Alfaress - Zan9a

With his first album still in the works, Alfaress has released a couple new songs. One of them, "Zan9a", tells the story of a kid on the street. Alfaress describes the video as a "street video," unlike the more official one for "Ana Almaghribi" because it uses selected clips from the Egyptian movie Tito (2004) to give the viewer a an appropriate visual to match the song's tone and subject matter. Like hip hop, this video embodies the spirit of collaboration and/or building upon an existing form or piece of art in order to create something new. For listeners who understand the lyrics of the song, certain scenes from Tito might have associations or connotations to that would allow the song to have that much more of an influence on the listener.

For me, the music, lyrics (from what I can understand) and the video are all reminiscent of 90s American rap tracks addressing street life. Like Ice Cube in Rabat. In this way, this video shows that rap is not a uniquely American musical genre, but rather an artform that allows artists like Alfaress to delve deep into the emotions of street life in cities across the world, even in the Middle East.

"Zan9a"