up to "free trade" but created no viable national authority that could impose imports. But maybe criticizing the "peace process" would be too radical a step for Sharp.

One thing that Sharp could have done is to promote the purchase of Palestinian kufiyas by providing a link to the The Kufiyeh Project. (Note to The Kufiyeh Project: get the Hirbawi factory to make green kufiyas, so that we can show our solidarity with both Palestine and Iran. If you need a green kufiya, try the Arab American National Museum.)

And a footnote to earlier kufiyaspotting posts. Here's another photo I found of Colin Farrell (man, he has been photographed a lot in kufiya!--see here and here.)

And here's a photo of a kufiya from designer Isabel Marant, from her Fall/Winter 2008 Runway Show (courtesy Mick Margo, writing in the Fashion Journal):

Interzone Radio Playlist: Iran Special

2009-06-23T22:34:00.003-05:00

Here's the playlist from my Interzone Radio show, broadcast tonight on KXUA 88.3 FM, from 6-8 PM. Interzone Radio is a world music show, and tonight, it was all Iranian music, in solidarity with the Iranian opposition movement. I played a wide variety of Iranian music, from traditional to hip-hop. I'm no expert, but I did my best.

1. "Raks dance," Raks, Waking up Scheherazade (rock from the 1960s)
2. "Dil Dasa Per Mesha," Kouroush, Waking up Scheherazade (rock from the 1960s)
3. "Kalagha," Manouchehr Sakhaee, The Best Of Manouchehr (pop)
4. "Dastgah-e Mahur: Tasnif 'Mahd-e Honar'," Alireza Eftekhari, Music Of Iran I (traditional)
5. "Foroud," Kayhan Kalhor & Ali Akbar Moradi, In The Mirror Of The Sky (traditional)
6. "Mahour," A. Ebadi, Setar Solo : Master Performers of Persian Traditional Music (traditional)
7. title unknown, Hich Kas feat. Reveal, download here (rap)
8. "Testament cover," SDS, courtesy youtube (death metal from Tehran)
9. "Sani," ZAMAN 8 & Hafez Modir, Suryaghati EP 1, Six Degrees (world/jazz)
10. "Neyriz," Jalal Zolfonun And Soheil Zolfonun, Mystic Journey: String Music Of Iran
11. "Bahooneh," Iraj, 48 Golden Hits of Iraj (traditional)
12. "Saz va Avaz," Mohammad Reza Shajarian, Bidad (traditional)
13. "Vaghti Mebanamet," Parva, Shah Mahiha (pop)
14. "Shekayat," Googoosh, 40 Golden Hits Of Googoosh: The Best of 1970-1979 (pop)
15. "Yadesh Beh Kher Tow Tehran," Faezeh, Yadesh Be Kher Tow Tehran (pop)
16. "Djooni Djooni," Minoo Javan, Persian Folk Songs (traditional)
17. "Magham Allahwaisy And Hejrani," Ali Akbar Moradi, Fire Of Passion (Kurdish Tanbur Music Of Iran) (traditional)
ُ18. "Sepideh(Avaz e Hejaz)," Shahram Nazri, Atashi dar Neyestan (traditional)
19. "Demokrasi," Abjeez, Hameh (rock)
20. "Ghame Del," O-Hum, Aloodeh (rock)
21. "Auricle," Kahtmayan, Exir (heavy metal)
22. "Dad Bezan Sedat Berese," Salome, courtesy youtube (rap)
This song is in solidarity with the people of Gaza, assaulted by the Israeli Defense Forces in Dec. '08-Jan.'09.

