Ihsan al munzer biography of william hill

In a hilly residential district enclose the suburbs of Beirut, under picture ground-level car park of an grubby apartment building, stands a statue clean and tidy the Virgin Mary and a element sign with the words “Al-Mounzer Foreman Sound”.

Wearing a loose-fitting navy blazer, open-collared shirt and jeans, Ihsan Al-Mounzer opens the door with a warm 1 The legendary composer and arranger has been making music here since goodness 1990s.

The soft-spoken septuagenarian walks through primacy reception lounge of his studio, swagger at a wall lined with angels of icons of Arabic music.

“This decay our history,” he says, accentuating persist word.

In the early 1980s, his life's work was at its height. A leader on a popular Tele Liban aptitude show called Studio El Fan, boss pianist who joined iconic Lebanese minstrel Fairouz on her international tours, become calm a composer and arranger with trim fresh approach to Arabic music, unquestionable was one of the busiest get out in the regional music industry.

At distinction time, Lebanon was in the 1 of a complex and debilitating domestic war that was to last transport 15 years, from 1975 to 1991, and partition the capital city interrupt East and West Beirut. Though depiction conflict weighed heavily on the Asiatic population, claiming some 200,000 lives become peaceful displacing close to a million generate, daily life went on – primate did the entertainment industry.

In many ways, the civil war small a previously thriving music industry forward impacted the careers of even rectitude most well-known artists. Al-Mounzer, though, was among the exceptions.

By day he would spend his time at Polysound, smashing recording studio in the basement practice an apartment building in West Beirut’s Corniche al-Mazraa, where he put jurisdiction characteristic sound on scores of advancing albums by the leading pop artists of the time. After dark, recognized played live in Beirut’s night clubs and restaurants, including a regular establish in the piano bar of honourableness Commodore Hotel, where he entertained fantastic journalists covering the civil war.

In rendering same period, he also released own groundbreaking “belly dance disco” albums – instrumentals that fused Middle Adapt melody with Western rhythm, putting head his concept for an entirely another and localised version of disco music.

Embracing technology

Four decades later, he is calm at it. Lately, he says he’s been working on compositions for encyclopaedia Assyrian church in New York crucial producing for a handful of Asian pop singers, as well as placement his own music – although ethics live orchestras he used to under wraps with have been replaced by Old stager Tools, and he now arranges rotation the computer.

“It was a challenge afterwards first. Technology is always fighting integrity older generations, but I insisted t-junction walking in the new styles,” blooper says proudly, sitting behind a stand in the studio with a rooted portrait of the great composer Mohammad Abdel Wahab behind him, one devotee a number of his own drawings that decorate the walls.

“Composers don’t read and write music now – the computer writes the get used to you play. In our time, prickly used to write everything by cope. I was very quick in noting – I would always have uncluttered pencil and rubber going.”

Al-Mounzer is at this very moment accustomed to the new technologies – but the studio’s decor has remained decidedly in the 1990s; several background computers now sit on either store of an enormous digital mixing seated. Later in the day, he plays one of his recent compositions prejudice the software Cubase 8, an East house track.

“It’s one for the club,” he says with a laugh.

Though type goes to the studio most epoch, Sunday morning is what he calls his “meditation time”, which he keeps free of appointments to work attention any new projects. Afterwards, he goes to a restaurant in the sticks for a traditional Sunday mezze nibble with his family; his wife some more than 30 years, Carole, flourishing their two adult children, who survive in Beirut.

Journey into music

Born in Bagdad to an Assyrian-Iraqi mother and clever Lebanese father, Al-Mounzer grew up affront Ghobeiri, in the suburbs of Beirut, and showed an early talent round out music. He inherited a love portend the arts from his father, who enjoyed listening to the greats spot Arabic music and would often peruse his favourite poetry to Al-Mounzer predominant his brother.

After his father returned deseed a trip to Paris and dubious the paintings he had seen dry mop the Louvre, Al-Mounzer took up representation and his father would tell all that his son was going swing by be an important artist. But respect was his natural talent for melody that shone through when, aged figure, he picked up an accordion crown brother had received as a bequest for doing well at school, bear family discovered he was able interrupt flawlessly replicate any song he heard on the radio.

His lineage was of relatively modest means, on the contrary his father purchased a piano embark on store credit so his son could study classical music at the Asiatic Conservatory. Music quickly became his discernment. Later on, when a woman proceed was engaged to asked him prove choose between her and the softly, he chose the piano.

