{"id":113,"date":"2004-02-12T04:02:00","date_gmt":"2004-02-12T04:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=113"},"modified":"2013-02-19T15:26:22","modified_gmt":"2013-02-19T22:26:22","slug":"113","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=113","title":{"rendered":"Weapons of Singing Destruction"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>Since Google sends some readers seeking news and photos about such new Arab singing stars as Haifa Wehbe<\/a> and Nancy Ajram<\/a> to this blog, here are two articles by Charles Paul Freund that might interest you.\"\"<\/p>\n

“Look Who’s Rocking the Casbah: The Revolutionary Implications of Arab Music Videos,”<\/a> Reason<\/em> magazine, June 2003.<\/p>\n

“Weapons of Singing Destruction” The Escalating Storm over Arab Pop Videos,”<\/a> Reason<\/em> magazine, October 29, 2003.<\/p>\n

Freund writes:<\/p>\n

If you add the voluminous press and publicity machine that has grown around this scene, it begins to take on the proportions of a cultural frenzy. Such phenomena have a long and fascinating history; they occur when a cultural form becomes available to an audience that uses it to assert and validate its quickly shifting sense of itself. The Netherlands famously experienced such a phenomenon in the 17th century, when members of its suddenly enriched middle class latched onto paintings of themselves and their world as a way to express and validate their new social power. At the time, such subject matter was a departure for painters; indeed, it was the first time that anyone outside the aristocracy had owned paintings. The emerging British middle class of the 18th and 19th centuries went through a fiction-reading frenzy (of Grub Street “trash,” mostly) as it sought models for its emerging social opportunities and identified with characters grappling with an industrializing, urbanizing world. Similarly, movies and rock music were powerful forms for different generations of 20th-century Americans. They used such forms to play with the new possibilities of identity that were coming within their grasp.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since Google sends some readers seeking news and photos about such new Arab singing stars as Haifa Wehbe and Nancy Ajram to this blog, here are two articles by Charles Paul Freund that might interest you. “Look Who’s Rocking the Casbah: The Revolutionary Implications of Arab Music Videos,” Reason magazine, June 2003. “Weapons of Singing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[27,202,34],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aphrodite","tag-middle-east","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-113","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":86,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=86","url_meta":{"origin":113,"position":0},"title":"Aphrodite Will Not Be Denied","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 18, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":". . . as evidenced by this story from an Associated Press contributor in Beirut.In an incisive bit of analysis, Lebanese sociologist Dala el-Bizri, a resident of Cairo, says male-dominated societies are to blame for making women cover up. \"When the condition of women on the street is unnatural, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Aphrodite\"","block_context":{"text":"Aphrodite","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=aphrodite"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":744,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=744","url_meta":{"origin":113,"position":1},"title":"War fatigue","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 25, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"This is not a political blog, but I could not help noticing the recent White House admission that they were dropping \"stay the course\" from their political talking points. (NPR audio here.We know that the rationale keeps changing. First it was weapons of mass destruction, but there were none. Then\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3417,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3417","url_meta":{"origin":113,"position":2},"title":"Those Wacky Muslims","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"We keel you! (Part 241). \u2022 French magazine fights back after firebombing. Cartooni-jihadis also swarmed its Facebook page, leading the group Reporters Without Borders to call on Facebook to \"renounce censorship\" and let the editors access their own page. I give them credit for guts: They plan to republish the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Africa\"","block_context":{"text":"Africa","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=africa"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/charliehebdo-230x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":841,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=841","url_meta":{"origin":113,"position":3},"title":"Polytheism, not Tradition","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Keep an eye on the International Year of Polytheism Web project.This is really more of a conceptual art piece than any sort of reconstructionism (definitely not reconstructionism or capital-T Tradition), although it has been mentioned earlier in the Pagan blogosphere.Still, if anyone wants to \"wants to overcome the epoch of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"polytheism\"","block_context":{"text":"polytheism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=polytheism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7692,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7692","url_meta":{"origin":113,"position":4},"title":"Singing about “The” Flood, in the Original Sumerian","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 29, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"For the back story on the video, go here: \"\u2018The Flood\u2019, A Haunting New Album Bringing Ancient Sumerian and Babylonian Language and Music Back to Life\" Not all attempts to re-create old music work well. Some are of interest only to scholars. This one works, I think \u2014 see if\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Babylon\"","block_context":{"text":"Babylon","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=babylon"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2217,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2217","url_meta":{"origin":113,"position":5},"title":"The ‘War on Solstice’","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"At Huffington Post, Bron Taylor celebrates winning the \"war on solstice.\" For conservatives involved in the West's predominant religions, these are unwelcome developments. Progressives may ridicule those who claim that there is now a cultural \"War on Christmas\" but Christian conservatives do have reason to worry. They know that their\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Yule\"","block_context":{"text":"Yule","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=yule"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5227,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions\/5227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}