“Mona Amarsha is one of the spearheads of the movement to ‘internationalize’ Khaleeji music, along with Asma Lmnawar, another Moroccan who is likely to be an Amazigh native speaker. Having conquered the Gulf ports, both these singers are now actually moving away from Khaleeji music, while others (including name Lebanese singers like Yara and Myriam Fares) are moving energetically toward it. In the case of Asma Lmnawar, I suspect she secretly harbors a desire to integrate Amazigh music into Arabic pop. Anyway, you might take in Asma’s ‘Hakawa’ video as a possible example of that trend. A track showing Mona Amarsha’s current direction is ‘Rafaa Daghti,’ where the musical roots are fairly ambiguous.

“You may ask why I concentrate so heavily on female singers, and I assure you it’s not simply that I’m getting an eyeful, for I generally listen to rather than watch this music. From what I’ve seen, male Arabic singers are often at pains to convince the listener of their sincerity, whereas the women keep things focused on the entertainment aspects. A wonderfully laughable case in point is the video ‘Wayed Helo’ from an Emirati, Abdullah Balkhair; this track seems to admit the distinction unabashedly, employing every device to make an all-male presentation as entertaining as possible. With this track we’ve arrived in the ‘authentic’ Khaleeji territory of the Gulf ports, so perhaps we should consider Ahlam, who is probably the top Emirati artist over the last decade and more. I particularly recommend her video of ‘Shaf Nafsah.’ With this track I imagine we have met the goal of providing a single video to qualify as an exemplification of ‘authentic’ Khaleeji music. Another worthwhile example from Ahlam would be her ‘Wala Teswa.’

“Saudi Arabia, with its stretch of Gulf coastline, is traditionally part of the Khaleeji region, and the singer Mashael performs interesting and authentic music: her video of ‘Henein’ has an interesting take on Bedouin culture and is well worth taking in. We may then segue peacefully out to the sounds of Nawal Al Kuwaitia’s ‘Ya Fahimni.’ Note that the scenes throughout this video are in Turkey, which is a foreign country so far as Arabic speakers are concerned, whereas a community of interests – especially musical – exists throughout the Arab-speaking world from Morocco to Oman. This commonality has been accentuated by the television age, with popular music playing a remarkably dominant role. And most recently Khaleeji music itself has been established as one of the unifying threads.”