What are young people listening to today? Twelve-year-old Omar Mohamed gives his recommendations Music is a big thing in my life and in that of my friends. I am 12 years old, and most of my friends spend a lot of time downloading songs from the Internet and hunting for new labels. Our mobile phones are packed with songs. We compare notes all the time, and when we get our hands on new releases, we pool our resources, sending the best songs from one telephone to the next. It's not only the music that interests us. It's something else, something that adults refer to as "lifestyle". A lot of my friends imitate the dress and hair fashions of the leading pop stars. Last year, the fashion among the older group at school was to crop their hair very short and grow a short beard, imitating Tamer Hosni's look on the album Haeish Hayati. Granted, Hosni himself used to imitate Michael Jackson in outfits and mannerisms on stage. Still, he is widely seen as being a very hip artist. One band that is very popular among my friends is Egy-Rap School. This band hasn't released any CDs, but it has performed in public and its music is spreading like wildfire from one group of music lovers to another through the Internet and via Bluetooth. We're often told that the language of our favourite songs is improper or even vulgar. Unless I am missing something, I believe that's what the attraction is. What's vulgar for older people can be cool for us. Even the use of "improper" language is ok when all you want is to be different. Like teenagers around the world, we can be rebellious too. Some of my friends are biased towards local singers like Ahmed Mekki, while others go for foreign singers, such as 50 Cent, whose recent concert in Cairo was a very big hit. The owner of a music shop I know tells me that CD sales are doing well despite competition from the Internet. Best-selling local singers include Tamer Hosni, Amr Diab and Mohamed Fouad. The album Recovery by Eminem has done well in Cairo, competing with local releases such as Ekhtart Sahh (You've Made the Right Choice) by Tamer Hosni, Aslaha Be Tefreq (It Makes a Difference) by Amr Diab and Bein Eideki (At your Service) by Mohamed Fouad. Also popular among my age group are Haga Mesh Tabyeia (Something Abnormal) by Mohamed Hamaqi, Elli Mennak Mennak (You've Brought it on Yourself) by Mohamed Saad, and Al-Helm (The Dream) by Ahmed Mekki and Donia Samir Ghanem. Michael Jackson is still a very big hit, even more so after his recent death. Whitney Houston, Madonna, George Michael and Britney Spears are also hip. Rap is getting bigger all the time. Tareq Ezzat, who works in the music industry, tells me that rap was first created by black artists in America during the 1970s. It was a rebellious form of music, but soon it spread beyond America's borders. Some songs have a tendency to make it big fast. One such song is Wavin' Flag by Somali-Canadian singer-songwriter K'naan. This was the official song for the 2010 World Cup, and it has since been released in many languages and made it to number one in Germany, Switzerland and Australia. Nancy Agram has recorded an Arabic version of the song with K'naan. This version, Shakira' Waka Waka, is much loved among my friends. We know the words by heart. We have to. Otherwise we wouldn't be cool.
