Project 365

When I’m homesick, one of the ways to cure that homesickness is by eating Middle Eastern foods or by listening to Arabic music! 😀

This song, Ally Gara, is one of my favorite songs and probably my only favorite classical Arab music. I don’t know who the original singer was, but this classical song was made popular (again) by Saber Robaei and Asalah Nasri. Saber and Asalah are two of the best Arab singers. Their voice is just amazing. Both of them have performed this song on separate occasions. If you watch this video, you’ll notice it’s a rather  spontaneous performance at a random party attended by many Arab celebrities. You can see how they made gesture to each other to tell whose turn to sing next. But despite the spontaneity, both Saber and Asalah did a great job!! I even think Saber can survive without Asalah there haha.

The song is quite long (more than 10 minutes) — the video that I embed here is the second part of the performance. It’s common for Arab singers to prolong a song by “playing” with their voice (like what Saber did at 2:34 and Asalah at 4:40). They do that quite often when performing a classical Arab music. I’m not sure why. Perhaps, it’s to show the greatness of their voice and how long they can sing without breathing.

You can download the mp3 of this performance from here. Saber and Asalah never recorded this song, so the one from this performance is used and was widely played in the radio across the Middle East when it was first broadcasted on TV. So you can hear the voice of Asala asking for a glass of water in the beginning of the song hahaha. It’s a spontaneous performance, I told ya!