Concert and Session

Omar Yousef

Songs from the Underground

In this singing session Omar Yousef sings and introduces songs which were not
“fanfared” in the media and were usually circulating in the black markets
of students, protest movements and lots of dreamers longing for social
justice. They were not part of the commercial and mainstream fanfare which
is dominated mainly by all types of love with a special accent on
suffering.
Omar Yousef presents another music which is richer and more colorful in
its themes and concerns in spite of the simplicity of its means: The music of the underground song-writers Sheikh Imam, Marcel Khalifa, Whalid Abdes-Salaam and others.

Sheikh Imam was an Egyptian rebel, with wit, sarcasm and a courage which
always brought him into trouble, he and his fellow poet Ahmad Fuad Nijem.
They gave voice to the underground and the left; both were imprisoned by
all the republican governments that ruled Egypt, from Nasser reaching
Mubarak. His songs cover the 60’s-80’s, mentioning several social,
economic and political issues in addition to love.

Marcel Khalifa was actively singing during the Lebanon war and voiced the
concerns of the national democratic forces and the left in the 70’s-80’s.
His songs were about freedom fighters but also of vendors, taxi drivers,
children and kites.

Walid Abdes-Salaam captured the mood and the concerns of the first
Palestinian Intifada in his songs. His texts flow between soldiers, stones
and the dreams of zeit u za’tar.