Dreaming in Circles: Dreamscapes in Russian and Arabic Music
Henry Spencer
A boat floating in a harbour is the perfect opening to a gentle dream, a departure point for a night of escapism on calm waters. Egyptian singer Nagat El-Saghira paints this scene in the opening to her 1980 song Bahlam Ma’ak (I Dream with You). It is an intimate yet paradoxically public song, in which El-Saghira sings of how a dream with ‘you’ on a boat transforms into a journey with ‘me’; the ‘you’ being simultaneously El-Saghira’s lover and any listener who may get swept away by her ethereal music.
Bahlam Ma’ak’s release came at the end of a decade of change in Egypt. Marked by President Anwar Sadat’s attempts for social and economic reforms, the 1970s witnessed the Egypt-Israel peace treaty as well as a revival of Islamism which spread across the world. In short, it was a decade of possibilities and bitter endings culminating in Sadat's assasination in 1981. The song’s bittersweet melody evokes a nostalgia and hope that simultaneously pulls the listener into the past and pushes them into the future. Like many dreams, it reworks our experiences into new fantasies, a process controlled only by the subconscious.
Illustration credit: Annabel Jupp
El-Saghira’s ode to escapism finds parallels in the song Kino (Film, 2020) by Russian singer Mirèle (Eva Gurari) featuring Roma Danilov. Mirèle sings of two lovers, who, though they may not be ‘суждено’ (fated) to stay together, construct a delicate escape through a film. This ‘film’ within the song creates an alternate reality, which turns into ‘начало сна’ (the start of a dream). It’s filled with colourful imagery of summer and a nascent hope, where waking seems a distant prospect, but the lurking reality is a constant threat, just as storms menace a calm sea.
Kino arrives at the end of a turbulent year, yet the music is weightless. 2020 in Russia was marked not only by the Coronavirus pandemic, but also by constitutional reform that is poised to cement Russia’s future for decades. With these momentous events in the background, a relatively insignificant conversation between the lovers’ eyes emerges in the song as they meticulously construct their filmic dream. While dreams take over the subconscious, film is able to deceive the waking mind. We consent to the escape on the screen or, like Mirèle, even actively create it. Intimacy is ruptured as the imagined camera watches just as every listener eavesdrops. It’s a story within a song that transforms from lyric to film to dream.
A translation of can be found here: https://lyricstranslate.com/en/kino-movie.html-
The unease between intimacy and openness is particularly apparent in the refrain of Bahlam Ma’ak as El-Saghira describes ‘العالم كل/ بأسراره’ (the whole world with its secrets) as ‘عايش وياي’ (living with) and then ‘جو’ (inside) her. Rather than the dream being an escape from the world, reality manifests inside El-Saghira in an intense moment. However, the dream is also described as a journey. A sense of movement emerges, which contrasts the stationary sleeping body, infusing the song with elements of both conscious and dream worlds similar to Mirèle’s mixing of filmic and dreamlike imagery.
As much as the singers are aware of the surrounding world, they also focus on the personal, sensual experience, creating the ethereal soundscapes which parallel their dreamscapes. Eyes are prominent in both songs as a way to perceive dreams and film. In Kino, they become not only a way to perceive, but also a way to speak as the lover has ‘[своими глазами] все сказал’ (said everything with [their] eyes). Dreams allow the possibility for senses to merge and for new, unimagined forms of communication to emerge. The sensory experience is no longer defined by the logic of the material world, freeing singer, lover, and listener.
A translation can be found here: https://lyricstranslate.com/en/bahlam-ma3ak-%D8%A8%D8%AD%D9%84%D9%85-%D9%85%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%83-dream-you.html
With the freedom that dreams allow, El-Saghira can create lyrics that do away with the rules of the prosaic language of the waking mind. Her words create a series of disjointed images of ‘اسمك واسمي’ (your name and my name) and ‘مدينتي... وحكايتي’ (my town…and my story). Rather than guiding the listener through the meanings of these words and their connection to each other and to the world, she invites them to meditate on their interconnectedness and simply appreciate their sound qualities. Like Mirèle’s attempt to escape fate through film, El-Saghira refuses to be defined by and reduced to the town she comes from or her story. Instead, she presents the dream as a way to unite past and future and to journey between them.
Both escapes are, however, fragile. Kino ends much as it begins; the song seems circular as if the dream will never end, and indeed the last line is ‘это начало сна’ (it’s the start of a dream). Yet songs like movies and dreams must end, and Kino does so at the height of its illusionary qualities. The listener is left wondering not only when the dream ends, but when it even started. Perhaps the song has been the dream, or does it end so that the singer can start dreaming? The end of Bahlam Ma’ak is also elusive as it fades off in a vocalise just as El-Saghira has sung of a ‘[رحلة [معها’ (journey with [her]). The vocalise composed of sounds reminiscent of the Egyptian Arabic word for night, ‘leel’, and creates a sense that El-Saghira is becoming distant as though she has already set off for this journey.
The endings of both songs break the intimacy between the listener and singer. The listener feels left behind as the singer seems to continue dreaming alone. Yet, this dream too, whether at or beyond the end of the song, must come to an end, and the sense of escapism will fade away. By creating the illusion of an open-ended dream, the singers find hope in the fragile medium of song. The harbour where the boat rests is both a starting point and an end, as well as a stop along the way—a place of potential and possibility in both dreams and while awake.