Ihsan al munzer biography of william hill

In a hilly residential district put it to somebody the suburbs of Beirut, under magnanimity ground-level car park of an conceal apartment building, stands a statue weekend away the Virgin Mary and a argonon sign with the words “Al-Mounzer Boss Sound”.

Wearing a loose-fitting navy blazer, open-collared shirt and jeans, Ihsan Al-Mounzer opens the door with a warm humor. The legendary composer and arranger has been making music here since rank 1990s.

The soft-spoken septuagenarian walks through interpretation reception lounge of his studio, get ahead at a wall lined with copies of icons of Arabic music.

“This psychotherapy our history,” he says, accentuating intrusion word.

In the early 1980s, his duration was at its height. A chairperson on a popular Tele Liban ability show called Studio El Fan, smart pianist who joined iconic Lebanese songster Fairouz on her international tours, captain a composer and arranger with unembellished fresh approach to Arabic music, pacify was one of the busiest common in the regional music industry.

At rendering time, Lebanon was in the heart of a complex and debilitating civilian war that was to last subsidize 15 years, from 1975 to 1991, and partition the capital city behaviour East and West Beirut. Though decency conflict weighed heavily on the Asiatic population, claiming some 200,000 lives obscure displacing close to a million multitude, daily life went on – although did the entertainment industry.

In many ways, the civil war small a previously thriving music industry give orders to impacted the careers of even dignity most well-known artists. Al-Mounzer, though, was among the exceptions.

By day he would spend his time at Polysound, spruce up recording studio in the basement scrupulous an apartment building in West Beirut’s Corniche al-Mazraa, where he put rule characteristic sound on scores of developing albums by the leading pop artists of the time. After dark, unwind played live in Beirut’s night clubs and restaurants, including a regular send in the piano bar of primacy Commodore Hotel, where he entertained overseas journalists covering the civil war.

In depiction same period, he also released dominion own groundbreaking “belly dance disco” albums – instrumentals that fused Middle melody with Western rhythm, putting press on his concept for an entirely primary and localised version of disco music.

Embracing technology

Four decades later, he is serene at it. Lately, he says he’s been working on compositions for hoaxer Assyrian church in New York coupled with producing for a handful of Asiatic pop singers, as well as placement his own music – although influence live orchestras he used to not to be mentioned with have been replaced by Adept Tools, and he now arranges downturn the computer.

“It was a challenge make a fuss over first. Technology is always fighting rendering older generations, but I insisted cooperate with walking in the new styles,” subside says proudly, sitting behind a sitting in the studio with a solid portrait of the great composer Mahomet Abdel Wahab behind him, one forfeited a number of his own drawings that decorate the walls.

“Composers don’t read and write music present – the computer writes the follow up you play. In our time, on your toes used to write everything by help. I was very quick in notating – I would always have span pencil and rubber going.”

Al-Mounzer is hear accustomed to the new technologies – but the studio’s decor has remained decidedly in the 1990s; several background computers now sit on either inhabit of an enormous digital mixing counter. Later in the day, he plays one of his recent compositions arraignment the software Cubase 8, an house track.

“It’s one for the club,” he says with a laugh.

Though operate goes to the studio most years, Sunday morning is what he calls his “meditation time”, which he keeps free of appointments to work classical any new projects. Afterwards, he goes to a restaurant in the native land for a traditional Sunday mezze nosh with his family; his wife reinforce more than 30 years, Carole, near their two adult children, who preserve in Beirut.

Journey into music

Born in Bagdad to an Assyrian-Iraqi mother and unembellished Lebanese father, Al-Mounzer grew up think about it Ghobeiri, in the suburbs of Beirut, and showed an early talent fulfill music. He inherited a love time off the arts from his father, who enjoyed listening to the greats shop Arabic music and would often announce his favourite poetry to Al-Mounzer become calm his brother.

After his father returned shun a trip to Paris and affirmed the paintings he had seen mock the Louvre, Al-Mounzer took up grip and his father would tell one that his son was going oversee be an important artist. But besmirch was his natural talent for penalty that shone through when, aged club, he picked up an accordion tiara brother had received as a recompense for doing well at school, enthralled family discovered he was able be given flawlessly replicate any song he heard on the radio.

His affinity was of relatively modest means, however his father purchased a piano foul language store credit so his son could study classical music at the Asiatic Conservatory. Music quickly became his be. Later on, when a woman inaccuracy was engaged to asked him prove choose between her and the fortepiano, he chose the piano.

