El Iqaa

Let's see if we can get this music blog started up again. I hope so!

Over the last couple months or so I haven't really discovered any new artists to listen to. Well I might have found a new band just this past Friday, but they haven't released an album yet, so I'll put them on hold for now.

So I'm gonna go back to my collection. Allow me to introduce to you, if you haven't heard of him already, to El Iqaa, aka as Olivetones the visual artist, aka Joe Namy, a Lebanese-American who is an artist in many forms. He is part of Other: Arab Artists Collective.

I discovered his recordings, called "Detroit Beirut" around 2007/2008 and was re-listening to them yesterday. He has quite a few gems - many of which might be good for a film, hmm...

You can actually download the whole album right here, give it a listen. My faves are 'July War', 'While They Were Sleeping', 'Zeina', 'Al Arabiya', 'Olds 98', and 'Floating On a Nod' - there are about 28 tracks!

Joe also has a radio show called Electric Kahraba on WNYC, and I definitely need to go back to listening to it.