23. "Talkhi Nakonad," Mohsen Namjoo, Toranj (rock)
24. "Ham Avazi Shushtari," Masters of Persian Music, Faryad (traditional)
25. "Tan Amiri," Ostad Elahi, Spiritual Epic (traditional)

Kufiyaspotting #48: Kathryn Bigelow

2009-06-21T01:55:00.003-05:00

Jonathan Olley/Summit Entertainment

I'm pretty excited to see this photo of director Kathryn Bigelow, kufiya clad, in the New York Times, June 21. It's from a great article by Manohla Dargis, on the occasion of the release of Bigelow's latest film, The Hurt Locker. I can't wait to see it. I'm a huge fan of Bigelow's Near Dark, Blue Steel, Point Break and Strange Days. It's wonderful to read a review that treats Bigelow with the respect she deserves, and that calls her a "great filmmaker." (Plus, the review mentions the fact that Bigelow appears in the film, Born in Flames, the subject of a previous kufiyaspotting.)

UPDATE: I should have thanked Therese for alerting me to this on Saturday evening. Otherwise I wouldn't have known about it until Sunday morning, when my Times arrives.

More on culture and #iranelection: Shajarian, Makhmalbaf/Mousavi, Iranian rap and metal, Khamenei's kufiya trim

2009-06-20T15:49:00.010-05:00

1. I've tracked down the context in which renowned Iranian singer Mohammad Reza Shajarian asked the Iranian state radio to stop broadcasting his songs. I quote some excerpts from an article in The Guardian on Thursday:

When it was uttered it was meant as a biting put-down to the thousands who dared to question his re-election as president of Iran.

"The nation's huge river would not leave any opportunity for the expression of dirt and dust," said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a rather elliptical reference to the surging protests on the streets of Tehran...

But, just as street protests the world over seize upon a poignant image to convey their message, so Ahmadinejad's contemptuous phrase "dirt and dust" has entered folklore and provided a focus for the rage of the protesters.

So far it has inspired pithy slogans, blog headlines, posters and a litany of insults throwing the president's words back in his face. "Dirt and dust is you, it is you who are the enemy of Iran," one chant goes. Another frequently-heard slogan has been: "We are not dirt and dust, we are Iran's nation."

The phrase (khas o khashak in Farsi) has become a badge of pride. Etemad-e Melli, a reformist newspaper, carried a huge picture on yesterday's front page showing marchers carrying a banner bearing the slogan, Epic of Dirt and Dust. The offending words were written in green, the colour adopted by Mousavi's campaign.

It has also prompted a high-profile protest from one of Iran's most famous singers, Mohammad Reza Shajarian, who asked the state broadcaster IRIB – controlled by Ahmadinejad supporters – to stop playing his songs because he believed the insulting reference included him.

"I emphatically ask IRIB not to broadcast my voice because this is the voice of dirt and dust and will always remain so," he told BBC Persian.

My friend Shiva tells me that Shajarian has been participating in the protest marches in Tehran this week as well. I've seen him perform in New York, with Hossein Alizadeh and Kayhan Kalhor (with Shiva), and I highly recommend buying any of his recordings, because it is great music, and you get to show support for a progressive artist.

2. Iranian film director and Mousavi spokesperson Mohsen Makhmalbaf issued a statement on behalf of Mousavi yesterday, published in The Guardian. In it, he refers to Mousavi's relation to the arts scene in Iran--as mentioned in my previous post:

Before the revolution, Mousavi was a religious intellectual and an artist, who supported radical change but did not support the mullahs. After the revolution, when all religious intellectuals and even leftists backed Khomeini, he served as prime minister for eight years. The economy was stable, and he did not order the killings of opponents, or become corrupt.

In order to neu[t]ralise his power, the position of prime minister was eliminated from the constitution and he was pushed out of politics. So Mousavi returned to the world of artists because in a country where there are no real political parties, artists can act as a party. The artists supported Khatami and now they support Mousavi.

Previously, he was revolutionary, because everyone inside the system was a revolutionary. But now he's a reformer.

3. Mark Levine, author of Heavy Metal Islam, is blogging about hip hop and heavy metal artists in Iran and their thoughts about the current protests. He's constantly updating the post, so keep checking back. Mark also links to the galleys of his chapter on Iran in Heavy Metal Islam, if you are interested in more background.

