The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

Gaza joy as Palestinian singer wins Arab Idol contest

Posted: 22 Jun 2013 09:51 PM PDT

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Jubilant Palestinians took to the streets in their thousands early Sunday after singer Mohammed Assaf won a pan-Arab singing contest that has had millions of viewers fixed to their TV screens since March.

Saturday's televised victory was the first such success for a Palestinian entertainer and sparked an unprecedented response in the occupied territories.

Assaf, winner of the Arab Idol contest in Beirut, dedicated the win to "the Palestinian people, who have been suffering for more than 60 years from (Israeli) occupation".

"Mohammed Assaf is the Arab Idol!" called out the presenter of the show, modelled on the Western Pop Idol contest, as coloured confetti rained down on the cheering audience.

Immediately after his win, Assaf was named Youth Ambassador for UNRWA, the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees and named Palestinian goodwill ambassador by president Mahmud Abbas.

The handsome, tuxedo-clad Assaf, 23, won after weeks of anticipation from his army of followers, who had been glued to big screens in cafes and restaurants across Gaza and the occupied West Bank, listening as his powerful voice propelled him through the competition every weekend.

His mother, wearing a traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, wept as she wrapped the Palestinian black, green, white and red flag around her shoulders.

Spontaneous celebrations broke out in Gaza, Assaf's home, and in the West Bank, with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets. Huge posters of the Gazan singer have festooned the streets, the singer becoming a source of pride for Palestinians everywhere in recent months.

Each edition of the twice-weekly show, aired by the pan-Arab MBC channel in Beirut, has been followed with increasing anticipation, with social networks mobilising to boost the number of votes for their favoured candidate.

In the West Bank town of Ramallah the celebrations after the final results were announced spread to the tomb of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

"The mood is undescribable. Everyone is celebrating. Thank you, Mohammed Assaf, for bringing joy to our hearts. We haven't felt this joy in a long time," Gaza resident Mohammad Dahman told AFP via the Internet.

In Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, celebrations turned sour as young Palestinians clashed with Israeli police. Several people were arrested.

In northern Lebanon, Palestinian refugees in the Beddawi camp fired gunshots into the air and took to the streets, honking their car horns to celebrate Assaf's win.

Across the southern city of Sidon, there were celebrations too, said an AFP journalist.

Born in Misrata, Libya, Assaf grew up in the overcrowded Khan Yunis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, one of the world's poorest and most densely-populated places where Israel severely restricts the movement of people, goods and financial aid.

The Islamist Hamas movement, which has controlled Gaza since 2007, disapproves of what it considers un-Islamic shows, such as Arab Idol, but has not officially clamped down on support for Arab Idol or Assaf.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas phoned Assaf during the contest to offer him encouragement, the official Wafa agency said.

In a previous episode of the programme, popular Lebanese singer and jury member Ragheb Alama had described Assaf as "the best rocket" to have come out of Gaza, and as "a rocket of peace, not war".

Announcing Assaf's nomination as regional ambassador for youth minutes after his win, the agency's chief Filippo Grandi said: "All Palestinians share in his success. Mohammed's music is a universal language and speaks to all of us. How fantastic that a Palestine refugee from Gaza should bring us all together in this way."

On the Israeli side, army spokesman Avichai Adraee congratulated the young Palestinian singer in a tweet in Arabic.

Israel imposed a land, sea and air blockade on Gaza in 2006 after militants there seized an Israeli soldier.

It was further tightened in mid-2007 when the Islamist Hamas movement took control of Gaza, then eased somewhat following the international outcry after Israel's botched raid on a humanitarian flotilla bound the enclave. - AFP

Revisiting Motown Record's Hitsville in Detroit

Posted: 23 Jun 2013 01:54 AM PDT

Motown churned out a sound and style that has come to define popular music.

THERE are magical places in this world. Some of them are natural wonders. Some of them are architectural achievements. And some of them are locations where something special happened.

