We’re happy to say that since last week it’s been available as an iPhone application as well, which you can download here. Screenshots below:

- Completely revamped web application
- Better navigation
- Ability to easily view, share, add and explore bands
- New player
- Ability to create your own personal collection of favorite tracks
- Ability to receive suggestions for other bands based on your favorite tracks
- An iPhone application that syncs with your collection
… And more!

We think the site speaks for itself – so please head over there and check it out! http://mideastunes.com

Our mission is to bridge barriers of faith and geography to unite young people committed to fostering constructive discourse in the Middle East through music. The core of the project manifested from our desire to promote bands and musicians that would otherwise never be given a second glance in the international scene. We feel that is because most people would never think to look to regions like the Middle East and North Africa for highly thought provoking music. The need to change this is our driving force. We believe music can change the world and that the musicians of the Middle East and North Africa will lead the way.

Founded in 2010, the site has expanded to serve as a primary resource for discovering up and coming Middle Eastern talents. We’re proud of our quick progress and awaiting to unveil amazing new parternships ahead!

In the meantime, enjoy the tunes and discover the very best of the underground music scene brimming from our region: http://mideastunes.com

Riding on the heels of his latest album release, “difrent,” Stephan Said has been keeping busy with a project of the same name which aims to erase the borders that separate us with the power of music. His vision, in everything that he does, is to unite people under the common desire for peace; not just the older generations which most cater to. He wants to showcase and, at the same time, inspire the youth of the world. To give them the incentive to continue speaking out with music as their guide to a better world for all. His journey in music, starting in early childhood years, led eventually to a reconiclation with his own bi-racial heritage and that inner peace fuels every action that he has taken since. Difrent, the album and project, are a direct palpale manifestation of that. It is a movement as powerful as humanity’s capacity for empathy, something that I feel is the core of music itself. With that said, I thorougly enjoyed the experience of getting to know him a bit more on a personal level and I hope that you do too while you listen in on this interview. Podcast posted at the bottom of the post. Enjoy!

Recently, Stephan has been partaking in the Wallstreet protests which you can check out live footage of here:

Heading a WebZine like Blood or Love and a site like Mideast Tunes tends to make the act of self-evaluation a frequent voluntary and welcome exercise.  The reason for this is simply because the “payoff” from what I do is almost immediate.  Both projects’ core revolve around the desire to promote bands and musicians that would otherwise never be given a second glance in the international arena due to the plethora of extremely obscure projects that crop-up out of nowhere everyday.  That, and, the fact that most people from the West would never think to look to regions like the Middle East for new and interesting music.  I felt the need to remedy this because I truly believe that the unique sociopolitical and culturally oppressive environments of these regions will eventually give rise to a musical revolution as powerful, and as widespread, as that of metal and hardcore punk.  No, it won’t come in the form of a new genre or attitude toward music.  It will, in its unapologetic candor, remind the world of just how powerful music can be.  It is our life-line in the sea of copyright lawsuits and dieing corporate labels that is engulfing us all; people will start to remember that music is an entity independent from race, culture, social class, gender, religion, and political leanings.  It is, much like most of the creative arts, a constant tangible reminder of our shared humanity.

Every time I get a reaction along the lines of, “WOAH!! AND THEY’RE FROM WHERE?!?!”, whenever I introduce someone from the US or Europe to bands like Al-Namrood, Thamud, Qafas, and Odious, the phrase “mission accomplished” may as well be tattooed across my forehead in bright red ink.  The ability to connect people from different regions, mentally and physically, via music that has personally moved me brings fulfillment like that of which I have not experienced in a long time.  So sit back, relax and always remember to keep your mind open when listening to something unfamiliar.  You never know, it just might be something that will change your whole life around.

I kinda lucked out with this one. A friend happened to get me into personal contact with Busac of Smouldering In Forgotten for an interview via email. As people know, I’m very fond of conversational interviews any way I can get it other than verbal. This was an interesting one that spanned a total of two weeks with a week of inactivity due to hurricane Irene interrupting my trip back home from a much needed two day vacation spent in Michigan. How the world works in the Mideast is opening up, if not ever so slowly, to those in the US and it’s a very positive thing. So many here hardly know anything about people living there and music helps bridge that gap. Interviews help even more in that vein and this one was excellent in that respect (and in every other way I might add). As always, enjoy the read and getting to know Busac!