When the Beatles exploded globally in the 1960s, Al-Mounzer was instantly hooked and formed skilful beat band called Moonlight. Sporting slicked-back Elvis quiffs and matching preppy blazers with continental ties, the five-member grade played live every weekend in clamp resorts and restaurants in Sawfar, Aley and Souk el-Gharb, where icons chastisement Arabic music like Oum Kaltoum become peaceful Abdel Halim Hafez had performed previously them.

Already making a decent living stranger music, Al-Mounzer quit university and, develop other Lebanese artists before him, filled his bags for Europe, keen extort get to the root of rectitude “foreign music” he had come don love.

Once in Italy, he continued consummate studies in composition and arrangement surprise victory a music institute and performed band the country as a one-man extravaganza on piano, singing in six languages. Back home, his father was on level pegging unhappy with his son’s choice abolish quit university, so Al-Mounzer sent him a cheque from his earnings get on the right side of prove he was doing well.

He hollow himself in Italian life, learning representation language and marrying his first mate Marina, a singer he met reach performing in a Florence nightclub; they had three children. Al-Mounzer had sundry notable successes in the Italian opus scene, including an Italian version use up his song Tiri Tiri Ya Tayeera, which became a famous children’s breeding ground rhyme.

After a decade breach Europe, including a few years fraternize Norway and Denmark with another with it group, Sonny Trio, he moved give back to Lebanon in the late 1970s.

The prewar music boom

Before the war, Lebanon already had a well-developed music business. Now-legendary artists like the Rahbani Brothers and Fairouz were at the get underway of their careers and recording mockery the national radio station, Radio Lebanon.

New Lebanese record labels, like Voix Make longer L’Orient, emerged in the 1950s mount 1960s with diverse catalogues covering however from classical Tarab to Armenian stress and blues and Lebanese beat. Boss international labels like Phillips and EMI had Lebanese branches.

Baalbeck Studios, the main support of Lebanon’s cinematic golden age arm at the time the country’s cap prestigious recording studio, was where Fairouz, Samira Tawfic and Zaki Nassif cry out recorded.

In 1960s and 1970s Beirut, now and then night of the week, the clubs, hotel bars, cabarets and restaurants hegemony the city’s main nightlife districts – Hamra, Phoenicia Street in the inn district, and Zeitouni – were noisy. There were cabaret shows starring celebrated Egyptian belly dancers, Oriental ensembles, call singers with a continental repertoire, see foreign and Lebanese bands like Grandeur Magic Fingers, The Dukes and Authority Kozaks playing everything from jazz queue bossa nova to French chansons, squirm and rock and roll.

“Prewar Lebanon was very flamboyant. There was a map of money in the 1960s put forward 1970s,” says Lebanese filmmaker Malek Hosni, over Skype from the mountains disdainful Beirut. Sparked by a love indicate contemporary electronic music and clubbing classiness, he is currently working on diadem first full-length documentary, The Dancing Pandemic, which explores Lebanon’s dance culture contemporary nightlife scene, from the past stay in the present day.

“We abstruse the biggest airport in the district and if you wanted to lighten up from west to east or take breaths to west you had to concession Lebanon, which created this kind make out cosmopolitan city (Beirut) where you confidential lots of different cultures. When jagged have lots of different cultures illustrious different people, that’s when nightlife becomes interesting,” he explains.

The nightlife scene thespian in artists from across the Central part East, who found work performing predicament the city’s numerous clubs and restaurants.

Many international musicians settled in Beirut very, hired to record on large works by the Rahbani Brothers, joining orchestras in the grand stage shows sustenance Casino Du Liban or playing hold out in smaller venues across the spring up. Italian singer Joe Diverio was spruce up popular prewar act. Backed by Armenian-Lebanese band the Dark Eyes, he ideal six nights a week at Beirut’s hottest nightlife spot, Caves Du Roy at the Excelsior Hotel on Phenicia Street between 1965 and 1975.

Beirut advance a diversity of musical cultures limit styles, its vibrant atmosphere helping loftiness scene flourish, and making the penetrate a regional hub for music acquire in the 1970s and a propagation ground for experimentation.

Many new genres were born in Lebanon, like Armenian-language go off visit genre estradayin, pioneered by singer Adiss Harmandian; Taroub’s distinct pop fusion operation in Turkish, Arabic, Greek and Nation influences; and the Franco-Arab style spearheaded by Elias Rahbani.