In the case of a house on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit, Michigan, something special happened again and again … and again. During the 1960s, this two-storey home served as Hitsville, U.S.A. – the primary recording studio (and headquarters) for the Motown Record Corporation. During Motown's blockbuster decade, Hitsville's Studio A produced the majority of the label's hits, from Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' The Tracks Of My Tears to The Supremes' Where Did Our Love Go to The Temptations' My Girl and hundreds of others.

A few years ago, my wife and I visited this pop music landmark, which has been operating as the Motown Historical Museum since 1985. I don't know what I expected Motown's headquarters to look like. (Where could these immaculate sounds have come from: a gleaming skyscraper or a stately mansion, perhaps?) It was surprising to find this legendary studio tucked away on a moderately busy urban street with old homes and wide lawns – house, house, house, Motown.

We entered the Motown complex and joined a tour, just as the guide was providing background on the company's founder, Berry Gordy Jr. The Detroit native had been a songwriter in the 1950s, but realised that he could make more money as a record label owner. In 1959, with US$800, Gordy started the label that would become Motown – which, by the way, is short for "motor town," a nickname for Detroit because of its automobile manufacturers.

It didn't take long for Gordy to find success, scoring his first national hit in 1960 with Barrett Strong's Money (That's What I Want), and Motown's first No 1 with The Marvelettes' Please Mr. Postman in 1961. The latter was one of the hundreds of thousands of songs recorded in the building we were touring. Gordy had bought it in 1959, put offices on the first floor, created a studio in the garage and moved his family in upstairs.

Gordy's success was notable for more than just his good business sense and musical taste. Gordy was an African-American record executive selling music by black artists to an audience of many races. This was no easy achievement in 1960s America, which was sharply divided because of tensions between whites and blacks. While some black musicians had found mainstream success, only a few had a prolonged impact and virtually none released music on a label that was owned and operated by a black man.

Gordy was all too aware of his musicians' importance as ambassadors for the black community in the United States (and, later, around the world). In concert and on TV, artists such as The Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas and Stevie Wonder were dressed in sharp suits and glittering dresses (which they called "uniforms" and are on display in the museum). The stars took artist development classes in which they were taught to speak and act like royalty in an effort to counteract the prevailing stereotype of uneducated and unrefined black youths.

Not that any of that would have mattered if the music wasn't any good. Under Gordy's leadership, writers and producers such as Smokey Robinson, Norman Whitfield and the team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland forged the "Motown Sound" – a hybrid of pop and soul with instantly memorable melodies and intricate instrumentation. The label's hits sounded like nothing else.

As we learned on the tour, those hits were no accident. Gordy reigned supreme over the company's quality control. To determine what he might release, he would hold listening sessions with teenagers from the neighbourhood. Gordy would conduct his "sandwich test." Our tour guide laid out the sce-nario: after a new song played, Gordy would walk over to a teenager and ask, "If you had 50 cents, would you by that record or a sandwich?" If the answer was a sandwich, he thought that the song needed more work. But, if the teenager responded, "What kind of sandwich?" he knew he had a potential hit.

And then our tour came to the room I had been waiting for: the recording studio. Saying that the studio used to be a garage doesn't really convey how tiny this place is. It's hard to imagine some of the vocal groups having room to move around, much less enough space for Motown's legendary "house band," known as The Funk Brothers. To give us an idea of how a recording session felt, our guide lined up five men from the group under the microphones, got them swaying in rhythm and forced a little bit of My Girl out of them. I felt a little of the Motown magic as the guide encouraged the whole group – white and black, young and old – to sing along. We all knew the words.

This was fun for us, but it was hard work for the people who toiled during Motown's heyday. At the studio's apex, employees worked in shifts at Hitsville, U.S.A., keeping the studio open 22 hours each day. Groups would come back from a tour, record a bunch of new songs, and then head out on the road again. Like the auto manufacturing facilities that also called Detroit home, Motown was a factory.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Ahad, 23 Jun 2013

The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

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