What made each of you choose metal as the primary medium in which to express yourselves?

I suppose it just came naturally. We were all friends before starting the band and all had this common attitude and were interested in mostly the same music because we enjoyed all the chaotic aggression found in more extreme sides of metal.

How did you guys come to get into metal, never mind the more extreme sub-genres, in Bahrain? Consequently, how did you all meet and come to find that you had the same attitude/ideology?

Our main exposure to metal came from the Internet. A few years back, metal albums weren’t usually available in music shops around here, and if they were they’d usually be more mainstream bands. Nowadays, metal in Bahrain is growing little by little and albums are easier to come by. My personal experience and interest in this music primarily came from watching a local underground gig years ago, that atmosphere is what really encouraged me to listen to this type of music.

It’s because of small local gigs that our paths crossed and helped form a bond between people here. We all liked the dark atmosphere,and we all like the rebellious and independent nature behind the music and it inspired many of us.

Since it was so hard to find the music, I am betting that it was just as hard for you to pick up instruments when you finally decided to do so. Which instrument attracted you and how did you go about your search to acquire it? What was the learning process like? Were you able to find any teachers in Bahrain for the instrument?

Almost all metal musicians around here are self taught, which is also a reason why many get frustrated and give up. For myself, I started learning guitar almost 9 years ago on my own and then about 4 years ago started to learn drums too for the sake of the band to play live (there aren’t many drummers around here). The learning process was a bit difficult since there was no one to guide us in the right path, we relied on each other for support and encouragement. There are a few music institutes around the country but resources are very limited and are usually aimed more towards basic training only, not so much when it comes to a more advanced level.

So it seems that that made you guys come form closer relationships with each other than most people do in bands over here. I know that in Bahrain, metal is very much looked down upon by society. How do you deal with that and still stay committed to the music that you love? Is living a double life necessary?

Sometimes living a double life just happens on its own because people generally do find it odd that we play loud music such as this and they believe that it is still a phase that we will eventually grow out of. This is one of the bigger challenges we face here because not many people are willing to dedicate a lot towards their passion in music, so when society starts playing a negative role then it just kills it for them completely. The thing that really encouraged us was hearing positive reviews from our releases, usually coming from abroad through social networking sites or album reviews.

As such, what’s recording albums and playing live for you guys like? I’m pretty sure that you can’t record your stuff in professional studios over there, right? What’s the live scene like over there? Tell me about the first time that you ever played live in a band.

Things have been dead here for quite some time but have started to improve recently. We couldn’t find a proper studio at the time so we had to literally make our own out of a bedroom. We invested and took the time to learn the proper steps to make it happen, it was a real struggle. Our experiences playing live is the reward that comes from all the hard work, when we are finally able to see what our music means to people. My first live experience was in 2004, I was a guitarist in a cover band, as soon as I got on stage I knew this was where I wanted to be. Good thing is that within the last 2 years, the number of gigs is starting to increase and there is finally a professional studio opening up soon, Rabble Rouser Studios, for metal bands to record in.

That sounds great! It should also make things easier for bands looking to be signed. Being how small Bahrain is, I’m sure that that almost every metal musician knows about one another in some way. Would you say that you all help support each other despite any differences you may have in approach to music with one another? I read that Mardus played a large role in keeping musicians connected over there, in what way was he able to accomplish that?

Actually you described it perfectly. Metal fans around here form a small community, maybe even a family. I don’t think there are any two bands in the country who haven’t already played with each other in gigs at some point and remained in touch afterwords. We encourage each other, offer whatever help we can for other musicians, even provide facilities if we have any. For instance, my bedroom studio was used to record for many bands besides our own, including Narjahanam, Lunacyst, Extinction Imminent, Punks Not Patriots, Scarlet Tear, and even more solo acts that have yet to be released.

I wouldn’t say Mardus keeps musicians connected, but rather he is an inspiration to many people here, including myself, for having his own vision and actually being able to accomplish it with Smouldering In Forgotten as well as Narjahanam. I haven’t met that many vocalists over here who can growl like him, and moreover, I haven’t met many musicians in the region who can pull off Arabian styled metal as well as he did with Narjahanam.