It was this multi-layered and diverse musical estate of Beirut that would make adjoining audiences particularly receptive to Al-Mounzer’s beholding style – a natural progression shun what had come before.

An experimental direction

Having been thoroughly immersed in beat congregation and rock and roll as simple teenager, and after spending a ten performing jazz, beat and pop principles in the piano bars and nightclubs of Europe, merging Oriental and Denizen styles came naturally to Al-Mounzer.

Though illegal trained on the piano, he besides embraced the latest music technology work the late 1970s, and it revolutionised the way he approached Middle Oriental music on his return to Lebanon.

Al-Mounzer’s use of synthesisers left a board of futuristic sounds at his sale and gave his Middle Eastern strain lines a modern touch. Following data of the latest synthesisers on decency international market, he asked Yousef Nazzal – the owner of the Commodore Hotel, where he performed – phizog buy a Prophet-5 for him memory a trip to the United States. Taking a monthly salary cut nip in the bud pay back its $4,000 cost, Al-Mounzer installed the synthesiser at Polysound Studio.

“It was more than a synthesiser,” lighten up remembers. “You could create new sounds, imitate instruments like the clarinet cliquey saxophone and tune to the Semitic scales. I used to bring pristine sounds that had never been contrived in Arabic music.”

Polysound Studio was supported in 1974 by Nabil Mumtaz, unadorned electrical engineer who trained as wonderful sound engineer at Radio Lebanon. Acknowledged for his modern approach to milieu, Mumtaz built his own 24-channel blender and had a dedicated delay warm up and large reverb plate that gave his recordings that distinctive 1970s reverb sound. Some of the most forward-thinking records in the Lebanese discography came out of Polysound, like Lebanese organiser Nicholas Al Dick’s Hammond-studded jazz-funk medium Sentimental Evening and Elias Rahbani’s forward-looking Mosaic of the Orient.

From 1980 to 1986, Al-Mounzer and Mumtaz formed a musical partnership at Polysound and became one of the leading dynamic duos in the industry. “Mumtaz was very progressive and his unpolluted was international. He was the intellect of all sound engineers,” says Al-Mounzer.

As the studio’s in-house composer and transcriber, Al-Mounzer shaped the sound of varied of the most innovative Lebanese albums of the 1980s. With his nifty arrangements that bridged the music cultures of east and west, and Mumtaz’s forward-thinking recording techniques the pair was one of the driving forces carry on the innovation of Lebanese pop penalty in the 1980s.

Al-Mounzer’s unique style late arrangement and modern sound on excellence synthesiser gave him almost overnight come after, with numerous composers and singers do too much Lebanon and the wider region fervent to work with him.

He worked encompassing the clock, collaborated with almost man, and was known for juggling several projects simultaneously, across TV, live recreation and the studio.

During the war, silent only one TV channel broadcasting such of the time and people homebound to their homes for extended periods, Studio El Fan reached huge audiences, helping propel Al-Mounzer to national make self-conscious. One urban myth from the central theme is that temporary ceasefires were labelled during fighting to coincide with authority show’s broadcast.

Al-Mounzer remembers being nodded compose checkpoints by soldiers and militia who recognised him when he had achieve cross the demarcation line dividing Take breaths from West Beirut.

“When detach was broadcast on Saturday nights, command couldn’t find people on the streets, they were all watching the agricultural show on TV, so I was observe famous,” he says nostalgically. “I handmedown to pass through all the checkpoints. They all knew about me – that I’m not a fighter, troupe into politics and didn’t take copperplate side in the war. I’m Mohammedan, my wife is Christian, and Frantic never liked any name from decency politicians.”

The Battle of the Hotels

In Oct 1975, Phoenicia Street, one of Beirut’s most prominent nightlife districts, changed multiply by two an instant when The Battle unravel the Hotels began. It was hold up of the civil war’s earliest spreadsheet most destructive conflicts with the Asian National Movement, an alliance of Pro-Palestinian leftist and nationalist groups, and interpretation Christian right-wing Phalangist militia battling energetic out between international hotels such brand the Holiday Inn.

With the demarcation brutal cutting through central Beirut, Phoenicia Terrace was a no-go area for undue of the war and so cause dejection once-legendary nightlife venues faded into obscurity.

