I recorded these videos on my camera after switching the channel from the camel racing. I thought that friends & family outside the Arabian peninsula might find these local music videos to be quite entertaining.
The men are doing the traditional yola dance, which I've read is designed for them to show off their rifle spinning skills. As one write-up in the local paper described: "The yola dance requires men to stand in a line together, facing another line of men who loudly chant lines of poetry. I'm sure you have been impressed by the back-and-forth movement of the hands and the head, and the men's ability to bend during certain parts of the poetry and music."
You can see the line of men in this video.
Some more here, that shows the bending that the writer mentioned.
With hearts and brains like hard drives, we all move through this life constantly shuffling through thousands of songs triggered by memories and names, a certain season, or even just the way the light of landscape feels in a certain place.
Here are some of the songs that I added to my hard drive in 2011, my top ten.
1. Pumped Up Kicks, Foster The People Thank you to NPR, or wherever I first heard about this song. One notable difference in my life in Dubai vs NYC is that, back in NYC I used to download a lot of really cool new music. In Dubai, my exposure is more limited to the local top 40 station or the dance tunes that the Lebanese girls play on Thursdays in the office. Where I used to hear a random cool tune on the an ad or online video and instantly download it for cruising tunes, I no longer have iTunes access here in Dubai (except for that gift card - thanks Joe!) so I don't just spend the occasional buck on a song. Instead, when I do here the occadional catchy song on an NPR "Summer Tunes" post or something, I file it away to my YouTube queue and listen on repeat. This song - totally loved it. Finally bought it with the aforementioned iTunes gift card from Joe. Not only do I love it, but it's a fave of James as well. Soundtrack of our Jumeira Beach Road cruising.
2. Here to Stay, Milagres This is just my perfect kind of song. A chirping optimistic beat. A singalong chorus. A key change to minor to give it texture. Over and over and over, I listen to this.
3. The Suburbs, Arcade Fire This song reminds me of so much - our trip to Europe in the summer, hanging out in Fred's apartment, watching a movie years ago with a soundtrack by a group called Barely Drawn Boy, growing up in the suburban side streets of Richmond. There's a gorgeousness to the layers of instrumentation of this song. The way that the plaintive horn sounds in a minor tone.
4. Staircase, Radiohead Radiohead often has this effect on me where I can instantly fall for one of their songs. It doesn't have to grow on me, it's instant. Other songs of theirs leave me indifferent, but sometimes, as in the case of this song, I'm blown away. I love this song.
5. Written on the Forehead, PJ Harvey The only CD that I bought this year, the only CD that I've bought in a long, long time, was PJ Harvey's "Let England Shake". So much has been written about the prize-winning album, its layers of sound, its instrumentation. At first I loved a song called The Glorious Land, for its urgent guitar strum, which make me want to learn how to play the song on the guitar. I still love that song, but then also fell in love with The Words That Maketh Murder after another blogger posted it on her favourite song list. However, my choice to be included in this list is this song, because it grew on me, and because the chorus swells with such a rich melody.
6. Fool's Day, Blur Ride along on a bike through London neighbourhoods. "Then on my bike/ Down the Ladbroke Grove/ To the forthcoming dramas/ The studio/ And a love of all sweet music/ We just can’t let go" and sing along to one of those simple guitar riffs that you just can't help sing out loud.
7. The Weight of the World, The Editors Part of the intrigue of sharing a home with a new roommate is the inheriting of their musical collection. I spent a weekend morning importing all of James' CDs to my iTunes, and this song was an absolute favourite. Soaring guitars and chorus and crecendoes. My kind of song.
8. Higher, Taio Cruz Here's the thing with live music in Dubai - as James puts it, it's the city where 80's bands come to collect that last hefty paycheque. Salt N Pepa, Sade, Britney Spears, Metallica, Michael Bolton... none are ever compelling enough to entice us into buying tickets to their shows. But when some friends offered us their extra tickets to Nelly Furtado, we decided, hey why not, and caught a taxi out to Abu Dhabi to see Miss I'm Like A Bird. Most awesome of all, however, was her opening act, this guy I'd never heard about before, playing catching pop song after catchy pop song. Taio - - you won a fan this year, and I listen to this song when I go running because it's the perfect pump up tune.
9. The Look, Metronomy Isn't it just a cool vibe and cool beat? That's why I like it. There are some songs that you hear in ads, like ones for French railways that had this song, and you just like the song and have to hear it again. This song is one of those for me. Ultracool.