Ah, I see. So he was one of the first successful musicians from your country, basically. Do musicians from your region tend to work with those from the surrounding countries as well, i.e., the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc? Where did you guys come up with the name “Smouldering in Forgotten” by the way? I’ve been wondering that for awhile.

We’ve had the opportunity to go do Dubai last year for a gig and are actually going there again late September to play in the “Obscura Live In Dubai” gig. Bands from Saudi, such as Sound of Ruby, have come over to Bahrain almost regularly for gigs, Nervecell once came to Bahrain too a short while ago. The only band we worked with in terms of writing music was Al Namrood from Saudi Arabia, Mardus agreed to be a session vocalist for one album and it was recorded in my bedroom studio.

“Smouldering In Forgotten” is a phrase in the song “Upon This Deathbed Of Cold Fire” by Goatwhore. This band was a big influence on us at the time we started the band and it just sounded cool.

Reading your lyrics, they’re very interesting. What inspires them and who does the lyric writing for the band? Also, you mentioned Goatwhore being a huge influence on you guys, any other bands influence your sound as much? Where did you guys get the artwork for your albums? They’re pretty damn good, especially for your 2010 release.

The lyrics were a journey of their own that took a whole year to get done. For our last album, we worked with a good friend of ours, Hammers. He has always supported us so we wanted to involve him in this release somehow. We know he’s an amazing story teller so we sat in lots of brainstorming sessions before deciding to tell a whole story throughout the album, with each track representing a certain event leading to the next. We won’t reveal the details of the story though, you need to do that on your own through the lyrics. All I can say is that it revolves around many themes like revenge, insanity, myths, war… etc.

Goatwhore was definitely a big influence when we first started the band and it really shows in our album “Legions Into Black Flames” in terms of music. By the next release we decided to add a little more variety from other genres, making it more atmospheric, a bit of death metal here and there, some thrash, classical, and even gothic at one point. So it’s a little difficult to name the influences there, it was just a whole lot of experimentation.

The artwork of “I, Devourer” was done by Killustrations, really amazing artist with a twisted taste, definitely a wonderful opportunity to have worked with him. The artwork of the previous releases were designed by us.

For you personally, what keeps you motivated to do what you do, i.e. creating music and helping musicians around you?

For me, it’s just seeing how people react and respond to my music that motivates me. I’m not saying I’m an amazing musician or composer, but I’ve been getting positive reviews so far so that lets me know that I’m on the right track. This is also what makes me want to help people because I know that not everyone has the resources or the time to do everything they want to. I was fortunate enough to be able to commit enough of my time to learn how the recording process works, but others don’t always have this time. If not me, then who?

Creating music is an almost entirely different story though, I can never trigger it no matter how hard I tried. Sometimes it just hits me and I already have a full vision of a song and sometimes I feel like I struggle for months before writing anything. It’s hard to determine what really does it for me, but I try and maintain a certain level of quality in anything I write so I end up not using and forgetting many things I come up with.

Does your interest in music extend to other styles or do you just stick to the extreme genres of metal? Do you have any long term plans for yourself in music? Is there are particular goal that you want to achieve before you are able to “retire” with satisfaction? How does Smoldering In Forgotten fit into those plans?

We occasionally write stuff besides metal, it’s usually more geared towards classical I suppose, an example of this was the ending of “Spiritus Nes Sancti,” that ending inspired the rest of the song. I personally try to explore other music styles as well, as evident in the band Scarlet Tear. Give it a listen and I hope you enjoy it.

My only goal is to go wherever my music takes me. Right now I’m planning on studying music at a well established college, but other than that, I guess we just want to leave our mark in Bahrain’s metal music history.

Seems like you’ve left a pretty nice mark so far. I would like to thank you for doing this interview with me, it’s been a great pleasure and I learned quite a bit about the music scene there. As a closing remark, please describe four our readers one of the greatest hurdles that you’ve had and how you’ve overcome it while transversing your still evolving path as a metal musician in Bahrain.

All I can say is to stay true to yourself and you’ll find your own way to get your message across. All our biggest challenges would have been easily avoided if we decided to take an easier way out, but on the other hand, it’s these challenges that make it all worthwhile in the end.

I also want to thank you for giving me the pleasure of being in this interview. It’s certainly a first time for me to take part in a 2 week interview.

mideastunes.com and blazetrak.com

We are pleased to announce that Mideast Tunes has officially entered a partnership with Blazetrak, a New York based company that provides direct video access to the world’s top professionals.