Mark also observes the following:

one of the main complaints i'm getting from friends in iran is that they are getting hardly any support from the arab world. ahmadinejad is very popular there bc of his 'standing up' to israel and the US (in my mind, it's more like professional wrestling--the iron sheikh vs sargeant slaughter) and no one caring what it actually means to live under the current system. i'm working on a piece now on how hosni mubarak must be viewing what's happening here. it's hard to imagine the egyptian people putting up with another sham election in their country after the courage displayed by iranians. but it is true from what i can tell that support for the iranian people from the arab ngo/activist sector has been relatively weak. if anyone has good examples to the opposite, please send them my way.

I too would be interested in comment on that subject. What is opinion in the Arab world?

4. Finally, when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered his speech yesterday calling on supporters of the opposition to end their protests, and asserting that there was no vote rigging or cheating in the elections, he wore a robe trimmed with the pattern of the black-and-white kufiya. Reasserting, then, that he and Ahmadinejad are the Iranian representatives of the sacred cause of Palestine. As noted previously, some of the protesters are contesting this. Just as they are contesting the ownership of the slogan of the Iranian Revolution, "allah-o akbar."

Culture and sports notes on #iranelection

2009-06-17T16:24:00.007-05:00

I'm passing on the 'new media,' since every single news media outlet has now published an article on the so-called twitter revolution, and so many have already said (and I even wrote it on Facebook): the revolution will be tweeted, facebooked and youtubed. (And flickred.)

I'm talking about more traditional forms of culture.

First up is Shiva Balaghi's invaluable report on Middle East Report Online, published a few days before the election, "An Artist as President of the Islamic Republic of Iran?".

Some of Iran’s leading intellectuals and cultural figures have been actively campaigning for [Mir-Hossein] Mousavi. They attended a May rally in Azadi Stadium, marking the anniversary of the 1997 election of President Khatami. The Oscar-nominated director Majid Majidi made Mousavi’s official campaign video. Over 800 filmmakers and actors signed a public letter published in Iranian newspapers supporting Mousavi’s candidacy. Leading directors like Dariush Mehrjui, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Manijeh Hekmat, and Masoud Kimiai appeared in a ten-minute video, “Green Stars,” distributed on YouTube, calling on Iranians to vote -- and to vote for Mousavi...An architect and an artist himself, Mousavi has garnered increasing support amongst Iran’s culture workers who have faced growing pressures in Ahmadinejad’s regime.

Renowned filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, in fact, serves as a Mousavi spokesperson abroad.

Second--and again, my source is Shiva--the renowned Iranian singer Mohammed-Reza Shajarian, who is probably the greatest performer of Persian classical music, has protested that Iranian state television used his music in their pro-Ahmadinejad broadcasts.

Check him out, performing with Kayhan Kalhor (kamancheh) and Hossein Alizadeh (tar).

Finally (and again, thanks to Shiva for alerting me to this):

Five Iranian soccer players, including captain Ali Karimi, wore green wristbands in an apparent sign of support for Mousavi at a World Cup Asian qualifying match in South Korea. State television showed the players wearing them for the entire first half, but the bands were gone by the time the second half started. (from MSNBC)

(photo: Min Kyung-hoon, AP)

Team captain Ali Karimi is second from left, and he's wearing a green armband, not a wristband.

Iran, Palestine, Kufiyas

2009-06-15T23:30:00.009-05:00

Just in case anyone had any illusions that the mass demonstrations that took place in Tehran earlier today represent a pro-Western movement that might somehow be sympathetic with US pro-Israel foreign policy: just check out this photo of one of the demonstrators. This image was screened three times tonight on the Rachel Maddow show. No doubt it is circulating widely.

And then there's this: Kamran Rastegar reported this on facebook today:

Students chanting seen on BBC Persian TV: "mardom chera neshestin, iran shodeh felestin." (people why are you still sitting, Iran's become Palestine).

Later in the day, Kamran posted:

Love to our Palestinian, Lebanese and other Arab supporters in the struggle in Iran... Kullina Ghazzeh, Kullina Tehran! [we are all Gaza, we are all Tehran].

