Abstract
It is a late autumn day in Damascus, and I am back paying a visit to my friend 'Adil al-Zaki, owner of the Sham Dan cassette shop. Mr. Zaki's shop has everything, including nearly half a million recordings in a variety of formats, mostly cassettes, of older Arab music and music from around the world. Zaki is a jocular octogenarian, somewhat round of belly and quick of smile, and a great enthusiast of Arab music-the good music, as he would put it, and not the modern popular songs, for which he has little regard. Whenever I visited him I would generally sit for an hour or so while we listened to various artists-whomever he happened to be making a tape of at the time or others according to his mood: the great Egyptian artists Umm Kulthum and Muhammad 'Abd al-Wahhab, of course, but also Indonesian Qur'an readers, Persian oud players, all-women orchestras from Tunisia, and others, both famous and obscure. We'd sip little glasses of coffee, sit back in our chairs, and enjoy the music-as we did that autumn afternoon.
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