10. The Ossie's Going to Wembley song I don't know the name of this song, and out of allegiance to Arsenal, my de facto official team, I won't embed the video of this song from the 1980's era Tottenham, but I felt it had to be captured here because there's a lyric within the song in which they refer to player Osvaldo Ardiles that goes "Ossie's going to Wembley" and we made in-house variations of this lyric throughout the year, e.g., "We are going to Doha" or "We're going to Abu Dhabi" etc etc etc. All of which is to say that I had to capture this song memory somehow.
11. Hard to choose a tenth (edit: I had repeated a number when I first wrote this, so I actually *did* pick 10 songs, but I'll leave this statement about picking one more here) amazing song. So many other favourites that have inspired impromptu dance parties in the dining room or passenger seat of the car. But the first nine of this list - all part of the hard drive, for sure.
Press play on this video, "The Suburbs" by The Arcade Fire, and have this tune in the background as you read this recap of our visit to London.
I love this song, we listened to it in Fred's apartment in Notting Hill, and it became a soundtrack to the holiday, played on repeat on Fred's CD player, and later in my mind after we'd taken a train to the next city.
From my journal:
"Except for one rainy morning in London, we had gorgeous clear sunny afternoons. Strolling the whitewashed Notting Hill buildings, I recalled our last similarly clear time in London, and thought about the perfection."
London is always beautiful when I visit, a series of beautiful days where we can walk and walk and walk outside. The pale sun hitting the buildings at just the right angle, the sound of people laughing and chatting in a calm crowd outside a pub, the flowers planted in neat window boxes, the mild temperatures that make for excellent exploring weather. But I know that the truth of London is that it is more Vancouver-esque, that there will be days, even weeks of grey rain, and that the 10pm sunsets will soon become pre-5pm sunsets. So I'm not naive, I know that there's this other side to its personality, but I appreciate the luck I've had in encountering the best of London, almost every time.
It's a place where, by now, I no longer feel like much of a tourist, and I get myself out to Canary Wharf for a business meeting with my Oyster Card in hand, or I jog over to Hyde Park for a nice morning run, or I find myself a seat at Tiny Robot for a glass of wine while I wait for the guys to arrive on the Tube. Favourite cafes and bookstores are visited, and favourite friends are visited as well.
I only took 5 photos in London, over several days, which I take to be a true sign of this transition from tourist-mode to familiar-mode.
One afternoon, after the rainy weather had blown away, we found ourselves with a crowd of friends high above Oxford Circus. The classic after-work crowd, relishing the return of the sunshine and sticking to the outside terrace even when the breezes were cold and the sun disappeared behind a cloud.
I packed one nice dress on this trip, and it had its only holiday appearance on an evening in London, when we caught a taxi to a nice restaurant, sharing crab appetizers, tasty entrees, a millefeuille dessert with friends. I enjoy catching taxis in London, as I am far more reliant on the Tube. My geography of the city is limited to those stops from which I've emerged, and if you were to plunk me down somewhere and ask, "how far to Islington? (or Paddington, or King's Cross, or the Thames)" I would be thoroughly flummoxed. I just don't know how it all connects, how that Tube map spreads out in real miles. So, in a taxi above ground, I see that it's not that far from Notting Hill to Oxford Circus and that we pass familiar places along the way. If I lived here, I would use my NYC strategy, whereupon I would walk and walk and walk, noticing little details along the way. Lower East Side to Port Authority and everything in between. Someday soon, I will more immediately recognize the landmarks of London, but for now, I immerse in the little details that I see.
One grey afternoon, we walked to the movies, which is a perfect way to shake off the effects of a big night before. That morning, we had sat in the back booth of a diner down the street, eating pancakes. The milkshake machine had been broken, thwarting our orders of chocolate shakes. I took a few photos of the decor, old books and photos.
And then late one night, back at Fred's place, we sang out loud to songs on full blast, the Arcade Fire, Pearl Jam (come on, listen to "Alive" again, what an anthem), The Tragically Hip... the windows were open, the air was cool, the streets outside were quiet.
I mentioned in my last post on the half-marathon, that there was a pipe band comprised of Arabian men who played at the start, and this again spurred my curiosity.
We have noticed bagpipes in Arabia here and there - like, when we were in Muscat right on their national day, the soundtrack emanating from taxi drivers's radios and the hotel loudspeakers was a mix of traditional Arabic songs and bagpipes. Here is a video I took in Muscat, you can see the tree-lined road, and see the cabbie's Omani dress and headwear, and listen to that radio! Bagpipes!