Indeed. On the youtube videos I watched of the Tehran demos yesterday and today, I heard demonstrators chanting, "marg bar diktator," or, "death to the dictator," i.e., Ahmadinejad. The slogan of the Iranian revolution was "marg bar shah": "death to the shah." About time that the symbol of Palestine solidarity was taken out of the hands of the cynical holocaust denier.

Ramallah Syndrome, Ahdaf Soueif on Palestinian Art

2009-06-13T18:15:00.003-05:00

Check out the blog Ramallah Syndrome, and its very informative discussions of Ramallah, Palestine's de facto 'capital.'

From Jamil:

Once you are outside Ramallah you immediately face Israeli checkpoints, so you have to see it through this system of controlled urbanization where the Palestinian Authority has some sort of symbols of sovereignty, but in fact it's all very deceptive. There is not much power, this is it. If you go to the restaurants and if you go to the fashion shops you can maybe choose fashion from Italy and maybe suits from France whatever, you think that you have entered this bubble - but it is a bubble, it can be punctured. Like what happened in 2002 when the Israelis invaded Ramallah. Which within one hour the Israelis took complete control, Arafat was besieged in one room, with smelly toilets and it was difficult to get him food. It shows you the real power - still with the occupation, when they want to use it they use it.

I wish I could have attended the Ramallah Syndrome Sound System Performance on June 6, put on by Aswatt (Basel Abbas) of Ramallah Underground and Ruanne Aburahme at the Venice Bienniale.

Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif published an informative piece on the Palestinian artists exhibiting at Venice, Palestine c/o Venice, as well as on the Palestinian festival of literature, held earlier in the West Bank.

I'd particularly like to see this, especially after meeting the Palestinian hip-hop group G-Town in the Shu'fat camp last summer. (See my photos of G-Town and Shu'afat here.)

Jawad al-Malhi's House No 197 concentrates on the "project" where he grew up, Shufhat refugee camp in Jerusalem, where buildings - although built in concrete - are "never conceived as a whole from foundation to rooftop, but rather are built in piecemeal fashion for temporary use as their occupants wait to leave". The work, which also examines community and its durability under stress, is eerie in its crowdedness, emptiness, the occasional splash of colour.

Live Kronos Quartet performance of Ramallah Underground's "Tahweesh"

2009-06-06T08:55:00.003-05:00

This song appears on the Kronos Quartet's new album, Floodplain. Read more about the recording here.

Reactions to Obama, Israel and Egypt (with kufiya content)

2009-06-04T17:06:00.005-05:00

Here's a poster of Obama that a right-wing Israeli group is circulating to protest Barack Hussein's supposed ostensible Jew-hating, courtesy the blog, Improvisation: Arab Woman Progressive Voice. (Thanks, Tahereh.) The claim, of course, is way over the top, but it's symptomatic of real nervousness in Israel about Obama.

The practice of photoshopping the kufiya over the head of any political opponent is routine representational practice on the Israeli far right. I'm reproducing below an image I posted previously. It's a poster plastered around Israel in the run-up to George W. Bush's visit to the country in 2008. I mean, if the far-right could label Bush (not to mention Olmert and Peres) as an 'accomplice to terror,' of course, Obama must be an anti-Semite. Right?

Many observers have noted that Obama's speech in Cairo today was, while critical of Israeli expansion of settlements, quite soft on Israel's oppressive policies towards the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, reaction to Obama's Middle East visit was quite positive in Egypt, as indicated by this tourist item for sale in Cairo's Khan El-Khalili (from fridayinla, on flickr--thanks, Robin). Much of this enthusiasm, no doubt, has to do with Egyptian nationalism--the fact that Obama gave his speech in Egypt, as opposed to another Muslim or Middle Eastern country.

For the positive feelings to translate into anything meaningful, however, will require that the US really pressure Israel to not only stop settlement expansion but also dismantle the settlements and leave all of the West Bank, for good. And to negotiate with Hamas and abandon the imprisoning and ruinous blockade of Gaza. Not to mention getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Nice words, but more action needed!