Time to revive Arab music

Singer hopes for a change with new Islamic album Cairo - Mahmoud el-Refaei In an interview with Arabstoday, Egyptian singer Mostafa Kamar disclosed that the release of his new album Mawla Subhanak (Praise You, Lord) is to help boost the Arab music market. The latest album, which is a compilation of Islamic songs and hymns, happened by chance, Mostafa adds, but could be the motivation the industry needs, he believes. "I'd never considered releasing a full religious album. Usually we would produce a stand-alone song or hymn for a specific occasion every now and then," the singer explains. "Years later, I found that I had a massive store of hymns and producer Mohsen Gaber, who owns the label Alam el-Fann, approached me about releasing a religious album combining some of these hymns with new ones." Kamar added: "We released the album to give the music market a bit of a shake-up. Technology has ruined the industry since the turn of the 21st century, but there would still be over 500 releases every year. However, two years ago, all labels across the Arab world went into a kind of stagnation. I thus hope this new album will provoke all singers to start releasing their own albums so things can return to normal." Kamar rejected description of his latest film, Gowa el-leaba (In the Game), as a flop: "The film was not a flop, it did well at the box office. I think it was a good movie, and one of my favourite films that I've done in my 15-year career in front of the camera, but there were other factors that had an impact on the box office." Rival producers, Kamar said, "viciously fought the film" which co-starred Riham Abdel Ghafour and Mohammed Lotfi. He added: "It's enough that people from rival companies would stand in the cinemas to attract the audience to their films and tell them that Kamar's movie was pulled from the cinemas because of a fault in the copy." The singer concluded: "An artist has to deal with success and failure equally well and not be too thrilled with success or miserable with failure. An artist has to look into why he won or lost so he can plan his future moves. This is the lesson I learned from my last film."