I did some online research to try to find out why the Scottish bagpipe is so prevalent in the Arab peninsula.
From Wikipedia: "The Great Highland Bagpipe also spread to parts of Africa and the Middle East where the British military's use of pipes made a favorable impression. Piping spread to Arabic countries such as Jordan, Egypt and Oman, some of whom had previously existing bagpipe traditions."
Also from Wikipedia: "Oman is home to the world's only camel-backed bagpipe military band."
And then furthermore, from the book A Reformer On The Throne: Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said by Sergei Plekhanov, talking about how the current leader of Oman had attended military school in Great Britain:
Finally the day of their graduation arrived. Assembled on a parade ground in navy blue dress uniforms with stand-up collars and white belts, the students waited for the signal to begin a passing-out parade. Bugles and bagpipes began to play, followed by drum rolls, and the students moved forward on command, with measured steps.... Even after many decades, the Sultan of Oman remembers this event with great delight and considers it one of the major landmarks in his life.
I just dug a little further and saw that the marching band that kicked off our half-marathon yesterday must have been the Ras Al Khaimah Police Pipe Band.
Music always forms a sort of cinematic soundtrack to my life, as I pop in the earphones for a long run, or a walk through city streets. This year, I started listening to WNYC on my radio as I was falling asleep, enjoying the sounds of Night Music and then waking up to the soothing voices of Morning Edition or Krista Tippett's weekend morning show, On Being. My favourite day to run was Monday because it meant I had a new episode of This American Life to listen to as I plodded along the dark streets.
I discovered and rediscovered some new music this year, and with most of these, I followed my usual pattern of completely overdosing on the songs, listening to them over and over and over on repeat.
Broken Bells - "The High Road"
In an evening of websurfing through one of the many blogs I follow, someone had posted this song and I almost didn't listen after the first few seconds of notes - - but then the bass kicks in at 0:11 and WOW is that a good song. The rest of the album was excellent, one of the first full albums I've purchased in years.
The Field Mice - "Fabulous Friend"
Reminds me of dancing around my apartment in NJ at night, and getting ready for a flight to London.
Gorillaz - "Stylo"
My favourite songs are cruising tunes, and this is the ultimate cruising tune. What a beat! I would crank this in the ol' Saturn, had it on almost all CD mixes last year, and now it's the soundtrack to roadtrips to Abu Dhabi and Ras Al Khaimah.
Thom Yorke - "Hearing Damage"
Radiohead is one of my all-time favourite bands, though I'm almost sheepishly reluctant to say how I discovered this amazing song. Listen to it first, how awesome, right? Okay, fine, I'll admit - I was watching the movie Twilight: New Moon and totally perked up when this song was playing in the background, grabbing my laptop to Google the movie soundtrack to see what it was, and of course! Radiohead's lead singer.
Grizzly Bear - "Slow Life"
Okay, and while I'm admitting to watching Twilight: New Moon (which does NOT appear on my Year in Review best movie list), I also LOVED this song from the soundtrack. Grizzly Bear, especially when it kicks in after the ~1 minute mark. Moody, great song for driving into NYC and watching rain out the window.
Coldplay - "Viva La Vida"
Coldplay is another all-time favourite band, their songs regularly appearing on my CD mixes. This song reminds me of shopping at Whole Foods in Columbus Circle after a NYRR run in Central Park, it was playing on the sound system while I was getting my post-run popsicles.
Todd Rundgren - "Hello It's Me"
Also a tip of the hat to the blogosphere for this one, where people were going crazy for Todd Rundgren this past year.
Phoenix - "1901"
How can you not start moving to this song? This reminds me of walking through Hell's Kitchen from the bus terminal, getting pumped up for work, doing subtle hand movements along to the rhythm of the song.
The National - "Conversation 16"
When I hear this song, I picture driving along the highway, or sitting back into a comfy seat on the bus as I watch the NYC skyline in the distance. Isn't the chorus amazing, "Now we'll leave the silver city where all the silver girls...".
The National - "England"
I downloaded a bunch of tracks from The National this year, here was another favourite that I would listen to in wistful moments, the lyrics: "You must be somewhere in London, you must be loving your life in the rain..." and "Put an ocean and a river between everybody else, between everything, yourself and home." Reminds me of moments in the fall when I would try to remember all of the good reasons why I was enduring so much move-related stress. I also love this song and heard it many times this year because it appears alphabetically right before NPR podcasts on my iPod.