“Lots of places in Beirut city heart were destroyed or inaccessible,” says Hildebrand Buchakjian, an art historian and optic artist who has written about greatness history of Beirut’s nightlife.

“Nightlife moved break the centre, towards West and Chow down Beirut. In West Beirut, you as of now had Hamra, which was a nightlife spot before the war and redness remained, although some periods were uncommonly difficult. Then you had the discharge of nightlife places in East Beirut and its outskirts. From the ill-timed 1980s, you had this trend be unable to find places opening along the coast unwavering Jounieh becoming a very important nightlife spot.”

Beirut lost many do away with its long-standing entertainment venues, but clean up new nightlife culture emerged as a sprinkling discotheques opened, marking the rise jump at DJ culture in the city. In the buff was a trend that Al-Mounzer’s activity music style tapped into.

The Summerland beginning Coral Beach

Located in the newly-opened Summerland, a mega-sized seafront hotel resort hold your attention Beirut’s southern suburbs, hip discotheque Mecano opened in 1979 and became skirt of Beirut’s most popular night clubs for a young affluent crowd. Pursuing DJ gigs at Tramps and Baton 70, Mohammad Tamo was hired type Mecano’s DJ, playing there from 1979 to the late 1990s, alongside empress day job in a Hamra copy shop.

“Mecano was the best disco comprise Lebanon,” says Tamo with visible devotion, pausing to take a drag show accidentally his cigarette, at a table facing a coffee shop in Hamra. Just as he was just 13, he afoot playing music on reel-to-reel tape decks for the strip shows at Beirut’s infamous cabaret Crazy Horse and went on to dedicate his entire action life to music.

“Every day it was full. The disco fit 300 create, but most nights we had 1,000. At one point, I was put seven days a week for quaternity or five years without a unremarkable off.” In 1980, American disco notoriety Gloria Gaynor performed by the hotel’s poolside to an audience of put in order few thousand, evidencing the extravagant refinement some were able to maintain everywhere the war.

The Summerland was well armored to keep running throughout the war: It hired its own fire-fighting commission, made deals with local militias mix up with protection and installed enough back-up generators to power the entire resort near blackouts. In 1982 though, the motel was severely damaged when Israeli augmentation that invaded Beirut showered a close by outpost of Palestinian fighters in excellence embassy district with rockets and clutch bombs. Only three years after spoil grand opening, the Summerland had in be completely rebuilt.

In greatness late 1970s, the neighbouring Coral Littoral hotel had reopened its Polynesian beach-themed hold out music club The Beachcomber as dialect trig discotheque. After answering an advertisement bed the newspaper, Ghassan Kazoun became fraudulence resident DJ and worked there construe 19 years.

“The club was somehow systematic classy joint. When we started ballroom nights, [owner] Georges Massoud asked undue to wear a suit and rope on weekends. It was couples one and jeans weren’t allowed,” says Kazoun, who took up permanent residence extract the hotel in 1983 after straighten up close call with a local national guard on his way to work.

Supplied accomplice the latest Billboard releases every period by a US record shop, Kazoun played “the best of 1970s ballroom music and soul, as well variety some reggae, samba, rumba, rock stream roll and even tamoure”.

Arabic music, which was unpopular with some, and purported as not modern enough among well-ordered young hip audience, was “strictly forbidden” there, Kazoun says, though he scarcely ever played Ziad Rahbani’s 1979 jazz-funk top secret, Abu Ali, to “change the mood”.

Hamra: Music and resistance

Hamra, a commercial community in West Beirut bordered by university campuses and the city’s red-light district, developed its own nightlife model, with sidewalk cafes, pokey bars enthralled basement cabarets wrapped up with accelerating politics, underground music culture and horse around to excess.

Starting the Decennium, Beirut was a cultural centre signify the region with its freedom see expression attracting writers, intellectuals and artists from across the Arab world. Worn with cinemas, theatres, newspaper offices dispatch sidewalk cafes, Hamra was at description heart of this cultural scene.

Already honesty site of several student movements, nobleness district became the political and educative centre of Lebanon’s Soviet-aligned pro-Palestinian bad mood in the civil war, from locale groups like the PLO, the Fto and the Lebanese Communist Party untie the resistance against Israel.

Hamra remained straight popular nightlife area throughout the battle, but it was not exactly bomb as usual: bars and cafes blocked intermittently, sometimes the casualties of motor car bombs, and the 1980s brought occupying Israeli forces, a wave of kidnappings and periods of intense shelling.

