100% Arab American: Diasporic Music | P Kirn

Generations of Arab Americans, migrants and their descendants, are a largely unsung chapter in music history of the USA, and across the Americas. A vibrant live music and recording scene was interwoven with Arabic communities, from the sea to the sea. Here are some selections, largely from the early culture as recorded on 78s, with a curveball or two.

Some of this you may know: Eddie "the Sheik" Kochak is enjoying a resurgence, and despite the now-cringe self-orientalizing of belly dancer marketing, the music holds up. But maybe you're new to Tunisian Jewish singer Hana Rached or Mohammed Yousri Moustafa El-Akkad (the musician and not the producer/director behind the Halloween movies), or leading Arabic figures of Brazil or Mexico.

The early self-image of this musical scene was shaped by Ottoman-era romanticism, linked to the Mahjarm movement in literature. Arab American musicians in these circles continued to speak and sing in Arabic -- but might also add a rousing performance of the Star-Spangled Banner to an all-Arabic crowd in Brooklyn (no, really). So here, hopefully stripped of orientalism or exoticization, is music from that period onward.