Raqs Nerd: building relationships with the music

My last two newsletters have been all about deep listening, and tuning in to some of the subtle features that give music its capacity to create transcendent experiences...

Today, I'm looking from another angle: how music weaves itself into the fabric of our lives - and why we dancers, in particular, need this to happen

Since I started learning Egyptian Arabic, I've been watching (and making my long-suffering partner watch) a lot of Egyptian TV with subtitles. Most recently we've been working our way through 2026 Ramadan series "We Nensa Ele Kan" ("And we forget what came before") - a romantic drama following the story of a glamorous actress, Jalilah, and her chivalrous working-class ibn el-balad bodyguard, Badr...

(if you're considering watching this, be aware that despite the showbiz theme there are no music/dance scenes at all, though quite a bit of cagefighting...)

At one point our hero Badr, afraid to tell Jalilah of his feelings for her because of their difference in social status, is talking to his elderly father in hospital. Badr's father tells him the story of how he met his mother - and how he took her out on a date, but was too afraid to tell her his feelings, he couldn't make the words come out... But then, the radio started playing Oum Kalthoum's "Alf Leila w Leila", and he didn't need to say anything after all; Oum Kalthoum had said it for him, and when he looked at his future wife, she felt and understood. Badr now understands why his father is carried away by emotion every time he hears this song...

And of course, this is fiction, and cheesy feel-good fiction at that. But it still points at something important: that the meaning of a song like "Alf Leila w Leila" isn't just in the literal meaning of the words. Or even the overall musical and emotional content of the song. It is also in the meaning it takes on from being a part of people's lives, a part of millions of life stories. Of meaning something to people.

When we're coming from outside the culture, it's easy to miss this.

At least to begin with, we only hear these songs in the context of dance: at classes, at haflas. They become the soundtrack of a certain part of our lives - but not our whole lives. We build memories around them, but those memories are of choreographies, of dance events.

But to really feel, to really find meaning in, the music - they need to start meaning more to us. Escaping beyond the "bellydance music" box in our minds, and becoming the soundtrack to our actual lives beyond the dance studio.

I still remember the first song I danced to in the first bellydance class I ever attended, back in 2008. And yes, it carries some nostalgia for me, and memories of the excitement of finding an amazing new hobby... But that's kind of it.

On the other hand, "Zey el Hawa" by AbdelHalim Hafez has come to mean a lot more - encompassing memories of my first visit to Cairo in 2015 with my best friend Sarah, where we learned to sing it in a class with singer and oud-player Emad Al-Rashidy (now based here in Manchester!), and all the wonder, excitement, and exhaustion of that trip... And of later singing it together with Sarah in her flat in Bergen Norway, accompanied on riq by our mutual friend the late Adam Warne - overlaid by the pain of Adam's sudden death the following year. All of that and more, is layered there on some level, whenever I hear this song - as well as the bittersweet lyrics and melody of the song itself. It is part of my actual life now, far beyond just my life as a dancer - woven in inextricably with special moments, friendship, and grief.

At this point, 18 years in, there are so many songs that carry their own specific meaning and memories for me now, beyond their 'inbuilt' meaning - of a certain place and time, a certain person or journey, or some emotional thing I was going through. Songs that brought comfort or the feeling of not being alone at a difficult time, or expressed the sheer beauty of existence in a way I couldn't myself in some particular moment...

I keep a private playlist of songs I've become very obsessed with at some point in my life, and these days I think it's about 50/50 Western and Arabic (and it delights me to have a playlist that will take me from George Wassouf to Nick Cave to Shadia to Leonard Cohen to Ahmed Adaweya to Echo & the Bunnymen in a way that feels, to me at least, somehow quite coherent...)

The point is, when we listen to music beyond and outside of just dance contexts, that's when we truly start to build our own emotional relationships with the music

That's when we get to a point where a song can hit hard not just because of the song itself, but what it means to you. Where you've let it in, and the music is a part of you now, of who you are, of your life when you look back on it.

Probably not ever as intensely, living our lives outside of the source cultures, as the songs of Oum Kalthoum (for example) can come to mean in Egypt for people immersed in and surrounded by this music for life. But still, a relationship. A personal connection. A story.

So in a way, I am making the same argument here as I did two weeks ago, though from a different angle: that it really matters, and changes things in an important way, when we engage consistently and regularly with this music outside of dance classes and our dance practice/performance.

I will leave you with some questions to reflect upon (which I also was reflecting upon as I wrote this piece)...

Which songs, from any musical tradition, feel like they have become part of your life story, or represent a certain time in your life in some way, large or small?

Are there Egyptian / Arabic / SWANA songs which carry a story or meaningful memory for you?

And how does it feel to dance to a song which carries your personal stories and memories and life experiences along with it, compared to a song you love, but haven't built a relationship with yet?

As ever - I hope this provides helpful and enriching food for thought. And I will be back next week with some more thoughts on music, emotion, and memory (because of course I have too many to fit in one email!)

With Love,

PS - on a somewhat less nerdy topic - for years, dancers have kept on asking me how I do my stage makeup, and asking if I could teach a class on it... And on Thursday the 16th of April I will (at last) be doing exactly that! More info here :)

PPS - every part of this newsletter is written by me, a flesh and blood human being, using my own thoughts, feelings, opinions, and writing style - now and always. This is a generative AI free zone 🚫🤖

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