Music
There has never been a greater time to take up belly dancing as the music which is now being released in the East, West and Middle, will make even the most "stay in your chair" die hard have to get up and wiggle those hips.
There are now hundreds of restaurants, clubs and bars popping up all over London as well as Spain, France and no doubt all over the world. They all have one thing in common and that is a Middle Eastern, North African feel. And what's causing this huge surge in popularity - of course it can only be the music.
Basically, they're mixing the traditional sounds of the East with the heady dance tunes of the west and the result is just faaaaantastic. Naturally, young people are listening to and buying this music and therefore the new Arabic style restaurants and bars are cool, young (and not so young) and fantastically trendy. Everyone wants to belly dance. What's so great about this music and these new style places to eat, drink and dance is that the music still appeals to the older generations brought up on purely traditional sounds and so it is popular with everyone.
"Shakira" now a hugely successful singer mixes Latin, Arabic amongst some of her sounds, she loves belly dancing and is extremely popular all over the world and now a mega success.
"Tarkan" what can I say about Tarkan, His own style of Turkish and pop is unmistakeable. I simply never get tired of listening to and dancing to his songs. Who can forget his wonderfully catchy tune "Shimarik" (kiss kiss song) which was later covered by Holly Vallance and reached number 1 in the UK charts. Original is better, though!
Alabina, featuring the sexy Ishtar and the latin group Los Ninos de Sera. They are a French based group mixing Middle Eastern, Arabic, French, Hebrew and Spanish gypsy music. Everyone loves this music and playing this music is a great way of introducing Westerners to Middle East sounds.
Indian and Arabic mixes another fantastic combination, just can't get enough of this.
"Oom Kharsoom" You may wish to look at 'What's involved in a show in the Middle East' to hear more about Oom Kharsoom)
Oom Kharsoom one of the most well loved respected classical singers Egypt has ever known. Surely they wouldn't dare. Yes they did, they mixed modern dance music with one of her most powerful and loved songs and its quite simply brilliant. I have choreographed this piece for my students in class and they simply love it. What would Oom Kharsoom say. Oh I think she'd approve. Hope so!
It is perfectly ok to use modern pop/Arabic music when performing. I tend to use more pop/Arabic when dancing for western audiences or when I am first introducing students to the music.
However, some of my all time favourites will always include songs from Abdel Halim Hafiz. I simply never get bored of dancing to Sowah, Gan el howa, Zay el howa.
Nowadays, I use a fair bit of Nany Ajram music in my classes and, of course, Amr Diab is as popular as ever. Warda is also one of my favourites and never dates and one of my latest additions is Amr Mostafa. Of course, I still play and dance to George Wassoof, another one of my all time favourites. There are just way too many to mention but a good chunk of modern and classical is sure to keep everyone happy.