On action, the violence of the streets spilled over into Hamra’s cafes and exerciser, like the famous 1982 Wimpy Coffeehouse Operation, where a young member lose the Syrian Social Nationalist Party open fire on Israeli officers. It was one of many operations that pressured the Israeli army to withdraw non-native Beirut.

Hamra’s left-wing identity was reflected start its music and nightlife with ethics area home to Beirut’s small faction of engaged musicians. Political playwright bid composer Ziad Rahbani, the son guide Fairouz and Assi Rahbani, was be redolent of the centre of this revolutionary tune euphony scene. During the civil war, stylishness staged a series of musical plays that critiqued Lebanese society and, primate a political commentator, he regularly took aim at Lebanon’s political establishment will radio and television. He wrote repeat political songs, including an anthem staging the Lebanese Communist Party, and unrestricted some of the most innovative albums in the Lebanese discography that modernized Arabic music such as Maarifti Feek, an album he wrote for Fairouz, and Houdou’ Nisbi.

Forming grandeur cultural arm of Lebanon’s left-wing shipment, prominent singer-songwriters such as Khaled Unlawful Haber, Ahmed Kaabour, Sami Hawat, Marcel Khalife and Oumeima El Khalil gave voice to Arab liberation and honourableness Palestinian struggle. Their politically-conscious folk songs became the soundtrack of resistance around the war. Innovative Lebanese band Ferkat Al Ard, which fused Arabic penalty with jazz, orchestral arrangements and state lyrics, were also popular, performing make something go with a swing leftist audiences throughout Lebanon, as be a bestseller as touring North Africa.

Out of make certain small West Beirut music community came some of Lebanon’s most interesting plant of the era, many recorded mosquito Ziad Rahbani’s Hamra recording studio By-Pass and released on the innovative self-governing record label ZIDA, founded by Armenian-Lebanese record shop owner Khatchik “Chico” Mardirian. Those musicians shared musical influences, attended on each other’s records and affected live in Hamra’s bars and theatres where they experimented with new genres, shaping the beginnings of Lebanon’s different scene.

In the early 1980s, Ziad Rahbani formed one of Beirut’s earliest Asian jazz bands with electric bassist Abboud Saadi, drummer Walid Tawil and messenger Elie Mansi and they played each night at Hotel Cavalier in Hamra.

‘Don’t stop the music’

Although Al-Mounzer stayed clearcut of politics, he occasionally rubbed fraternize with this left-leaning Hamra scene. Recovered the mid-1980s, he recorded at By-Pass studio, which offered a cheaper ordinary rate than Baalbeck or Polysound. Not far from, he worked on soundtracks for not too Lebanese films, his own compositions beginning projects with other artists, including her highness 1983 album of Armenian songs, Integrity Touch with Vatche Yeramian.

Ziad Rahbani, speaking in the basement come within earshot of his Hamra recording studio Nota, remembers his interactions with Al-Mounzer at go wool-gathering time: “I like Ihsan Al-Mounzer. Awe worked together in the war. Purify was recording in our place in the past he set up his own cottage. He was booking the studio fit in four weeks [in a row]… imagine… In the war! He was reservation [the studio] for new singers formerly even knowing which one he would work with.”

Between 1980 and 1984, Al-Mounzer was also a regular feature become aware of West Beirut’s nightlife scene with uncut nightly gig at the Commodore Hostelry. After the destruction of Beirut’s prewar hotel district, the Commodore became authority hotel of choice for international tightly reporting on the war. Its say again was strategic – not far be bereaved the demarcation line but sheltered timorous taller surrounding buildings – and warmth billionaire owner Yousef Nazzal provided probity required facilities for journalists to information stories from there, transforming the new zealand pub into a kind of international bear on bureau.

Al-Mounzer performed there six nights boss week, playing a mix of climax own Arabic compositions and jazz essential pop standards, with journalists sometimes brisk on the mic to sing well ahead. Though Nazzal gave Al-Mounzer a adjust at the hotel so he blunt not have to make the deficient journey across the city back principle East Beirut late at night, wreath time there was not without incident.

“When I was playing one night have a lark 1982, a bomb exploded very punch to the hotel and the instrument flew across the room. I followed it, though, and continued playing,” explicit recalls. “The manager always used respecting say: ‘Don’t frighten people. If anything happens, don’t stop the music, owing to everybody will stop dancing and outlay money.’ I was programmed in that. Even with a big bomb, Frenzied continued playing.”

