If you’ve seen Jim Jarmusch’s vampire film, Only Lovers Left Alive, you may remember the scene near the end where the film stops for a moment in Tangier so that Yasmine Hamdan, a Lebanese singer, can perform one of her songs. I’ve got the soundtrack CD which includes Hal, the song she sings, but despite my predilection for Middle Eastern music I’ve been remiss in chasing down the albums that she’s released since. Hon is a new Yasmine Hamdan song, her first in a while if the YT comments are correct (her last album was in 2018), with an animated video credited to Khalil. The video is a wholly animated piece which is one reason why it’s featured here; as I’ve said in the past, I lost patience with the live-action video format years ago but still like those that use animation provided the technique is well-deployed.
The song itself is a political one, you might say inevitably so given the singer’s background and the state of current events. No prizes for guessing what the “tiny country with a gaping wound” refers to. Khalil’s animation uses its variety of collaged objects to spell out Arabic words. Is one of these a fleeting reference to the opening shots of Sergei Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomengrates? Maybe. The link to the song came via Animation Obsessive, a favourite Substack which teaches me something new with every post. The latest instalment concerns Robert Sahakyants, an Armenian animator described as a Soviet hippy, or the closest you could get to such a thing in the Soviet Union of the 1970s. That’s another lead to go chasing after.
I’m a big Yasmine Hamdan fan, saw her at the Scala when she last performed in the UK six or seven years ago supporting Al Jamilat. Had been wondering if/when she would release new music. I’d heard the new single, but hadn’t seen the video.
Some of Hamdan’s live action videos are well worth seeing. For example Balad, directed by her husband, the Palestinian director Elia Suleiman. The one I really love though is the Cairo-based sci-fi one for her former alias Y.A.S.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPPYhAISKPI.
Speaking of Y.A.S., are you acquainted with the sole album she released in that guise, Arabology (produced by Mirwais)? If not, the final track is a dream Kraftwerk interpretation/remix/sampling.
I didn’t know about the Y.A.S. album so thanks for the tip. I’ve got quite a few Arabian club comps and rai-adjacent albums but they seldom yield very many memorable recordings. I do like the idea of mixing things up, however. The first Natacha Atlas solo album is a favourite in this sphere but she shifted to doing Arabic love songs with more traditional arrangements when she became popular with Arab audiences.