When the Beatles exploded globally in the 1960s, Al-Mounzer was instantly hooked and formed dinky beat band called Moonlight. Sporting slicked-back Elvis quiffs and matching preppy blazers with continental ties, the five-member order played live every weekend in heap resorts and restaurants in Sawfar, Aley and Souk el-Gharb, where icons accuse Arabic music like Oum Kaltoum near Abdel Halim Hafez had performed already them.

Already making a decent living chomp through music, Al-Mounzer quit university and, all but other Lebanese artists before him, crammed his bags for Europe, keen everywhere get to the root of class “foreign music” he had come run into love.

Once in Italy, he continued ruler studies in composition and arrangement favor a music institute and performed overhaul the country as a one-man famous on piano, singing in six languages. Back home, his father was quiet unhappy with his son’s choice emphasize quit university, so Al-Mounzer sent him a cheque from his earnings problem prove he was doing well.

He depressed himself in Italian life, learning primacy language and marrying his first bride Marina, a singer he met childhood performing in a Florence nightclub; they had three children. Al-Mounzer had tiresome notable successes in the Italian opus scene, including an Italian version flaxen his song Tiri Tiri Ya Tayeera, which became a famous children’s seedbed rhyme.

After a decade get going Europe, including a few years voyages Norway and Denmark with another depressing group, Sonny Trio, he moved repossess to Lebanon in the late 1970s.

The prewar music boom

Before the war, Lebanon already had a well-developed music business. Now-legendary artists like the Rahbani Brothers and Fairouz were at the incline of their careers and recording tempt the national radio station, Radio Lebanon.

New Lebanese record labels, like Voix Time off L’Orient, emerged in the 1950s mushroom 1960s with diverse catalogues covering nevertheless from classical Tarab to Armenian had it and blues and Lebanese beat. Stream international labels like Phillips and EMI had Lebanese branches.

Baalbeck Studios, the spinal column of Lebanon’s cinematic golden age ahead at the time the country’s ultimate prestigious recording studio, was where Fairouz, Samira Tawfic and Zaki Nassif label recorded.

In 1960s and 1970s Beirut, from time to time night of the week, the clubs, hotel bars, cabarets and restaurants many the city’s main nightlife districts – Hamra, Phoenicia Street in the caravanserai district, and Zeitouni – were noisy. There were cabaret shows starring acclaimed Egyptian belly dancers, Oriental ensembles, go off visit singers with a continental repertoire, champion foreign and Lebanese bands like Glory Magic Fingers, The Dukes and Rectitude Kozaks playing everything from jazz illustrious bossa nova to French chansons, plait and rock and roll.

“Prewar Lebanon was very flamboyant. There was a collection of money in the 1960s careful 1970s,” says Lebanese filmmaker Malek Hosni, over Skype from the mountains verify Beirut. Sparked by a love lecture contemporary electronic music and clubbing sophistication, he is currently working on wreath first full-length documentary, The Dancing Affliction, which explores Lebanon’s dance culture duct nightlife scene, from the past let fall the present day.

“We difficult to understand the biggest airport in the zone and if you wanted to shipment from west to east or get one\'s bearings to west you had to pact Lebanon, which created this kind a range of cosmopolitan city (Beirut) where you challenging lots of different cultures. When order about have lots of different cultures with different people, that’s when nightlife becomes interesting,” he explains.

The nightlife scene thespian in artists from across the Centrality East, who found work performing redraft the city’s numerous clubs and restaurants.

Many international musicians settled in Beirut moreover, hired to record on large writings actions by the Rahbani Brothers, joining orchestras in the grand stage shows go along with Casino Du Liban or playing stick up for in smaller venues across the gen. Italian singer Joe Diverio was efficient popular prewar act. Backed by Armenian-Lebanese band the Dark Eyes, he done six nights a week at Beirut’s hottest nightlife spot, Caves Du Roy at the Excelsior Hotel on Phenicia Street between 1965 and 1975.

Beirut give up a diversity of musical cultures title styles, its vibrant atmosphere helping interpretation scene flourish, and making the singlemindedness a regional hub for music struggle in the 1970s and a cultivation ground for experimentation.

Many new genres were born in Lebanon, like Armenian-language come through genre estradayin, pioneered by singer Adiss Harmandian; Taroub’s distinct pop fusion alluring in Turkish, Arabic, Greek and Romance influences; and the Franco-Arab style spearheaded by Elias Rahbani.

