Alas Abdel-Khalek… Goodbye Orange Time

It seems that this is not the right time to seek the advice of a talented poet who is many years older than me and who has achieved great success with his words in the singing “market”. He followed his advice with another, more realistic or painful suggestion: “Consider that you are writing for three hundred million innocent people in the Arab world!”

Did the singers of the time get their “colors” from reality or did reality follow them?

Actually, my friend used a harsher word than “innocent,” but the meaning is still the same; Never rely on the listener’s “intelligence”, find very simple words and then simplify them further to suit the listener.

Fortunately, it is true that my friend did not follow his desperate advice, and he did not become the star of other singing poets like Ayman Bhagat Qamar or Medat al-Adl, for many reasons, but he wrote many beautiful songs. Some of the singing stars. Among them was one of the most important stars of the stage with whom we had that conversation. That is, Ala Abdel-Khaleq.

This was in the period between my two albums, “Thaiyara Varak”, in which the title track became a significant hit, and the album “Nee Meinhi Prathai”, which featured the song and video of “Dary Your Eyelashes”. The clip shot for it was less than successful, “Thaiyara Warak”. If so, we are talking about the beginning of the last century and the mid-nineties, or the period between the fifth and ninth albums of Alaa Abdel-Kalek, because he left the group of friends he founded – in the era. The popularity of musical groups – the musician Ammar al-Shari, in addition to male voices, Alaa and Ammar, two female voices – who later retired – they are Hanan and Mona Abdel-Ghani.

There are no titles like Nightingale or Raja, but rather voices and even ordinary names taken from civil registry documents, such as Hisham Abbas and Ihab Tawfiq, voices that owe much of their success to Hamid Al Sheri’s magic touch. arrangement, and everything connected with the song of the period from the word “young man.”

It was a period of sounds that seemed ordinary, without great vocal talents like Abdel Halim, Umm Kulthum, and the next generation like Omar Fati, Imad Abdel Halim, Mohamed Mounir and Amr Diab, not even at the “Tarabic” level. No titles like Nightingale or King, but rather ordinary voices and even names, as if they were taken from civil registry documents, voices like Hisham Abbas, Ihab Tawfiq and Hossam Hosni won by magic. A touch of Hamid Al Sheri’s arrangement, and everything about her, from the word “teenager” added to the song of the time, to the short songs, casual clothes, “drops” and “effats” on stage or in video clips. A lot of bright colors, a lot of yellow, orange and phosphorescent in the pictures and posters of Mostafa Qamar’s “Dabadibo”, and albums and clips.

Did the singers of the time get their “colors” from reality or did reality follow them? Those of my generation, born in the late seventies, who were deeply affected by the news of Alaa Abdul Khaliq’s passing, still remember that bright colors were the “fashion” of that time, and even dark combinations of them. High “punk” haircuts with side-swept black and blonde, women’s “lion” hairstyles and eighties/nineties clothing, parallel to the high color spread, make the eyes “excessive”. Among them, a quick look at clips of Latifah Al-Tunizi or Huda Ammar is enough to refresh that color memory.

Alaa Abdel-Khaliq is no exception to these colors. He shot the clip “Tayira Warak” in the yellow color of sunflowers with an orange “filter”, and the heroine of the clip, Jihan Nasrin, shines in yellow. Orange dominates the cover of his album “Weyaki” in Alaa’s same song, “Dary your eyelashes”, paralleling the phosphorescent colors in “T-shirts”.

The songs – often criticized in their time – had meanings that a naive listener did not need, even if I begged him with a dazzling screen of colors, they were remembered as symbols of the past, how much nostalgia tried to restore it.

Were those colors, on camera lenses, clothes, shoes, and fields, a means to capture the attention of this generation, a whole (stagnant?) era’s means of resisting oblivion?

In any case, the only difference is that there is no image – or “driving” on stage. Despite the “simple” advice of my frustrated friend the talented poet, his words and the words of his fellow poets, were signs of a stop, after which the existence of poetic art in the lines of song almost ceased. “Youth”, most of whose “poems” then became a mere linguistic bridge for defined meanings, lacking in poetic form and lyrics drawn from the rap world in favor of “gasps” metaphors, or lazy flirtatious words loaded with descriptions of fruits and sweets, that it had nothing to do with. Nasty taste. For example, the taste image in “Tayyara Waraq” is snow (words by Ahmad Marzouk): “O father of the heart, the taste of snow is all green/ the stranger’s voice began and his grocery is a family and a home.” He does. The wisdom of singing in the words of Majdi Naguib from Alaa’s debut solo album “Mersal” “Happiness has a partner and sadness has a partner/ I am al wat modasahib”.

Were those colors, on camera lenses, clothes, shoes, and fields, a means to capture the attention of this generation, an entire (stagnant?) era’s means of resisting oblivion?

Upon learning of the death of Alaa Abdel-Khalek, the songs that were often criticized in their time – such words and the music of their melodies (Medhat el-Khauli / Ahmad Munib), people first remembered. Even though it begged through a blinding veil, the meanings the innocent listener didn’t need. In the colors, no matter how much nostalgia tried to retrieve it, it was remembered as a symbol of a bygone era.