Blogs & Ecology

Image source: Campus Consciousness Tour

The King of Pop Michael Jackson has done it again and stories about his alleged conversion to Islam are keeping blogs in the Middle East abuzz with snark comments. Is Jackson's conversion a part of an American conspiracy “to destroy Islam from within,” is it a media stunt or has he finally found his true calling?

The Skeptic from Egypt remarks:

Shaaban Abdel Rehim, the illiterate Egyptian singer whose songs are mainly about political and social issues, has released a new song about the new American President-Elect Barack Obama.

The Rag Blog quoted Dr Hasan Qayed al Subaihi, an assistant professor of Mass Communication at the UAE University, saying:

Unzipped comments on this year's junior Eurovision international music competition and says that Georgia's win was well deserved. The blog notes that Russia gave full points to the country it was recently at war with, but also expresses disappointment with Armenia's entry.

Popular Nepalese music band Nepathaya has a blog where an interview with its soloist Amrit Gurung was published.

Forget politics, Obama or the economic crisis. The new buzz in the Syrian blogosphere is about love.

Mariyah, a Syrian blogger from Damascus, has been playing with the hearts of her readers with the most delicate series of posts about the story of Ghassan and Alexandra.

It all starts on one cold evening in the winter of 1955 in Stuttgart, Germany:

Kenji Williams is in Tokyo this week with his amazing Bella Gaia presentation. This video is from the digital planetarium at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, filmed using HD cameras and fisheye lenses. Kenji Williams on the violin with KaChun Yu running the visualizations. Because we all need a reminder of just how beautiful our planet really is....

As part of her continuing updates on life in the Armenian capital, local blogger La Vida - los WatcheRos includes accounts of two concerts by foreign musicians she saw perform in Yerevan this week. Although both started an hour later than scheduled, the blog says that Italian musician Zucchero was the best and enjoyed by all while Planet X played to an almost empty hall and was terrible. Photographs accompany both posts.

Photo via Waponi @ flickr

Clueless came across Rim Banna's work recently and she was moved beyond the words on her blog:

I am glad that I got introduced to that great voice .. I am grateful to that friend who gave me the chance to listen to those great lyrics composed and arranged in so beautiful tunes.

Rim Banna; I only got to know about her weeks back when I knew about her performing for first time here in Cairo. I marked my calendar and wanted to make sure I reserve my seat there!

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Source: Global Voices Online

Steve from the Fool's Mountain introduced a number of indie music bands in China.

The View from Fez clues us in to Morocco's Festival de l'Etrange (Festival of the Strange), happening in Essaouira in a few weeks.

Kenyan reggae video for Obama: “Obama Be Thy Name.”

Foreign Policy Association's Russia blog pays tribute to Muslim Magomayev, “the original Soviet mega-star” who “was many things: a quintessential dandy who also happened to be a People’s Artist of the USSR; a trained opera singer with a Sinatra’s showman touch; a brilliant scion of an family of artists and musicians in an ardently ‘class-less’ society; a globe trotting cosmopolitan performing at La Scala and to sell out crowds at the Paris Olympia whilst remaining a steadfast Soviet patriot who always came back; a consumate gentleman and a sex symbol in the officially sex-less Soviet Union; a ‘national treasure’ moving in the poshest echelons o

Credit: Bonnaroo Music Festival

Bonnaroo Music and Art festival has been given the “Outstanding Greener Festival” award by agreenerfestival.com, “authority on all things green in the live music industry around the world.” ...