Dil Ki Doya - "Paban Das Baul"
One night I was relaxing at home, listening to WNYC's World Music Survey, and they played this song. It has a great rhythm and moody melody.
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - "Home"
Isn't this just a super fun song, like one you can't help bouncing along to, and then chiming in for the chorus, "Home is wherever I'm with you!"
Bebel Gilberto - "Samba da Benção"
I have three memories associate with this song - the first, when James and I went to see the Bebel Gilberto concert on a spur of the moment, "let's see if we can get tickets" at Koko in Camden. I had my first kebab after the show. The second memory is watching Eat Pray Love with Laura and Shanty, and this song is playing in the background when Javier Bardem's character first appears onscreen, cruising in his Jeep, and Laura let out an "oh YES!" The third memory is watching the movie Closer on the plane to Dubai, and this song is playing in the background during Julia Roberts's character's photography exhibit.
Blur - "Fool's Day"
Just a great catching Britpop tune from the WooHoo! song guys. And it was a free download!
Gorillaz - "Demon Days"
One rainy evening, I had my iPod on Shuffle mode and this song started playing - I had never listened to it before, probably because the first minute or so starts off so slowly, but then it kicks into this great beat and rousing choir song. This song will forever remind me of October 2010, the rain of autumn, dealing with so much stress, and yet playing this on repeat on my morning runs.
OMD - "Forever Live And Die"
And this song will always remind me of the move to Dubai too. We were driving on Jumeira Road and the radio station started playing this classic 80's song that I hadn't heard since the 80's, and yet I still knew the lyrics. I downloaded this song the moment I got back to NJ and for the next few months of uncertainty, I would listen to this to remember cruising around Dubai. I would also hear this song a ton because, alphabetically, it comes right *after* NPR podcasts, so once my news was done on a morning run, I could get a dose of this song.
There were a bunch of other super fun songs, some Usher that I loved dancing to at Shanty and Shaleen's wedding, the "Bed Intruder" autotune song ("now you can run and tell that, run and tell that, homeboy, home home homeboy") and the Cee-Lo song that lodged itself in everyone's brain the moment they heard it, SO funny and SO catchy ("I see you driving round town with the girl I love and I'm like f*** you...").
So many songs in the 2010 soundtrack and so many great memories associate with these songs!
Taking the elevator to the mezzanine at Giants Stadium.
The massive (like, SERIOUSLY massive) stage set-up. There wasn't an empty seat in the stadium, and I'll never forget seeing an ocean of people bouncing to Where The Streets Have No Name - gave me the shivers!
Afterwards, I exchanged text messages with a colleague who was also there, and I summed it up by writing: SO F-ING AWESOME!!
I really like this video, the wistful moodiness and the idea of "hitting reset", moving to an entirely new city to find one's creative inspiration and to find oneself.
And the singer's voice, it's so delicate. I had never heard of Metric before this video but then, in researching around, I found out that she is the singer on one of my favourite songs of the last few years, "Swimmers" by Broken Social Scene.
When you hear the album version of Metric's "Help I'm Alive", which I promptly downloaded last night after seeing this video, it is a totally different version, with Wilco-style distortions and reverb and hard beats (you can hear that version at the end of the video). The one in this video, where Emily Haines plays on the piano is lovely. Two entirely different moods, but I like both, very much.
In this video, Emily Haines touches on one of the major themes felt around the world right now - a large cloud of uncertainty and doubt hangs over many people's heads. I know that on a personal level, I've never talked with so many people asking the "what do I want to do with my life" question before.
People are questioning much of what they felt good about before. They are considering giving up on things they've been doing for years. They're not sure where to go or what to do next. They are searching for answers and help. As an industry, we're partly to blame for this situation. We've worked to help convince people that if they simply buy our products, they'll have whiter teeth, enjoy the comfortable feel of their rich Corinthian leather seats and ultimately, be much happier. If there's any good in the mess that we're facing, it's that we have an opportunity now to help clean it up.
See the glowing firefly in the photo? A few nights ago, I took some video clips and assembled them into this, my first ever iMovie project. The music is Dawn Chorus by Boards of Canada, and the first clip is the galaxy of fireflies outside my building at dusk. The second clip had me following a lone firefly as it hovered around, flashing on and off... when it started to flutter around me, and came right up to me, like a pixie. I love how you can hear the evening songbirds as well.