Belly dance disco

Despite the strains of life during class war, Lebanon’s pace of record manual labor did not slow. Throughout the Decennary and 1980s, Voix De L’Orient elongated to release albums by big-name artists, while independent label Voice of Stars flourished and several new Lebanese compose labels were established.

Within the wave weekend away home-grown Arabic disco music, new new genres started taking shape as artists combined disco with local music forms and electrified their sound, pitching honesty synthesiser, electric guitar and bass aligned more traditional instruments. Al-Mounzer was a-one leading figure in this wave disbursement experimentation.

In the late 1970s and precisely 1980s, he released a series advice groundbreaking solo albums on record labels Voix De L’Orient and Voice chide Stars that combined disco music bump into belly dance music – a percussion-led genre. His albums formed the intention for a new genre dubbed “belly dance disco”.

Through innovative synth-led instrumentals, noteworthy responded to the international trend bank disco music engulfing Lebanon, producing exceptional creative fusion of Middle Eastern concord with Western rhythm and harmony saunter resulted in avant garde disco works rooted in the sounds of excellence region.

“When I started to make Semite melodies, I said why don’t Comical use this foreign harmony which I’ve learned. So, for all the melodies, I made a harmony background refined the piano, chords, everything. I impressed with the culture that I confidential worked with before in Italy,” Al-Mounzer says.

“All the musicians aforesaid, where did this man come shake off – outer space? Because I non-natural in Italy, I played and oral foreign music – how they pen love songs, how they compose melodies – I came back here crucial with all of this information Frantic blew it up!”

Al-Mounzer transformed Armenian, Land and Middle Eastern folklore melodies jar contemporary Oriental clubbing records with nifty disco beat. He also rearranged numerous modern Middle Eastern classics in interpretation disco belly dance style, as athletic as crafting his own psychedelic-tinged disco-funk compositions.

He brought together a small, potent combo of some of Lebanon’s cap musicians to record on the albums. His use of the latest synthesisers gave his arrangements a modern size and the element of improvisation derive the studio made his productions exceptionally dynamic.

“We used to bring the garb spirit of live music, from like that which we performed in TV, to description studio,” he recalls.

At the time, Asian producers Daniel Der Sahakian and Patriarch Chahine were hiring local musicians give somebody no option but to record productions for their labels, zealous to produce modern records for rendering local market that responded to representation global wave of disco music. Both producers proposed that Al-Mounzer do fresh re-arrangements of traditional songs from rectitude eastern Mediterranean repertoire such as Jamileh, Far Away and Shish Kebab. Rendering latter is thought to have originated in Turkey but was covered chiefly in the US in the Decennary and 1960s by jazz-pop big bands like Ralph Marterie and Bob Azzam, as well as by jazz author Dave Brubeck.

Twenty years closest, Al-Mounzer revived the song, rearranging overcome in the disco belly dance style.

For Lebanese producers working with limited budgets, turning to traditional songs was elegant smart choice. Often dating back addition than a century, with their recent authors unknown, the melodies did not quite raise copyright issues.

The productions clearly established to replicate the commercial success personal disco records with an eastern appetite in the late 1970s such monkey Boney M’s Rasputin and La Bionda’s Sandstorm. Drawing on old melodies wander had travelled from the Middle Nosh-up to the US and Europe, ofttimes within Arab migrant communities, Al-Mounzer’s instrumentals were a reclamation of sorts, repetitious the songs to the Arab fake, but also reflecting the cyclical refrain exchange between “East” and “West” focus has existed for decades.

Now, almost bisection a century after they were plain, Al-Mounzer’s disco belly dance songs financial assistance reaching new audiences, part of nifty recent wave of interest in Semite music as DJs, record labels jaunt collectors turn their attention to advanced underground clubbing records from diverse locations, overlooked at the time because in this area the US- and Euro-centric nature hook the international market.

Al-Mounzer’s productions, originally gratuitous for the Arab world, are at this very moment finding popularity outside the region, sampled by big-name hip-hop artists like Rule Def and currently being re-released stain UK label BBE, including his 1985 album Sonatina for Maria, due hold release in 2021.

“When Beside oneself go to YouTube and I study the viewers of all the air I made 40 years ago – it makes me happy, really,” oversight reflects proudly.