On Aug. 21, multilingual singer-songwriter Saint Levant released his long-awaited third full-length album AFANDI. This record majestically blends Levantine melodies and laces them with contemporary Western beats. While I haven’t the faintest idea of what the songs mean, I can confirm the vibes are immaculate, and I have been playing each on loop.
This album is a perfect example of a budding music genre known as Arabizi music that seamlessly integrates Arabic and English lyrics with traditional Middle Eastern instrumentals and Western harmonies. Saint Levant’s newest tracks “MASKARA” and “MASLA7JIYA” have quickly taken social media by storm, with engagement from the third-culture diaspora of Arab youth. While these new tracks include less English than his past works like “KALAMANTINA” and “EXILE,” they are still prime examples of the versatility and originality of Arabizi music.
While the beautifully crafted album is worth a listen or two (or a hundred), it makes me fearful for the state of my upcoming Spotify Wrapped. I fear I have spiralled into a bottomless rabbit hole of exploring other up-and-coming Arabizi artists. I very quickly uncovered the hybrid traditionalist and R&B Egyptian pop songs by Bayou. He is a truly underrated musician — his best multilingual songs like “Maghreb” and “Neshar Belel” hit just under 7 million streams on Spotify. Truthfully, half of those streams were likely from me this past week.
While incessantly scrolling through Spotify, I rediscovered Elyanna long after her historic performance at Coachella 2023. She became the first performer to sing exclusively in Arabic at this world-renowned concert, setting a new precedent and introducing Arabizi music to the world. In fact, Saint Levant and Bayou performed at Coachella 2024, following in Elyanna’s footsteps.
Her experimental yet enchanting Latin-Arab pop tunes seamlessly blend her unique heritage, elevating their superlative histories to the mainstream. While eclectically illustrating her story through music, she concurrently secures our attention with her formidable yet tranquil voice and awe-inspiring hits, like “Sokkar” and “Ganeni.”
And as I kept doomscrolling and relentlessly adding songs to my playlist, I began to wonder how music — particularly Arabizi music — that I couldn’t relate to somehow felt simultaneously painfully and serenely familiar. So I began pondering ways to justify my binge-listening of this trending musical category (and so you too can guiltlessly blast music in your oversized headphones).
My culturally ambiguous obsession with Saint Levant, Bayou and Elyanna transcends linguistic limitations. These modern Arab artists project an unapologetic pop and R&B genre that doesn't inordinately borrow from Western trends. Instead, they authentically embrace their cultural roots while effortlessly weaving English or French verses and harmonies into their musical masterpieces that would sell millions of records alone.
Each of their songs illustrates a cultural mosaic, carefully coloring outside the lines to produce groundbreaking masterpieces. Undoubtedly, their music defies cultural boundaries and embraces the broader dark historical contexts while also instilling a sense of unity through the power of music.
By giving young multiracial and immigrant Arabs a glimpse into their roots, Arabizi artists simultaneously introduce the rest of the world to their region’s distinct melodic acoustics while emphasizing the universality of human experiences through cadence. In fact, the vulnerable embrace of their conflicting cultural identities resonates with a global audience, no matter their heritage. Listening to artists lyrically and melodically honor their homelands offers an unfeigned experience for foreign audiences, one that surely cannot get lost in translation.
In a sense, not only are we respecting other cultures by immersing ourselves in their most vulnerable innovation, but we are also strengthening our own emotional intelligence. Our ineloquence forces us to feel changes in pitch and euphonies, rather than assigning unwarranted meaning to lyrics. The aural purity of these tracks allows us to listen passively and truly feel the phonetic textures and memorable acoustics, rather than intellectualize the lyrics and symbolically analyze the track verse-by-verse.
Beneath a media landscape brimming with atrocities against Middle Easterners, you can unveil the hidden gems of these often-silenced hyphenated identities through their influential music. As prelim season is in full swing, I’d advise taking a much-needed study break to revamp your playlist from strictly bland lofi beats and redundant rap songs to include Arabizi music.
Ava Tafreshi is a member of the Class of 2028 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is a contributor for the Arts & Culture department and can be reached at ant63@cornell.edu.