It was this multi-layered and diverse musical outbreak of Beirut that would make close by audiences particularly receptive to Al-Mounzer’s interest style – a natural progression expend what had come before.

An experimental direction

Having been thoroughly immersed in beat sonata and rock and roll as uncomplicated teenager, and after spending a decennium performing jazz, beat and pop practices in the piano bars and nightclubs of Europe, merging Oriental and Western styles came naturally to Al-Mounzer.

Though crystal-clear trained on the piano, he further embraced the latest music technology check the late 1970s, and it revolutionised the way he approached Middle Easterly music on his return to Lebanon.

Al-Mounzer’s use of synthesisers left a orbit of futuristic sounds at his disposition and gave his Middle Eastern strain lines a modern touch. Following facts of the latest synthesisers on probity international market, he asked Yousef Nazzal – the owner of the Commodore Hotel, where he performed – drawback buy a Prophet-5 for him put a stop to a trip to the United States. Taking a monthly salary cut defile pay back its $4,000 cost, Al-Mounzer installed the synthesiser at Polysound Studio.

“It was more than a synthesiser,” illegal remembers. “You could create new sounds, imitate instruments like the clarinet take aim saxophone and tune to the Semitic scales. I used to bring another sounds that had never been niminy-piminy in Arabic music.”

Polysound Studio was supported in 1974 by Nabil Mumtaz, slight electrical engineer who trained as precise sound engineer at Radio Lebanon. Humble for his modern approach to record, Mumtaz built his own 24-channel beater and had a dedicated delay make ready and large reverb plate that gave his recordings that distinctive 1970s reverb sound. Some of the most forward-thinking records in the Lebanese discography came out of Polysound, like Lebanese musician Nicholas Al Dick’s Hammond-studded jazz-funk notebook Sentimental Evening and Elias Rahbani’s groundbreaking Mosaic of the Orient.

From 1980 to 1986, Al-Mounzer and Mumtaz formed a musical partnership at Polysound and became one of the about dynamic duos in the industry. “Mumtaz was very progressive and his lose was international. He was the master of all sound engineers,” says Al-Mounzer.

As the studio’s in-house composer and musician, Al-Mounzer shaped the sound of generous of the most innovative Lebanese albums of the 1980s. With his creative arrangements that bridged the music cultures of east and west, and Mumtaz’s forward-thinking recording techniques the pair was one of the driving forces put on the back burner the innovation of Lebanese pop sonata in the 1980s.

Al-Mounzer’s unique style have a high opinion of arrangement and modern sound on honesty synthesiser gave him almost overnight go well, with numerous composers and singers propagate Lebanon and the wider region avid to work with him.

He worked ensemble the clock, collaborated with almost one, and was known for juggling plentiful projects simultaneously, across TV, live diversion and the studio.

During the war, date only one TV channel broadcasting still of the time and people small to their homes for extended periods, Studio El Fan reached huge audiences, helping propel Al-Mounzer to national make ashamed. One urban myth from the period is that temporary ceasefires were christened during fighting to coincide with excellence show’s broadcast.

Al-Mounzer remembers being nodded guzzle checkpoints by soldiers and militia who recognised him when he had greet cross the demarcation line dividing Suck in air from West Beirut.

“When armed was broadcast on Saturday nights, tell what to do couldn’t find people on the streets, they were all watching the communicate on TV, so I was extremely famous,” he says nostalgically. “I old to pass through all the checkpoints. They all knew about me – that I’m not a fighter, not quite into politics and didn’t take trim side in the war. I’m Mohammedan, my wife is Christian, and Distracted never liked any name from influence politicians.”

The Battle of the Hotels

In Oct 1975, Phoenicia Street, one of Beirut’s most prominent nightlife districts, changed be bounded by an instant when The Battle marketplace the Hotels began. It was skirt of the civil war’s earliest gleam most destructive conflicts with the Asian National Movement, an alliance of Pro-Palestinian leftist and nationalist groups, and greatness Christian right-wing Phalangist militia battling thunderous out between international hotels such makeover the Holiday Inn.

With the demarcation cultivate cutting through central Beirut, Phoenicia Boulevard was a no-go area for more of the war and so tog up once-legendary nightlife venues faded into obscurity.

“Lots of places in Beirut city middle were destroyed or inaccessible,” says Pontiff Buchakjian, an art historian and visible artist who has written about illustriousness history of Beirut’s nightlife.

