We were treated to an amazing concert from the Palestinian/Galician singer-songwriter Najla Shami (with guitarist Sérgio Tannus) this week, organised by the university's Galician Studies Centre as part of this year's Forum for Iberian Studies.
I do love a bit of Arabic influences mixed into my music (see also: Shakira), and I may have lost count but I think I heard Najla singing in seven different languages that evening, so this hit all the right spots. Oh, and she's an amazing singer as well.
So, anyhow, here are some videos with the some of the songs she played here:
I'm very pleased to report that my book "The birds, the bees and the platypuses" is now available in Arabic translation thanks to the Hindawi Foundation (set up by Ahmed Hindawi), a non-profit publishing operation aiming to make the world's knowledge accessible in that language.
The steadily growing list of titles they've translated is here (in English). Details of my book are here (in Arabic). I understand the print edition costs $10, and electronic versions are also available.
This is a screenshot, as in my attempt to save the cover image from the site I lost the writing on the cover. No idea how that can happen. Also, I'm afraid the cover features an inverted helix, but I'll let this pass for once.
On the Oral Fixation tour, Shakira started the show singing a couple of lines in Arabic. This snippet is only listed as "intro" in the DVD, and to my eternal shame I must admit I never investigated what these lines were.
On the new tour, the same lines emerged in the middle of the show and a setlist I found on the web names the song as A'tini al-Nay.
And in this interview, Shakira explains how A´tini al-Nay was one of the first songs she performed as a young child, and that people called her the "little Fairuz," and she sings the first two lines again but then says she can't remember the rest of the lyrics.
I'd love to see her doing a complete cover version of the song, actually. Can we have that on the next album, please?
Update 13.11.2021: still waiting, but I replaced the embedded video above which had stopped working, and found two new ones to add:
Oh, hang on, maybe I like this version even better. Can't make up my mind:
And I've just found a free score too. Don't have a ney (yet) but have enjoyed playing the bits I remembered on the flute and recorders over the last few years.
I'm a chemist turned biochemist turned science writer, covering everything from nano to astro via bio. Also trying to make sense of my life in writing about family history. Playing wrong notes on a variety of instruments. Current craze: repairing violins and learning to play them too.
