Day 94 : Book Excerpt : Muhajababes

Darah is a very tall girl even without heels, a study in androgynous black style—baggy workmen trousers with flaps for hammers, Timberland boots, a big white-hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses. This builder's look was saved by Darah being very handsome, but if it was easy to see why she'd been spotted by Zen TV execs in a Beirut nightclub then it was also easy to see why the glasses plus the trousers plus the boots equalled what was seen as an ambiguous sexuality. The look earned her and Zen TV, where she had worked as a presenter, condemnation, and in the months before all of Zen TV went belly up, she was one of the first casualties. Of all Muslim countries it is only Lebanon that is attempting to legalize homosexuality but region-wide, which was Darah's TV profile, there was no such attempt. Homosexuality was very haram or forbidden. This was why she was now a radio presenter. Her heavy eyelids and, when we sat down, the cloud of shisha smoke she spoke through made her seem like a supercilious Marlene Dietrich and my questions banal. But her answers were always full.

 There was a problem, she said. First off, she agreed with the others that, as Zen TV had made way for the disco divas, bands like Zidan's, real artists, just didn't fit into the current musical scene of the lone, highly lucrative, commercial artist. In the rare circumstances that they were able to afford to cobble together an album, at the end of the process they then had to go to the censors who would inevitably persuade them that certain lyrics might offend people. If they didn't go to the censors then any radio or TV station they approached would also be likely to baulk at incendiary lyrics or outof-the-ordinary riffs. What these guys needed was a boat like Radio Caroline bobbing around off the coast of Lebanon broadcasting illicit Rayess Bek or The Three Esses. Maybe the dead-eyed video-clips were an equivalent to the stultifying torch songs of the pre-Beatles hit parade. Back then the music industry was controlled by fusty middle-aged impresarios, who second-guessed youth tastes and churned out singers like Helen Reddy to croon about being abandoned above a treacly slick of bombastic percussion and soaring violins. I put this to Darah, bonding as I thought we were about the region's shit music but she shook her head.

 'You've got it wrong,' she said, 'the bigger problem is that a lot of people actually like these video-clips.' There was no Radio Caroline because there was no appetite for this kind of grungier stuff. 'For most people, the video-clip stars are the best entertainers they have ever seen.'

 We were now in her car and she was giving me a lift across town. Except she wasn't because it was rush hour and we had been stuck in the same bit of traffic jam for a very long time. 'Have you seen the Saudis hanging around Beirut?' she asked me. Yes, yes. I repeated what Future TV's Khalid had said—that Saudi sheikhs had been closing down things like Zen TV. And then there was Walid's cursing and swearing as we ran into downtown past the Khaleejis.

 'Well, yes and no. In fact, probably, more no than yes. That wasn't what I was thinking about. Have you heard of Rotana?' Signing 80 per cent of Arab artists, and bagging exclusive rights to broadcast their video-clips, Rotana was the largest producer and distributor of Arabic music. It has six satellite channels, three of which show music and movies. 'And you've heard of its owner?' He gave some money to New York's Mayor Giuliani for victims of 9/11, she said, and then the next month urged America to re-examine its policies towards the Middle East. Giuliani sent the cheque back. 'He's a Saudi prince, a keen proponent of change in KSA.' And as owner of Rotana a keen proponent of video-clips.

 By now I knew my Arab pop stars quite well. I knew that the singer belly dancing in Prague was Haifa Wehbe and that Nancy Ajram had got in trouble for pretending to be a waitress and cavorting through an all male cafe. Very different from Umm Kulthoum who sang for millions of Arabs in a long-sleeve top. This Prince's aim was, in his own words, to 'have the number-one entertainment company in the Middle East.' Darah's point was that if they weren't popular, he wouldn't touch them. It is difficult to ascertain because none of the companies has to reveal its viewing figures, but the region's 50 million satellite dishes are popularly thought to be tuned to al-Jazeera and other news outlets for five minutes a day and to Rotana, Mazzika and Melody Arabia for as much as five hours.

~~Muhajababes -by- Allegra Stratton