Different Sounds from Arabia

I first read about Tania Saleh on a Jordanian blog. Tania is a young Lebanese singer and composer, who studied arts and music in France. What makes Tania different? It is her devotion to music as a pure form of art and not some kind of business. And this is why you will never see her on Melody or Mazzika. It is because she is not a part of the mainstream, which is filled with crap by the likes of Haifaa and Marwa. Tania belongs to a small group of Arab artist such as Oumaima Al Khaleel, Jahida Wehbe, and May Nasr (if you know more examples please do tell in the comments) who represent an alternative genre of music than what is available to the public.

I will not be surprised if this was the first time you read about any of these artists as the Arab media do not have space for people like those. I've been listening to Tania and Oumaima quite a lot in the past two weeks, and nobody, nobody around me had the slightest idea who they were. When people who consider themselves music-savvy asked me about them, their immediate reaction would be: and how come I never heard of them? I had a really hard time trying to explain to these people what does it mean to be out of the mainstream, and to be honest I did not had much success in that regard.

Do listen to these artists, at least for a change, and if you had a chance to attend a concert for any of them, do not miss it. Those of you living in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria have a better chance to see such artists performing in concerts, while for us in the Gulf listening to their CDs should be good enough for the time being.