I want to tell you a story. It’s about FEN and why we need it.

The other night, I attended Kinan Azmeh and Dinuk Wijeratne’s concert, Complex Stories, Simple Sounds. Afterwards, I went out to dinner with them along with Debbie Smith, a local arts producer and Leyya Tawil, a contemporary dancer.

So here I am, with Kinan, a clarinetist who splits his time between Syria and the U.S., and Dinuk, a Sri-Lankan pianist who was raised in Dubai and now lives in Canada. Add to the mix Debbie, an American who knows more than the average Arab about Arabic music of all sorts, and Leyya, a Palestinian/Syrian-American who is the only Arab female contemporary dancer in the U.S. It’s not every night that I get to sit with such a unique and talented group. I’m excited about the potential stories and leads sitting around me and I warn them that I might slip an interview question or two into the evening’s conversation, but before I even get the chance the exchange [as best as I can recall] goes something like this …

Leyya: (talking about her experience teaching and performing contemporary dance in the Middle East, we’re all brainstorming where else she can apply to teach and perform in the future) …yeah, the people of Ramallah were so amazing, I really want to go back.
Kinan: You should try the Damascus Opera House.
Leyya: There’s an opera house in Damascus?
Kinan: This is precisely the problem, no one knows what’s going on in these places…
Me: (Gulp, putting my glass down) Guys, I don’t mean to make a pitch for FEN now [they politely tell me it's okay] but this is exactly why we need FEN, because of this problem. There is a scene, there are opportunities for artists, we just need a better way to find out about them. One of FEN’s missions is to help artists make these connections…

Young Arab-American artists and their audience need a venue to find out what their colleagues are doing, share their work and process, and perhaps even find opportunities for collaboration and mentorship.

FEN puts artists in-the-know, whether it’s about an event or a potential partnership–even the power of one artist to inspire another can’t be underestimated. Some of you say there isn’t a scene. But just because you don’t know what’s going on in Toronto or Ramallah, Beirut, Damascus, or Chicago doesn’t mean there isn’t anything going on.

So let me be the first to tell you: the Arab-American scene is here, right here, it exists, and it is everywhere. If you are reading this you are a part of it. The scene is FEN, and FEN in turn is the scene. Let this be your destination for all things Arab, American and art.

I promise, we won’t let you down.

Truly,
Marwa

As I loaded Amr Diab’s Wayah into VLC player, the program that new music has to make it through to get to iTunes on my computer (yes, even Amr Diab has to pass this test), most of the necessary elements in the perfect Amr Diab listening experience were present: summer, 87º F (27º C), sun shining, breeze flowing through my window (replacing the wind of a window-down car ride), and a pair of perfect studio monitors. What was missing? Egypt. But for the sake of this experience, my longing for Cairo’s streets and the 20×30 portrait of Khufu staring at me off the wall would suffice.

There are a few things with Diab that are given: His voice and formulaic vocal production will almost never sound bad; he has access to some of the world’s best musicians and engineers; people all over the world eagerly await and eventually celebrate his release dates; and he looks 1 to 3 years younger on each successive album cover. But does he always deliver the experience along with it? Unfortunately, not so given.

Wayah is…OK. All the pieces are there—the poppy house joint(s), the two or three slow jams, the few flamenco-Arab dinner-on-the-sea numbers, and the fillers that just seem to belong on the album and booming from tinny Fiat (or, these days, Toyota and Hyundai) speakers stuck in traffic. But what we all love and crave most—the feeling—just isn’t. Maybe it’s just me, but it wasn’t until “Malak” (listen) that I could smell the salt of the Mediterranean. (Which, to Diab and the song’s credit, really DID happen in my NYC apartment.)

The other thing that isn’t there is progression. Leadership. Evolution. Diab is a mogul and was once an innovator; he shouldn’t be contributing to the stagnation of Arabic pop music. But let’s face it: for the past few releases, he sort of has been. Some of the tracks on this album really had me excited in the first few measures. I thought, “Oh damn, he’s really about to change it up!” But then the 1+1=2 came in, which was disappointing.

Overall, I give the album a B minus. 4 or 5 songs will pass by the gatekeeper into iTunes bliss, while the rest will get archived in external hard drive hell. The music isn’t terrible; it’s just more of the same. If I want to listen to Amr Diab, there are plenty of good options from the past. And plus, we’re talking about a prolific music giant here. Just think: Can you name ONE B-rated Bob Marley album?