On this month’s episode of Discoteca we wanted to present a project we spent some time on earlier in the year. Sarena, a friend and member of my small circle of Arab community in LA reached out for suggestions on how she could digitize some records she found in her dad’s possession in Jordan. This was over a year ago and it feels wonderful to have been able to digitize these artifacts and share them here.

Sarena kindly offered a reflection to accommodate the broadcast:

It was the end of 2019, right before the pandemic, and my dad and I were exploring places from my carefully researched list of hidden gems in Jordan. We wound up in Madaba – a town known to Christians globally by its symbol, the Tree of Life – at a small bookstore that had garnered a lot of “expat” attention. There was a Fairuz record on sale for 75 JD – about $105. My dad could not believe it. He said he had hundreds of records like that from his youth and never thought they would become so valuable. For reference, the average monthly salary in Jordan is about 700 JD so it was priced for tourists. I asked him where there would be any remaining records from his collection and for the week we would ask my aunts and uncles where the records could be now with no end.

A few years later, my dad, my aunt Noha, and myself were sitting around the glare of the TV in the dark living room when he remembered some of the records had been found and he had held onto them for me. As I shuffled through them, I would randomly lift up a record and it was like the two of them were the record players the way they would start singing without needing to even see the text. They went back and forth about which record was whose favorite and relived occasions when each was played. The energy in the room was unlike anything I’ve experienced before. Memories of a family of ten wild siblings in a two bedroom home nestled into a village known for its closeness – what must have felt like a past life now – were being brought back to life.

I wish I could have understood more. Not being able to carry the stories of my family because I am not fluent in Arabic shatters me. However, receiving the music that played in the background of my family’s life feels like the greatest synchronicity. To me, music surpasses the realm of language. When I started looking for these records, it was in the hopes that I would own something culturally valuable. Something physical that undeniably connected me to my Arabness and would get me into the cool kids club. In the process of listening to the records and having conversation with Karim, I have had the opportunity to think about what this collection truly means for me, especially in a digital archive. I feel it’s an opportunity for connection and longevity. It’s a thread that I am now able to weave into my own life – through ritual, through sharing, through car speakers blasting down Sunset. The significance of this collection lives in how I incorporate this music into the background of the memories I go on to make. That is, after all, what lives on for my father and his siblings. Already, I am planning to play some of these tracks at my brother’s wedding in October. Culture does not exist in an item, no matter how rare or buried and found – culture is about how many stories can be tied to a common source. So please, play these tracks in the background of your life and welcome to the family.

Ahlan wa Sehlan.

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