Assi El-Hillani and the Era of Bulk Song Production in Arab Music Industry

The Lebanese singer Assi El-Hillani exhausts himself in recording and issuing songs in bulk, with the help of a group of his composer friends, as a constant attempt to present what he sees as new, but all this new is just a consumption of albums that exceed the number of their ten songs.

A week ago, Al-Hillani and Rotana Company published a group of music clips and a video clip for the song “You Know What I Love You”, composed by Adel Al-Iraqi. The latter and Al-Halani presented a duet titled “Wink Habibi” in 2013, which was a success. This cooperation is repeated today in a song of an Iraqi character, which receives a good viewership on YouTube, after Al-Hellani filmed it in agreement with the young director, Serge Majdalani.

In an interview with director Majdalani, he said that Al-Hellani admired the idea of ​​the clip, which continued to be prepared for two months, and said that he was given the green light to implement the idea that envisioned the owner of “Ya Mayma” as a king, so that the result appeared different from reality and the song together. Scenes that take us back to the era of the beginnings of the clip industry in the Arab world, prompting the director to limit filming to one location, and to seek the help of a team that is clearly a beginner in implementing such projects in terms of clothes or dances, and to complete the clip with images and scenes similar to a cartoon series intended for children presented in the eighties of the last century. , and the stories of Sinbad and Aladdin, all the way to the sleeping princess, who appears at the end of the clip, along with “The Handmaid”, to present herself as a bride to the expected lover.

An inexpensive clip, and it is certain that it was produced by Al-Hellani himself, and not by the Wartana company, which distributes the lyrical works without contributing and supervising their production, as was the case years ago, and this is something that has become a burden on the artist in the first place, and makes him captive to his tendencies and plans and impose them on the producing company. Which turned into a marketing space, in pursuit of the financial return generated by platforms and social media.

Assi El-Hillani tries to confront his artistic surroundings and stay on firm ground, and despite the “demand” for Al-Hellani at concerts, festivals, and weddings, he is always in a hurry to maintain a good level in his work, and thus this is clearly reflected in the number and spread of these songs, and the cost of their production, To enter, in one way or another, the era of consumption that Arab art in general suffers from, in front of the alternative media’s control of this group of singers, including Al-Hellani himself, and an attempt to seduce them by deluding them that what they are doing is the right thing, and keeping them within the circle of light, fame and success that they reaped in the beginnings.

It is not possible to acknowledge the success or failure of Al-Hillani’s new album, waiting for the songs to achieve popularity on alternative sites at first, and in the concerts that the Lebanese singer is scheduled to perform during the upcoming summer period. However, this does not excuse Al-Hellani from repositioning him, and not rushing with the aim of issuing good songs, especially since he has dozens of successful works in his credit, but some of them remained just a “complete number” in the album.