July 16, 2024
I felt eager and excited to share the story I had written for Rolling Stone on Moroccan superstar DYSTINCT after it published in February'24. With the link at hand and copied, I texted just about every person I knew who listened to Arabic music and would appreciate learning more about one of the biggest pop artists in North Africa. DYSTINCT, with over 9 million monthly listeners on Spotify and garnering over 500 million views on YouTube, maintains a strong fanbase in Europe not just with Moroccans and Arabs, but with non-Arabs alike. Yet here in the United States, from where I am currently writing, most Arab diaspora with whom I spoke either had never heard of him or maybe knew one song vaguely. This struck me as odd. An artist with that many streams and views and who has performed globally in front of large audiences was barely known among Arabs in the US.
I started digging more into other artists similar to DYSTINCT in terms of name recognition and large fanbases—such as rapper ElGrandeToto, pop stars Zouhair Bahaoui and Manal, or even Wegz —and realized more and more that Arab Americans were generally behind on the scenes happening in the Middle East and North Africa or even other diaspora communities outside of the US.
Yet the artists that they did know—Palestinian singer Elyanna, Egyptian artist Bayou, and Palestinian star Saint Levant, to name a few—were cited to me anecdotally as the biggest artists in the emerging wave of Arabic music.
Almost every week there is a new story about Elyanna becoming the new “global face” of Arabic pop music, or how Saint Levant ingeniously mixes Arabic, French, and English in his music. The almighty algorithm, tailored to benefit these kinds of artists, provides an added boost on social media and streaming platforms, as these artists have continued to be marketed heavily in the faces of users and listeners.
And while these artists have certainly tapped into the zeitgeist of Arab America, I can’t help but notice and feel that their overpromotion and overexposure is coming at the detriment of artists in other diaspora communities and, more crucially, artists actually living in the Middle East and North Africa.
Frankly, the US-based Arab artists do not even have the numbers to back up the claims, the hype, and the coverage that they receive—and some of their music does not feel nearly as inspired or creative as artists who should also be recognized for their music.
The Arab diaspora in the US tends to be loud, dominating conversations and spaces with their own opinions and projections of their feelings. I am not here to debate the validity of these feelings, as I am someone who also empathizes as an Arab American. However, from my vantage point as a music writer covering the emerging Arabic music scene, what is happening is that Arab American listeners are settling for Western-sounding songs with Arabic lyrics—or even stereotypical and self-orientalizing music like the Mohammed Ramadan, Massari, and Future collaboration “Arabi”.
And the success among US diaspora by artists like Elyanna, who herself is backed with all of the financial resources of a major label, has created a diverging listening experience and reality between Arabs living in the US and Arabs living in the Middle East and North Africa. Of the people I’ve spoken with who live in the region, Elyanna does not have the same hold as she does in the US. Same with Bayou, Saint Levant, and other US-based Arab artists. Yet they continue to loom so large over the entire emerging Arabic scene, marketed as the faces of this new wave despite not having that impact in the actual region from which they draw their identities, their music, and their language.
I say all of this not to knock these artists or their musical outputs, but to question why coverage and attention has focused so squarely on them when there are artists who are pushing boundaries creatively in Arabic music but don’t receive the same attention.
Artists like Dana Hourani, the Lebanese indie singer who has completely reimagined what acoustic and experimental pop can sound like. Artists like Stormy, the Moroccan rapper who seamlessly traverses genres and put out what I would consider my album of the year with ICEBERG.
There is too much at stake for us to settle. And Arab artists outside of the US cannot continue to live in the shadows of diaspora music that frankly feels unimaginative at times. There needs to be greater recognition, respect, and attention paid to artists in the Middle East and North Africa.
Arab diaspora in the US have to recognize that Arabic music goes far beyond Elyanna and Saint Levant. There needs to be more homage paid to the OGs who laid the foundation for this scene to thrive—artists like Narcy, Omar Offendum, Flippter, Don Bigg, Shadia Mansour, and so many others. And we, as journalists, have an obligation to be better about capturing the breadth and depth of our creative scene.
