Arab music comes to America

When Raymond Rashid says his company is one of the oldest and largest wholesalers of Arab music in the world, it's easy to believe him. Throaty, melancholy classics like Umm Kulthum jostle for space on his shelves next to modern-day raï masters like Khaled. Rashid's shop feels like a Middle Eastern music paradise - until you see the yellow New York taxis drive past the window. Then you remember that this is not Beirut or Baghdad - it's Brooklyn.

'Arab music is a very competitive business in America these days,' said Raymond, who owns and manages Rashid's from a building just off Brooklyn's famous Arab drag on Atlantic Avenue, across the East River from Manhattan. 'There are now five Internet wholesalers for the United States alone. But we're the oldest surviving Arab music company in the world and we're still going strong.'

Though the former claim may be exaggerated, Rashid's is certainly more than just another ethnic record shop in New York. From being the first record distributor for legendary 1940s Egyptian artists like Farid Al-Atriche to being the world's first Arab music website in 1995, the company has played a significant role in the history of the Arab music industry. And by American standards, the family-run firm's story starts way back: not with the sale of a record, but with the sale of a car.

In 1938 Raymond's father, Albert - a Greek Orthodox Christian from south Lebanon - had recently graduated from the University of Detroit. One day Albert received a telephone call from Cairo. 'It was people he knew there, who told him the Egyptian composer Mohamed Abdul Wahab wanted a new car,' said Raymond.
Albert, a shrewd businessman, immediately used all his available funds to buy a four-door Ford. He then stuffed it full of spare tires - 'He knew there'd be no spare parts available for it in Egypt,' said Raymond - and drove it up the gangplank of the first available ship from New York to Beirut.

Albert drove the last stretch from Beirut to Cairo himself. When he got there, he presented the car to Mohamed Abdel Wahab, who had just completed a musical movie, The White Rose, a landmark in Arab cinema. 'Abdel Wahab was so glad to get the car, he turned to my father and told him to be his agent in the United States,' said Raymond. In the 1930s, when Arab pop music was mostly recorded in Europe, a foray into the American market was a major joint business venture. Albert returned to Detroit, where he started Rashid Music Sales Co. Inc.

Immigrants. Albert successfully showed The White Rose, and other films sent over by Mohamed Abdel Wahab's publisher, the Baidaphone Record Company of Cairo. Large numbers of Syrian and Lebanese workers in major cities in the United States - Detroit, New York - turned up to the cinema halls and bought records from Albert by mail order.

'My father was a pioneer in the mail-order business,' said Raymond. He himself has continued with mail order in the digital age, founding the first Arab music net venture, www.rashid.com, in October 1995. Albert, who died in 1990, also opened two book and record stores in New York - in Manhattan and Brooklyn - and started Orient Records, a label that catered to the growing demand for US-produced Arab instrumental music.

Through its six decades of trading in Brooklyn, Rashid's has kept close links to the stars of the Arab world. The shop's walls are plastered with pictures from Raymond's business trips to Cairo and Beirut, sharing dinner and drinks with iconic stars of the past two decades. He grins next to Mohamed Mounir, the legendary Nubian jazz star -'You can't tell, but that was four AM, ' Raymond fondly recalls. He shares a drink with Egyptian comedian Hasan Al-Imam -'A funny, funny guy,' says Raymond.
But Raymond said that today, New York's Arab consumers have shifted from Egyptian pop (Amr Diab, it seems, is out of fashion) to more sophisticated Lebanese starlets (Najwa Kurum, he says, is all the rage these days).

Around 10 percent of sales are done online. 'Rashid.com was started in October 1995,' explains Raymond. 'In fact, we didn't come up with the idea ourselves. America Online was on the lookout for potential web businesses and they approached my brother with the idea.' AOL helped design the site's web interface. Later, Rashid's employed their own web master, and AOL simply hosted the site.

The web side of the business is being seen as a way to weather the current economic storm that is gripping America. 'September 11th did create some interest in Arab music, as people wanted to get to know this culture,' Raymond said. 'But it wasn't enough to save us.' Rashid's, which shifted over 500,000 items a year during the 1990s, now sells just 100,000. 'We haven't shown any profit so far this year,' laments Raymond.

Another factor making business tough these days is the saturation of the Arab music market in the United States. 'It seems everybody with a grocery store wants to start a record company, everybody with a basement wants to start a web operation,' complained Raymond. Still, Rashid's makes 25 percent profit on each item sold - enough to cover its $2,100 running costs and $4,100 rent.

Raymond, who did not marry an Arab girl, was in some ways an unlikely successor to his father's Arab music crown. He described his early years in Detroit, in a mainly Iraqi neighborhood, as tough. 'It was the kind of neighborhood where when you see a stop sign or a red light, you drive on,' he says.

When the family moved to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, things became easier, 'though there was still a lot of joking about Arabs - jokes about camel jockeys and the like. But I think now people see us as Americans, not as Arabs, and talk to us that way. The Lebanese have been here a very long time and are seen as separate from the new arrivals from other Arab countries.'
Crescendo.

Raymond grew up with a passion for Arab melodies. He sprang up from his desk during the interview and picked up an Arab tabla (drum) and started beating out an attractive rhythm as he spoke. Within a few minutes he had become absorbed, his frenetic drumming reaching a crescendo: Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. Tat-Tat-Tat.
'I've played with every major dancer in this country,' said Raymond nostalgically over the noise of his own drumming.

His fondest memory is of playing the darabonka - a specific type of tabla - alongside Ibrahim Farah in New York's Lincoln Center in 1975. The next year, he played with Anahid Sofian in New York Town Hall. 'And I played with Simone Shahine several times in the 1980s,' he said. 'I don't play much now, but those were great days.'

Rashid's Music Sales Co. Inc. has supplied a changing Arab-American community with music for three generations, but it is not clear where the future will lead the business. Older Arab families like the Rashids are slowly being absorbed into the fabric of America. Raymond himself is happily married to an Irish Catholic from Brooklyn.

Marrying outside the Arab community was never an issue, he says. 'It turns out her values are more old-fashioned Lebanese than my parents ever expected,' says Raymond. 'She calls my mother every day - that's more than I do.'

But Raymond thinks it's unlikely that their sons, Michael, 14, and Raymond, 17, will take on the family business. Nor is today's Arab community the same one Raymond fondly remembers. 'The community's become more Arab and less American,' Raymond said. 'People from all over have come in, and things have become more Islamic.'

But it's not long before his tabla is in his hands once again, and he's up and dancing around the store: Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. Tat-Tat-Tat. 'I heard Arab music everywhere when I was a kid,' he shouted. 'By the time I was 18, I was hooked. And I still am.'