Sanaa Al Hussein & Kawthar Mansour

Afrah Wady Khaled (Wady Khaled Weddings)

• Ataba
• Dabke Arab (Arab Dabkeh)

• Khataba (Suiter)
• Dabke Arab (Arab Dabkeh)
• Ataba

Label

Location Issued

Artist Origin

Credits

Sawt Al Shabab Records - managed by Khaled Al Sheikh, Lebanon / Al Faihaa Records, SyriaKeyboards: Abdel Hamid Kajak

More Info

On this cassette from a wedding celebration in Wadi Khaled on the Lebanese-Syrian border, Kawthar Mansour shared the stage with shaabi singer Sanaa Al-Hussein and keyboard player Abdel Hamid Kajak, offering a feast of energy and rhythm, topped by explosive female performances with the intent of teaching waists and shoulders how to dance the dabke. The cassette reaches its peak on the second side with Kawthar and Sanaa's performance of the song "Khataba (Suiter)," a dabke classic at wedding parties, which is difficult to listen to while seated, due to the fast keyboard playing and unrestrained singing. The song reveals a high familiarity between the singers' voices and the electronic sound of the keyboard, one complementing the other in successive, feverish sequences of singing and playing. During a period when the cafes and entertainment venues stretching between Homs and Damascus were a magnet for regional tourism, the memories of many visitors to Syria and its people were associated with the voices of female singers who shaped the features of that era. Kawthar Mansour was one of the most important among them. Kawthar Mansour kept her upbringing and personal life to herself, but she reached a level of fame and popularity in the scene that few others achieved. Kawthar was contemporary to the pre-millennium generation of Syrian popular music, when songs were slower and orchestration was string-based. She also lived through the modern electronic loud generation, collaborating with its stars, such as Talal Al-Daour. Her rich, detailed voice and her wide vocal range helped her navigate various genres, from ataba and mawal to dabke and Iraqi shaabi music, becoming a well-rounded shaabi singer with a delicious archive of recordings to explore. We share three of them here.