On Friday at Dubai’s One & Only The Palm luxury hotel will host the performance of “Tomorrow, Bokra.” This charity concert promises to gather some 24 Arab performers with Senegalese-American R&B artist Akon.
The performance will be broadcast by the satellite network MBC and on YouTube. It will be recorded for release and Malek Akkad will direct a music video and documentary film about the event.
The date 11.11.11 was specifically chosen, the event’s organizers have said, to “reflect a sense of oneness [among] all Arab countries.” It is meant to be a symbol of hope in the Middle East and North Africa region.
Among the 24 artists promised to be involved in the project is Lebanese vocalist and U.N. Goodwill Ambassador Majida al-Roumi, who wrote the adaptation’s Arabic lyrics. Yet Roumi will not be present at the Dubai event.
Speaking to The Daily Star from overseas, Roumi said she withdrew herself from the project for “personal and artistic reasons … I wrote the Arabic lyrics. It is a beautiful song and I hope it will have a lot of success.”The long process of pulling together “Tomorrow, Bokra” began last May in Rabat under the patronage of Morocco’s King Mohammad VI, working in collaboration with the Doha Film Institute.
The creative engines behind the project are Grammy award-winning American music icon Quincy Jones and Emirati entrepreneur Badr Jafar, who joined forces to form The Global Gumbo Group, a company dedicated to developing opportunities for Middle Eastern and North African music and other entertainment.
“Tomorrow, Bokra” isn’t the first time Jones has been involved in such an ensemble music event. Pop culture observers of a certain age will recall “We are the World,” the 1985 tune written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and produced by Jones.
Recorded by the ensemble USA for Africa, the number was – like Bob Geldof’s 1984 Christmastime hit “Do They Know it’s Christmas?” – designed to open people’s eyes on the food crisis in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa generally. Music legends such as Jackson and Richie, Cindi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen, Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder (to name a few) collaborated in Jones’ project and raised more than $60 million for humanitarian aid in Africa.
Neither does “Tomorrow, Bokra” mark the first time that Arab entertainers have involved themselves in such an event. In 1998 the tune “The Arab Dream” featured an ensemble performance by a chorus of Arab superstars that included Syria’s Assala Nasri, Lebanon’s Walid Toufic and Tunisia’s Zikra, performing a tune written by Egyptian composer Sayyed Shawqi.
Devised to unify the Arab world under the banner of peace, optimism and hope, “The Arab Dream” did leave an imprint on the regional consciousness. In this it was far more successful than the 2009 follow-up effort, “The Arab Conscience.”
Originally recorded by Tevin Campbell, “Tomorrow (A Better You, Better Me)” won Jones’ the Record of the Year Grammy in 1989. Press materials suggest that Jones agreed to have this song adapted because it represents today’s history of the Middle East and North Africa.
Working in association with a series of agencies that include the United Nations World Food Program, organizers promise that proceeds from the purchase of this single will be donated to benefit educational programs in music, arts and culture for children across the Middle East North Africa region.
Since the donations will also provide education facilities in schools across Arab countries including Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Jordan, the WFP’s School Feeding Program is also supporting the “Tomorrow, Bokra” project. This charity single is the result of a between artists from Libya, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait and many more.
Among the collaborating artists is Iraqi crooner Kazim al-Sahir who worked on the music adaptation. Also performing in the project are Algerian singer-songwriter Souad Massi, renowned Qatari singer Fahad al-Kubaissi and Lebanese singer-songwriter Marwan Khoury, Palestine’s Rim Banna, Egypt’s Sherine Abdel Wahab and Tamer Hosny, Tunisia’s Saber Rebai and Latifa and the UAE’s Fayez al-Saeed.
Akon’s participation in “Tomorrow, Bokra,” it is said, will be “the biggest multi-cultural collaborative work [he] will have ever worked on.”
Badr Jafar, the executive producer of the single, explained in the press release that this project was the appropriate way to encourage solidarity concerning what is happening in the Middle East nowadays. “Music and arts,” said Jafar, “have the ability to bring together people from across the world for a brighter and more prosperous future.”