#12 - the outsider
You can listen to the playlist on Spotify or scroll to the end.
These songs all deal with feeling like or being an outsider in some way, whether on a micro-level, such as at a party or with a group of friends (e.g., Ten Feet Tall), or at a more societal level, in diaspora (e.g., Where You From) or in your own country (e.g., Ghareeb fi Belad Ghareeba). Many of them overlap with themes of change, loneliness, longing, and belonging. The playlist starts with Weyes Blood’s newly released single It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody, which starts with the lines “Sitting at this party, wondering if anyone knows me, really sees who I am. Oh it’s been so long since I’ve felt really known.” Then the track keeps coming back to the reminders, or assurances, or perhaps attempts at convincing, that “it’s not just me, it’s everybody.” It’s the opening tack off Weyes Blood’s upcoming album, which I am incredibly excited for considering her last album, Titanic Rising, is one of my all time favorites.
Ketchum, ID is about longing for home while being on tour and never being somewhere long enough; I was recently reminded of it because Aaron, one of my favorite artists from NYUAD, covered it just as I was preparing to leave Cairo, again. Tghayarti is a fan favorite by my current favorite and impressively versatile Arab artist, El Far3i. In it, Far3i repeatedly asks what can be interpreted as a city, a country, or perhaps a person, enti tghayarti leh? (“why did you change?”).
At that point the playlist delves into broader conceptions of being an outsider. For someone who will quite liberally joke about diaspora poetry, several of my favorite and most influential artists sure are diaspora poets, thus cue Lowkey and Riz Ahmed. I was introduced to Georges Moustaki by a friend recently, an Egyptian-French singer of Jewish Italo-Greek origin… talk about diaspora.
Towards the end, Hamza Namira and Zap Tharwat (ft. Amir Eid) are singing/rapping about el ghorba, the untranslateable experience of estrangement or alienation from your hometown, also colloquiuely used to mean a country outside your own. The songs discuss living in ghorba to pursue a dream, or just a stable reality, by choice or by necessity, and the sacrifices made along the way. I’ve definitely played Tazkarti (translates to ‘my flight ticket’, and centers around the assurance that it is indeed a return ticket) many times on my first flight to Abu Dhabi for undergrad, looking out the airplane window all dramatic. ملعون أبوك يا طموح.
I end with Ghareeb Fi Belad Ghareeba (‘a stranger in strange countries’.. ish?), Cairokee’s banger, much like Tazkarti, best experienced singing/screaming with thousands of Egyptians slightly losing their minds in a live audience. This tune in particular is very easy to hype a crowd, but I was recently thinking about concerts’ power to turn not just the danceable and anthemic but also songs associated with your darkest, quietist, loneliest moments into joyful collective memories. To look around and see, and hear, that the few dozen, or couple hundred, or many thousands around you have, too, felt these songs, maybe played them on a late night in an empty room, and are now singing them with you. And then you remember that of course, Weyes Blood is right, it’s not just me, it’s everybody. More or less.
10 songs
(Spotify)
It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody - Weyes Blood
Ten Feet Tall - Charlie Hickey
Ketchum, ID - boygenius
Tghayarti - El Far3i
Le Métèque - Georges Moustaki
Where You From - Riz Ahmed
Children of Diaspora - Lowkey
الغربة (El Ghorba) - Zap Tharwat ft. Amir Eid
Taghreeba II (Tazkarti) - Hamza Namira
Ghareeb Fi Belad Ghareeba - Cairokee ft. Abd El Baset Hammouda
NYUAD people may recognize the playlist is named after Deepak Unnikrishnan’s highly popular writing seminar “The Outsider”. I’ve never taken the class, but it somehow popped in my head while making this playlist. Looking back at my and my friends’ relationships with Deepak, I am grateful and in awe of his ability to, on the contrary, make you feel seen, included, valued, and cared for. Despite having never been his student (at least not in class), I would run into Deepak in the dining hall or a random hallway, and he’d immediately dedicate me all his focus and care in answering a request for advice or merely asking how I was, over an impromptu lunch or walk. Thankfully, his care and thoughtfulness are apparent in his poetic writing, too. I recommend checking out his book Temporary People (here’s his short reading of the intro).