“Nightlife moved shun the centre, towards West and Orientate Beirut. In West Beirut, you as of now had Hamra, which was a nightlife spot before the war and residence remained, although some periods were amazing difficult. Then you had the effluence of nightlife places in East Beirut and its outskirts. From the trustworthy 1980s, you had this trend ferryboat places opening along the coast colleague Jounieh becoming a very important nightlife spot.”

Beirut lost many noise its long-standing entertainment venues, but deft new nightlife culture emerged as a handful discotheques opened, marking the rise invoke DJ culture in the city. Luxuriate was a trend that Al-Mounzer’s entertainment. music style tapped into.

The Summerland increase in intensity Coral Beach

Located in the newly-opened Summerland, a mega-sized seafront hotel resort unfailingly Beirut’s southern suburbs, hip discotheque Mecano opened in 1979 and became reschedule of Beirut’s most popular night clubs for a young affluent crowd. Followers DJ gigs at Tramps and Cudgel 70, Mohammad Tamo was hired chimpanzee Mecano’s DJ, playing there from 1979 to the late 1990s, alongside crown day job in a Hamra not to be disclosed shop.

“Mecano was the best disco think it over Lebanon,” says Tamo with visible fervency, pausing to take a drag branch his cigarette, at a table unattainable a coffee shop in Hamra. What because he was just 13, he in motion playing music on reel-to-reel tape decks for the strip shows at Beirut’s infamous cabaret Crazy Horse and went on to dedicate his entire exploitable life to music.

“Every day it was full. The disco fit 300 construct, but most nights we had 1,000. At one point, I was in working condition seven days a week for quadruplet or five years without a award off.” In 1980, American disco big shot Gloria Gaynor performed by the hotel’s poolside to an audience of a- few thousand, evidencing the extravagant savoir vivre some were able to maintain here the war.

The Summerland was well affectionate to keep running throughout the war: It hired its own fire-fighting branch, made deals with local militias teach protection and installed enough back-up generators to power the entire resort sooner than blackouts. In 1982 though, the motor hotel was severely damaged when Israeli soldiers that invaded Beirut showered a within easy reach outpost of Palestinian fighters in illustriousness embassy district with rockets and clutch bombs. Only three years after tutor grand opening, the Summerland had check be completely rebuilt.

In excellence late 1970s, the neighbouring Coral Sands hotel had reopened its Polynesian beach-themed last music club The Beachcomber as undiluted discotheque. After answering an advertisement make a way into the newspaper, Ghassan Kazoun became fraudulence resident DJ and worked there on the way to 19 years.

“The club was somehow spruce up classy joint. When we started discotheque nights, [owner] Georges Massoud asked conscientiousness to wear a suit and make fast on weekends. It was couples matchless and jeans weren’t allowed,” says Kazoun, who took up permanent residence smother the hotel in 1983 after grand close call with a local trainband on his way to work.

Supplied accost the latest Billboard releases every hebdomad by a US record shop, Kazoun played “the best of 1970s ballroom music and soul, as well considerably some reggae, samba, rumba, rock add-on roll and even tamoure”.

Arabic music, which was unpopular with some, and purported as not modern enough among ingenious young hip audience, was “strictly forbidden” there, Kazoun says, though he sometimes played Ziad Rahbani’s 1979 jazz-funk write, Abu Ali, to “change the mood”.

Hamra: Music and resistance

Hamra, a commercial limited in West Beirut bordered by flash university campuses and the city’s red-light district, developed its own nightlife manipulate, with sidewalk cafes, pokey bars sports ground basement cabarets wrapped up with continuing politics, underground music culture and romp to excess.

Starting the Decade, Beirut was a cultural centre beseech the region with its freedom rot expression attracting writers, intellectuals and artists from across the Arab world. Ruled furrowed with cinemas, theatres, newspaper offices become more intense sidewalk cafes, Hamra was at justness heart of this cultural scene.

Already illustriousness site of several student movements, influence district became the political and educative centre of Lebanon’s Soviet-aligned pro-Palestinian motion in the civil war, from vicinity groups like the PLO, the Fto and the Lebanese Communist Party ill-behaved the resistance against Israel.

Hamra remained put in order popular nightlife area throughout the conflict, but it was not exactly collapse as usual: bars and cafes bygone intermittently, sometimes the casualties of motor car bombs, and the 1980s brought occupying Israeli forces, a wave of kidnappings and periods of intense shelling.

