Mohammed Assaf performs in a rehearsal for Arab Idol
GAZA CITY: Eyes glued to big screens in cafes and restaurants across Gaza and the West Bank, adoring fans cheer on Mohammed Assaf as he sings his way closer to winning this year’s Arab Idol song contest. Since March, the handsome, immaculately dressed 22-year-old Gazan’s powerful voice has propelled him every weekend to the ranks of only seven remaining singers in a Beirut-based competition that started out with 27.
In Gaza City and Ramallah alike, fans carry banners that urge viewers to text “number 3” to the Arab Idol hotline on their mobile phones, giving Assaf a vote. As with Pop Idol, the Western equivalent on which it is modelled, Arab Idol eliminates each week the singer with the fewest votes. Assad made it through again on Saturday night.
“He deserves to win,” said Maya, a 19-year-old supporter who watched the show at a cafe in Gaza, smoking a shisha (water pipe) and drinking coffee.
“His voice is great and his presence even better; there’s none like him!”
“Assaf is competing to raise the profile of Palestine and Gaza. I support him and am proud he’s from here,” she added, smiling.
Assaf, introduced on the programme as representing Palestine, has featured prominently in the Israeli media and captured not only the popular imagination, but also that of prominent West Bank politicians.
He has received a personal telephone call from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, according to news agency WAFA, and has been endorsed on the Facebook page of caretaker premier Salam Fayyad.
Assaf began his musical career singing Palestinian nationalist songs in his hometown of Khan Yunis and aired on Palestinian TV, and his choices of song on Arab Idol retain a political tinge. “Palestine, the north and south, two brothers in an Arab world,” he sang on a recent instalment of the show, as the screaming studio audience held aloft traditional Palestinian headscarves, and a panel of judges that included Arab pop personalities clapped along.
AFP
