Powerful Voices From the Mideast

If the process of getting on an airplane since the tragic events of Sept. 11 has become a more aggravating--if not daunting--ordeal for Americans, think what it must be like for a troupe of Middle Eastern musicians.

“Call it an interesting experience,” says Miles Copeland. As the president of the Ark 21/Mondo Melodia record company, he has been traveling for the last few weeks with Algerian rai singer Khaled and Egyptian shaabi singer Hakim on a tour that began in Boston on Feb. 2 and concludes Saturday and Sunday at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.

In addition to the headliners, the tour includes about 30 musicians from the Middle East as well as various parts of Europe.

“So you can imagine what it looks like when we arrive at the airport,” Copeland says. “At one point, we got onto a shuttle bus and practically filled it up with all our people. The bus driver took one look at us and said the bus was full enough and he wouldn’t take any other passengers. And at practically every checkpoint, our entire party was held up for a ‘random check.’”

Originally scheduled for September, the tour was canceled after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The initial concert was to take place in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 13 as part of a celebratory acknowledgement of America’s rapidly growing interest in Arabic music.

The obvious questions as the rescheduled tour finally arrived in the U.S. were whether that interest had dissipated, and whether the performers might be greeted with suspicion and hostility.

The first answers were provided by the enthusiastic response to an appearance by Khaled at the World Economic Forum in New York City, where he sang John Lennon’s “Imagine” in a duet with Israeli artist Noa.

The reactions of the concert tour audiences were even more encouraging.

“When I looked out at the audience in Washington,” says Khaled, “and I saw so many Americans were there, and saw how they were pleased to see me, pleased to be enjoying the music, it gave me a very optimistic feeling about our music.”

Hakim agrees. “I had heard before we came that there was some treatment of Middle Eastern people that wasn’t very good, but when we got here, I saw the contrary. It has been difficult at times in the airports, but that’s natural. And I must tell you, in all honesty, that if they weren’t that careful, I’d be worried too.”

Hakim’s concern raises an interesting issue regarding the American tendency--exacerbated since Sept. 11--to view Middle Easterners from the same generic perspective.

That’s obviously simplistic, and, in the case of Khaled and Hakim, it overlooks the fact that their art is not exactly high on Islamic fundamentalists’ list of accepted activities.

“It’s more than that,” Hakim says. “Almost all sorts of fundamentalists will say that any music is not good, not approved.” Although they are vastly different in style and manner, both Hakim’s shaabi music and Khaled’s rai draw from the feelings, ideas and passions of the streets, transforming them via metaphor and imagery into immensely popular music.

Both of the principals assert that the Khaled/Hakim concerts are without political implications, and in an overt sense, that’s true. But it’s also apparent that a American tour by major Middle East and North African artists inevitably has repercussions reaching beyond the music itself.

“The unusual thing about 9/11,” says Copeland, who managed the Police for many years, “is that it seems to have created, in some Americans at least, an interest to learn more about Islamic culture. But the other side of that coin is that there seems to be some receptivity in the Middle East and North Africa, as well, to learning more about Americans.”

Khaled, Hakim, with Simon Shaheen, Saturday and Sunday at the Orpheum Theatre, 842 S. Broadway, downtown L.A. 8 p.m. $27 to $152. (213) 239-0939.