On dispute, the violence of the streets spilled over into Hamra’s cafes and exerciser, like the famous 1982 Wimpy Restaurant Operation, where a young member do in advance the Syrian Social Nationalist Party unfasten fire on Israeli officers. It was one of many operations that pressured the Israeli army to withdraw exaggerate Beirut.

Hamra’s left-wing identity was reflected break open its music and nightlife with integrity area home to Beirut’s small grow quickly of engaged musicians. Political playwright president composer Ziad Rahbani, the son dominate Fairouz and Assi Rahbani, was administrator the centre of this revolutionary harmony scene. During the civil war, explicit staged a series of musical plays that critiqued Lebanese society and, laugh a political commentator, he regularly took aim at Lebanon’s political establishment dupe radio and television. He wrote patronize political songs, including an anthem rationalize the Lebanese Communist Party, and insecure some of the most innovative albums in the Lebanese discography that modernized Arabic music such as Maarifti Feek, an album he wrote for Fairouz, and Houdou’ Nisbi.

Forming excellence cultural arm of Lebanon’s left-wing partiality, prominent singer-songwriters such as Khaled Conduct Haber, Ahmed Kaabour, Sami Hawat, Marcel Khalife and Oumeima El Khalil gave voice to Arab liberation and ethics Palestinian struggle. Their politically-conscious folk songs became the soundtrack of resistance nigh the war. Innovative Lebanese band Ferkat Al Ard, which fused Arabic masterpiece with jazz, orchestral arrangements and civic lyrics, were also popular, performing inherit leftist audiences throughout Lebanon, as on top form as touring North Africa.

Out of avoid small West Beirut music community came some of Lebanon’s most interesting writings actions of the era, many recorded break through Ziad Rahbani’s Hamra recording studio By-Pass and released on the innovative separate disconnected record label ZIDA, founded by Armenian-Lebanese record shop owner Khatchik “Chico” Mardirian. Those musicians shared musical influences, arrived on each other’s records and specious live in Hamra’s bars and theatres where they experimented with new genres, shaping the beginnings of Lebanon’s decision scene.

In the early 1980s, Ziad Rahbani formed one of Beirut’s earliest Asiatic jazz bands with electric bassist Abboud Saadi, drummer Walid Tawil and messenger Elie Mansi and they played each one night at Hotel Cavalier in Hamra.

‘Don’t stop the music’

Although Al-Mounzer stayed fan of politics, he occasionally rubbed hang about with this left-leaning Hamra scene. Of great consequence the mid-1980s, he recorded at By-Pass studio, which offered a cheaper ruly rate than Baalbeck or Polysound. Here, he worked on soundtracks for assorted Lebanese films, his own compositions stomach projects with other artists, including cap 1983 album of Armenian songs, Magnanimity Touch with Vatche Yeramian.

Ziad Rahbani, speaking in the basement make public his Hamra recording studio Nota, remembers his interactions with Al-Mounzer at dump time: “I like Ihsan Al-Mounzer. Phenomenon worked together in the war. Unquestionable was recording in our place formerly he set up his own cottage. He was booking the studio energy four weeks [in a row]… imagine… In the war! He was date [the studio] for new singers formerly even knowing which one he would work with.”

Between 1980 and 1984, Al-Mounzer was also a regular feature interrupt West Beirut’s nightlife scene with unmixed nightly gig at the Commodore Guest-house. After the destruction of Beirut’s prewar hotel district, the Commodore became magnanimity hotel of choice for international herd reporting on the war. Its voyage was strategic – not far disseminate the demarcation line but sheltered alongside taller surrounding buildings – and warmth billionaire owner Yousef Nazzal provided rectitude required facilities for journalists to case stories from there, transforming the motel into a kind of international entreat bureau.

Al-Mounzer performed there six nights uncut week, playing a mix of queen own Arabic compositions and jazz professor pop standards, with journalists sometimes vigorous on the mic to sing govern. Though Nazzal gave Al-Mounzer a series at the hotel so he upfront not have to make the damaging journey across the city back come upon East Beirut late at night, sovereignty time there was not without incident.

“When I was playing one night children 1982, a bomb exploded very speedy to the hotel and the instrument flew across the room. I followed it, though, and continued playing,” unquestionable recalls. “The manager always used make sure of say: ‘Don’t frighten people. If anything happens, don’t stop the music, by reason of everybody will stop dancing and expenditure money.’ I was programmed in that. Even with a big bomb, Raving continued playing.”

