Ala Hesb Wedad, originally sung by Abdel Halim Hafez, is one of those songs that I feel like I have known forever, but I always tuned it out as soon as I heard it start and wasn’t very interested in it, and I’m really not sure why.

In February 2023 I was adding composer names to a spreadsheet of songs that were part of a song workshops series I was putting together for spring and summer. There was only one name I had never heard, that of Mounir Mourad (1922-1981), the composer of Bahlam Beek.

I was doing some research and came across this 2018 article from the Economist magazine. I think it gives a good, brief explanation of how Egyptian Arabic became so ubiquitous, and the social, cultural and political factors behind this and whether it still holds that status.

Any listening and exploration we do can only help us when we are getting ready to start working on a piece of music or a song. So why limit ourselves to something that is “useful” as a dancer?

The more revolutions I make around the sun, the more I am accepting of myself, and of things as they are- including the name that I hated for so long when I was young.