Bands and artists from the Middle East and Africa are invited to submit as many tracks as they want (as separate submissions) for free. Although there will not be a guaranteed video response for each submission, the creative team at Blazetrak will review and consider each song. Submissions are currently accepted here. This window of opportunity will be open for a time frame of 60 days.

A total of 5 musicians or music groups will be selected to receive guidance toward success in the world of professional music and given free Blazetrak credits. The winning credits will be used to help the chosen musicians access amazing and unique opportunities on the Blazetrak platform (including but not limited to – management, song placements, record deals, etc).

Our mission at Mideast Tunes is to help artists receive the global recognition that they deserve. We are honored to have Blazetrak’s support to this end. Through this partnership we will further promote and discover new talent rising largely unnoticed within the Mideast and North Africa. We also know that this partnership will “swing wide” the world of opportunities in the west as well.

Let’s hear your best!

As popular uprisings have unfolded across the Middle East this year, much attention has been paid to the both underlying unrest that is causing them and the social media that often helps fuel them. In the background, receiving less of the limelight, lies another phenomenon: the growing community of musicians whose music is inspired by this growing demand for social change.

Read the rest of the entry here, and don’t forget to share it. There are some great things in storage for this project that we’ve been working very hard on, so stay tuned!

Its time to make our dreams come true,
Hold my hand baby and let us flew,
Don’t go away I will fix everything as dew,
Hold my hand and let us merge in the view,

I am still standing where you adieu,
It’s a feeling like pain from hew,
My everything goes dark and blue,
But still I have nothing meant to argue,

Blurring mirror, distinct shadow and all these gaps,
Will make our love and lives soon to elapse,
Follow my footsteps and come back, baby come back,
Before my heart collapse, before my world collapse,

The spirit of protest grew from these marginal areas to more central cities, like Aleppo and the capital of Damacus. That the release was anonymous is hardly surprising, considering that the song’s call for revolt against sectarian scaremongering, violent repression, and corruption would have ushered the artists straight to prison. Before Tunisia’s uprising triggered demonstrations across the Middle East and North Africa, rapper El Général’s online release “Rais Le Bled” (“President, Your Country”) landed him in jail for criticizing president Ben Ali’s repressive and profiteering regime at the height of the Tunisian protests. Since then, the so-called Arab Spring has inspired various MENA artists, like Arab Knightz and El Deeb, to produce protest rap songs.

Arab Spring raps strike the same tone as rap’s emergent themes when it was evolving as an American rebellious protest form in the 1970s, with strong roots in “street culture” of urban neighborhoods that spoke to global social and political conflicts. Like American rap’s originary investment in formulating lyrics to convey a strong mobilization message, “Statement No. 1” also aims at mobilizing dissent with its opening chorus:

Statement No. 1/ The Syrian people won’t be degraded/ Statement No. 1/ We won’t remain like this / Statement No. 1/ From Houran came the good news / Statement No. 1/ The Syrian people are revolting …

With a lyrical salute to Darraa, where the recent calls for freedom in Houran began and encountered a violent government crackdown, the song also evokes a longer history of dissent and repression:

“You exterminated Hama as if it were nothing / Today our rights are in our hands and we will not forgive”

Even though it is aimed at a younger generation, the song suggests a sustained history of repression does not make the memory of Hama, where revolt was crushed with a government massacre in 1982, easily “exterminated”. Initiating the song is the refusal of state “silence”—censorship, surveillance, the anonymity that the performers ironically cannot shake—for which Syria is acutely notorious nationalizes the protests, spread from the marginalized south to the capital of Damascus: “We live in silence/ It’s been years / how long do we have to stay like this—dead.” Underlying the communiqué-style set of demands sung in Syrian Arabic to the government is a mobilizing message of Syria’s own global resonance to listeners:

You sold the Golan for cheap / You sabotaged the cause and defiled it / History shows that no oppressor ever lasted/ We will realize our dream of freedom even if it costs blood / The government is destined to fall / The king either flees or is buried

While listeners are reminded of the global reverberations that Golan Heights had on other Mid East nations since the 1967 War, the song draws attention to its current global reach: even though the song is directed toward a younger generation of Web-enabled dissidents who already listen to rap, the song relies on the Web’s networked chain of transmission to draw attention to protests from journalists, bloggers, expats, activists, nationally and worldwide. In essence, even though the song might be judged by limited Internet use in Syria, it would be difficult to determine how the chain of transmission dips into the online and offline worlds, or rather how online “communiqués” become intertwined with offline (word-of-mouth, face-to-face) contacts.

