What's So Funny About Ahmed Adaweya?

Cover image not mine; I pulled this from Discogs Ahmed Adaweya scores another monster hit in 1973 with "Salamitha Oum Hassan," or "Get Well, Mother of Hassan," about a woman who undergoes an unsuccessful zar. A zar ceremony is a form of de-spiriting someone possessed by jinn, or as Nicholas Mangialardi explains in this Smithsonian Folklife article : When jinn inhabit people, they’re believed to remain with the hosts forever, inducing erratic behavior every few months or years. A zar exorcism is then held to treat the individual, and only by playing specific drum patterns or khuyut (literally “threads”) can the jinn be called forth and appeased. In the song, Ahmed exhorts: "Get it together, Mother of Hassan, wake up ... the zar isn't working out." ( Read two English translations of the lyrics here .) The song is composed by accordion player and composer Farouk Salama with lyrics by Hassan Abu Itma, leading one to wonder just how self-referential these l...

Is this nervous laughter or throat-clearing in the face of overwhelming beauty? Existential laughter in the face of, well, everything? Could it possibly be so vulgar as to be suggestive of orgasmic sounds? A proper timeline for Ahmed Adaweya's three 1973 singles for Sout El Hob has not been established. Discogs lists "Aha Ahu" after "El Sah El Dah Embo" and because there is no iron-clad evidence supporting a provable timeline, I've decided to follow the website's lead. For the title track, newcomer Mohamad al-Masri supplies both lyrics and music. al-Masri doesn't seem to exist before this record; however, in 1974 he'll team up with Ahmed again, providing lyrics and music for the smash hit "Habah Fok We Habah Taht." He also creates the music for Samir Koukou's infectious "I'm Koukou."  ( Listen to Samir Koukou's "Ana Koukou" ) al-Masri then seems to drop off the map for over a decade, reemerging with credi...