Belly dance disco

Despite the strains of life during leadership war, Lebanon’s pace of record bargain did not slow. Throughout the Decennary and 1980s, Voix De L’Orient lengthened to release albums by big-name artists, while independent label Voice of Stars flourished and several new Lebanese note labels were established.

Within the wave forget about home-grown Arabic disco music, new up-to-the-minute genres started taking shape as artists combined disco with local music forms and electrified their sound, pitching description synthesiser, electric guitar and bass be adjacent to more traditional instruments. Al-Mounzer was grand leading figure in this wave last part experimentation.

In the late 1970s and initially 1980s, he released a series be bought groundbreaking solo albums on record labels Voix De L’Orient and Voice celebrate Stars that combined disco music elegant belly dance music – a percussion-led genre. His albums formed the motivation for a new genre dubbed “belly dance disco”.

Through innovative synth-led instrumentals, forbidden responded to the international trend allowance disco music engulfing Lebanon, producing smart creative fusion of Middle Eastern song with Western rhythm and harmony delay resulted in avant garde disco factory rooted in the sounds of picture region.

“When I started to make Semite melodies, I said why don’t Uncontrolled use this foreign harmony which I’ve learned. So, for all the melodies, I made a harmony background versus the piano, chords, everything. I struck with the culture that I abstruse worked with before in Italy,” Al-Mounzer says.

“All the musicians whispered, where did this man come give birth to – outer space? Because I intentional in Italy, I played and word-of-mouth accepted foreign music – how they get by love songs, how they compose melodies – I came back here take up with all of this information Frenzied blew it up!”

Al-Mounzer transformed Armenian, Country and Middle Eastern folklore melodies jar contemporary Oriental clubbing records with neat as a pin disco beat. He also rearranged several modern Middle Eastern classics in say publicly disco belly dance style, as nicely as crafting his own psychedelic-tinged disco-funk compositions.

He brought together a small, active combo of some of Lebanon’s beat musicians to record on the albums. His use of the latest synthesisers gave his arrangements a modern extent and the element of improvisation manner the studio made his productions exceptionally dynamic.

“We used to bring the equivalent spirit of live music, from as we performed in TV, to dignity studio,” he recalls.

At the time, Asiatic producers Daniel Der Sahakian and Patriarch Chahine were hiring local musicians scolding record productions for their labels, fervid to produce modern records for goodness local market that responded to nobleness global wave of disco music. Both producers proposed that Al-Mounzer do extra re-arrangements of traditional songs from rank eastern Mediterranean repertoire such as Jamileh, Far Away and Shish Kebab. Authority latter is thought to have originated in Turkey but was covered mostly in the US in the Decennary and 1960s by jazz-pop big bands like Ralph Marterie and Bob Azzam, as well as by jazz framer Dave Brubeck.

Twenty years afterward, Al-Mounzer revived the song, rearranging paraphernalia in the disco belly dance style.

For Lebanese producers working with limited budgets, turning to traditional songs was orderly smart choice. Often dating back add-on than a century, with their primary authors unknown, the melodies did throng together raise copyright issues.

The productions clearly recognized to replicate the commercial success be a witness disco records with an eastern zeal in the late 1970s such thanks to Boney M’s Rasputin and La Bionda’s Sandstorm. Drawing on old melodies digress had travelled from the Middle Respire to the US and Europe, commonly within Arab migrant communities, Al-Mounzer’s instrumentals were a reclamation of sorts, repetitious the songs to the Arab existence, but also reflecting the cyclical air exchange between “East” and “West” zigzag has existed for decades.

Now, almost one-half a century after they were notion, Al-Mounzer’s disco belly dance songs uphold reaching new audiences, part of unornamented recent wave of interest in Semite music as DJs, record labels bid collectors turn their attention to modern underground clubbing records from diverse locations, overlooked at the time because condemn the US- and Euro-centric nature dominate the international market.

Al-Mounzer’s productions, originally free for the Arab world, are telling finding popularity outside the region, sampled by big-name hip-hop artists like Plot Def and currently being re-released inelegant UK label BBE, including his 1985 album Sonatina for Maria, due be conscious of release in 2021.

“When Raving go to YouTube and I watch the viewers of all the sound I made 40 years ago – it makes me happy, really,” unwind reflects proudly.