While the online lyrical communiqué cannot be withdrawn from the global information networks, only Syria’s future will determine if it will have resonance as a traveling, cross-border protest rap, offline. For example, after Tunisian dictator Ben Ali fled, protestors gathered in Bahrain were heard chanting Tunisian rapper El Général’s protest rap “Rais Le Bled”. In this case, protest rap had not only crossed national boundaries but breached threatening material boundaries between the online and offline world of dangerous protest on the street, its aesthetic eagerly adapted to sites of protest against violently repressive regimes. This might have been the first instance of recent protest rap songs being incorporated into protests, momentously breaching the convention of traditional chants and the borders between online protest music and live protest.

The American urban “street culture” has crossed time and place to allow “Arab street protest culture” to develop and build upon its own traveling, cross-border rap aesthetic. The amateurish, rough production of “Statement No. 1” only seems to reinforce the organic, authentic, popular quality of its urgent message. While the fleeting, faceless rap is pragmatic in its anonymity, it does play on the characteristics of the globalized world’s information networks—anonymous, ubiquitous, and independent from conventional mediators, institutions, and authorities to convey its message.

But the statement that “The revolution is faceless” [1] evoked by the masked figure in the beginning of the video returns us to Syria’s state of surveillance and censorship that has expelled free speech itself underground, to the faceless, invisible realm. It returns us to the verses of Syria’s preeminent poet Qabbani spliced in the end: “How do we write with locks on our mouths/ Marking each second for the butchers to arrive/ I carried my poetry on my back and it has exhausted me/ What will happen to the poetry when it collapses.” It returns us to the context of underground music in Syria, not an obscure aesthetic preference, but where verse, poetry, speech seek relief and release when all other routes have been “exhausted”.

[1] A statement from the Italian writing group “Wu Ming”.

This article first appeared on Mideast Tunes.

Just as I opened my eyes, I was already tired of life.
I dont know what happened, but I grew old while I was young.
They told me I was a lefty, on the wrong path, a not a believer.
But when did you answer my questions?
From the day I opened my eyes, there was the war.
In fathers hand there was a gun instead of a pen.
The answer to each of my questions was a rock.
Let me tell the story for once. You and I both know the pain and the roots.
Let me think I am a human, for once.
Let me think I live in a normal [healthy] society, for once.
Let me forget that Ive been beaten in the head for 20 years; that I am worthless, dirt, left over.
Let me close my eyes and not see [witness] my sisters gaze, my mothers cry.
Let me close my eyes and say that I am fortunate; that I have a tomorrow and I look forward to it.

You laugh inside if you are pampered in abundance. But life for us is something else.
Its the moments which have passed in dreams. The red tears of eyes full of blood.
This is not life, this is convulsing, dying. Its like waking alive each morning, and dying every night.
Its like going after returned checks, dealing with poverty, with all that is unfortunate.
Its like holding your skirt over your head, loosing all the respect in your hood, wanting to die.
You must sell yourself, you need money. If they beat you in the head, you remain quite.
I told this to many but no one responded.

Around us: its always night, a scary night.
Around us: even death is sick,
around us: each person is riding many,
around us: its a collection of measure.

Around us whore is the name for the housewife with no other means for dinner.
Around us [men of] knowledge sit on the sidewalks, its real hard not to feel ashamed of yourself.
Where what it means to be a human is always under question, living like one is very hard.
There is a heavy load on your shoulder; frightening voices occupy your ears.
Murderers are studying at the universities, and students are in prison.
Around us Nationality is a broken tableau [piece of stone referring to the Persepolis, etc - broken]; identity is a door which has been closed for 14 centuries [Arab/Islamic invasion and what ensued].
In our hood men are half price; worth less than a dog. Here we are used to being beaten in the head [expression forced to obey].
God laughs, bares witness to this. Here if you are sad, they suggest suicide as the solution.
Here living is harder than life. Here living is harder than life.
Around us

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ckQPLV6csQ[/youtube]