Category: Music

This is a pretty cool track and video by Altersal, the lead singer of my favorite local band Galaxy Juice. It’s his first single from his solo debut album “Wifi Dreams” which comes out early next year. [YouTube]

Last week I passed by the vintage radios shop Moqtanayaty and ended up picking up a 1960’s Dynatron Mazurka record player for myself. I didn’t have any music records, nor did the store so I needed to buy some and didn’t want to resort to ordering them online since they would have taken at least two weeks to arrive. Instead, I decided I’d over to the antique shops basement in Salmiya to check and see if they had any for sale there.

The first shop I went into had a large pile of records piled up in the corner of the shop. So I sat down on the floor and started going through them one by one. Anything that was remotely interesting I put on the side. By the time I was done I had found around 14 potential records which I ended up reducing down to 10. The 10 records I decided to go with were actually pretty great and included the likes of Simon & Garfunkel, Frank Sinatra, Cat Stevens, Marvin Gaye, Andy Williams, Nat King Cole, Fats Domino and more. The buying process though wasn’t so easy. The shop was originally closed (it’s always closed whenever I visit) but the basement janitor has the key. So I had him open up the shop for me and after I chose the records I wanted, he had to take pictures of each one and send them to the owner. Originally I was quoted KD30 for the 10 records but managed to haggle the price down to KD25 which is pretty reasonable considering the stuff I got.

There are a couple of other shops that had records for sale as well but I wasn’t in the mood to go through their piles so there could be more treasures waiting to be found. So if you’re looking for records, I’d head over to the basement as soon as possible before anybody else does (including me). For directions and more information on the basement, check out my previous post [Here]

Update: Kuwait now has a local online record store! vinyldestination.com

Yesterday local musician Ghaneema released a music video for her track “You Got Me” from her EP “Bad Habits”.

It’s her first music video ever and you can check it out above or on [YouTube]

Quick reminder, if you want tickets to the Sting concert, they’ll be going back on sale today at 1PM. Here is the [Link]

Goodluck!

Update: Tickets went on sale at 1PM with no drama. The website is functioning fine and 20 minutes after launch and there are still a ton of seats available.

The popular musician Sting is coming next month to perform in Kuwait. He will be performing at JACC over a period of two days. As if this post tickets are yet to go on sale, according to their website they’ll be on sale on Thursday, November 23rd (tomorrow) at 1PM.

I’d expect the tickets to sell out fast so if you’re interested in getting tickets, you should probably do so as soon as they go on sale. For more information, click [Here]

Stamp the Wax, a popular music blog in London asked local musician Zahed Sultan to do a city guide of Kuwait along with a 1hr mix of music from traditional/emerging local artists. It’s a series they do and you can check out the Kuwait music mix along with the city guide on their website [Here]

This is super weird. No idea how/why/what but somehow, for some really strange random reason, the Kuwait City skyline makes the appearance at the end of a pretty gory and gruesome music video for the heavy metal band ANTHRAX. That has to be one of the most random, weirdest and coolest things to ever happen to the Kuwait City skyline. Fast forward till minute 7:30 if you want to see Kuwait but it’s a lot more fun and bizarre if you watch the whole video up till that point.

Thanks Red!

Timmycatdog (Taymour Khajah) has a new music video out for his track “Flower Power”. The video also features appearances by Mosab, The Goddess Dalal and Turk Himself. If you like the track you can follow Taymour on instagram @timmycatdog

“Way Too On” is a new music video by Kuwaiti rapper Element that was released a few days ago. If you like his music make sure to check out his website aboveallelements.com for more tracks and information.

Galaxy Juice are one of my favorite local bands and they just released a music video yesterday for their new single ‘Awaken The Sunshine’. It’s a pretty nice video and the track is really great so check it out.

If you like their music follow them on [Instagram] [Twitter] or [Facebook]

Over the weekend I was told that preliminary approval from the Ministry to bring Adele to Kuwait was given. If everything works out she’ll be performing at the Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre which has recently hosted other big name musicians like Yanni and Googoosh. Although, bringing Adele would be on a completely different level.

I wasn’t given any dates on when this might happen, but based on her schedule, it would be safe to assume that if it will happen, it would be sometime in the second half of this year.

Red Bull Music Academy is bringing the acclaimed audiovisual artist Ah! Kosmos for a night of house and electronic music that will be held on the rooftop of Radisson Blu this coming Friday night. Local artists Boom Beats and Essa Hashemi will also be performing that night.

Tickets to the event are KD10 each but I’ve teamed up with Red Bull to giveaway two tickets to my readers. All you need to do to enter the draw is leave a comment below mentioning which energy drink is hosting the event. I will stop accepting entries in the comments section tomorrow at noon and then randomly choose one winner and notify them via email.

For more information on the event as well as the artists, click [Here]

Rules: Only one entry per person and please make sure you use a working email since the winner will be contacted by email. If winner doesn’t respond, another winner will be randomly chosen.

Update: Post closed for comments and using random.org I drew a number which was 42. The winner of the two tickets is “AP” and I just sent them an email. In case he doesn’t get back to me another number will be drawn.

Yanni will be performing at JACC in around 10 days time and tickets finally went on sale this weekend and sold out right away. That obviously upset a lot of people who had been hoping to buy a ticket. Tickets selling out at events is a common issue, majority of the popular shows I’ve attended like a Bob Dylan concert or a Connor McGregor fight for example, I’ve had to buy tickets on the second hand market and at ridiculous prices. In the States and the UK I tend to use websites like StubHub to buy sold out tickets, sometimes I buy them off strangers at forums as well. Where would one look for tickets in Kuwait? Not that I am interested in Yanni but this is kind of a new situation here and I’m curious to know where people are going to sell or buy tickets. 4Sale maybe?

Yusuf Al-Jaddah, a sowt singer I encountered during a performance in a private suite at the Jumeirah five-star hotel in Kuwait City in May 2014, pointed out the huge changes that have occurred in the background, even as the tradition of communal performance has persisted:

“Years back I used to sing exactly at this spot with musicians from Bahrain. We were sitting in the sand and this hotel was not even built.”

Kuwait was musically quite a revelation to me. Despite rapid modernizations across the Gulf, which sees traditional performances occurring nowadays in hotels as well as diwānīyahs, traditional music is still performed, at least in private gatherings, on a weekly basis. Although at first the apparent absence of any older buildings in the city centre would imply complete modernisation of the culture, it is clear that musical culture is still very vibrant.

A friend sent me a link to an article from the Qatar Digital Library on traditional music in Kuwait. Honestly, only reason I’m sharing it is because I loved the first song on the playlist called “كاسين ويسكي” or two glasses of whisky in English. The song was written before the alcohol ban in Kuwait and was composed and sang by Kuwaiti musician Abdullah Al-Fadala in Bahrain in the 1950s. You can check out the article [Here] and listen to the whisky song as well as other songs they’ve selected below.

By the way, the Qatar Digital Archive is kinda similar to something I was proposing back in January that we need in Kuwait like urgently. I mean Qatar have digitized and archived Kuwaiti history while we haven’t even done that for ourselves yet alone for our neighboring countries.

Kuwaiti rapper Element released a new album on the Liberation Day of Kuwait thats composed of 11 tracks and a music video. The track above is #ArabGang and if you like it you should check out the rest of his album which is available on [iTunes] [Apple Music] [Spotify] and [Google Play]

Also make sure you check out his instagram @aboveallelements