Mid-east Belly Dance Music MINUS DRUM

Karaoke for Middle Eastern Drummers

     

For the longest time, I couldn't figure out why, on earth, anyone would want a belly dance album without percussion. Duh - it's meant to be a sort of "karaoke" album for drummers. This would make a great practice album for doumbek students, and the bonus rhythm sample tracks make good refreshers. This is a nice selection of music, representing a wide variety of sources (egyptian, lebanese, turkish, greek, armenian, israeli), and a very wide variety of rhythms. The eclectic selection and the styling are most suitable for american style belly dance. Scott Wilson doesn't record the "spiciest" renditions of these songs, but his more easygoing style can be a nice change, and is also great for teaching and listening. However, and when the percussion tracks are removed, it can sound downright insipid, so I don't recommend using his album by itself for performance. That said, this might be a nice way for dancers to bring live music to a performance when only a drummer is available, and not a full band. For other uses, dancers will be better served by Scott Wilson's other albums, which have the full versions of these songs (including percussion).