The Eyes Have It: Amr Diab and "Nour El-Ain"

I'm a typical guy. I miss a lot of things. For instance, I will often ask my wife where the peanut butter is located. "Right there in front of you!" And it magically appears, because it was there the whole time but for some reason, my guy brain decided to remove it from the picture - as if my mind opened up an organic version of Adobe Photoshop and decided to remove all the pixels that coincided with peanut butter. Which is why I rarely notice eyes. I've noticed that women are often very attentive to eyes. I've had women come up to me and comment on my blue eyes, as if they'd seen them shining from across the room and came like a moth to the flame. And I'm thinking "hey, you have eyes! That's so cool!" So it's funny to me to hear a song, like today's Nour El-Ain, extolling the eyes of another person, because it just isn't what I do. Of course I notice eyes from time to time, particularly if they have some kind of deformity, but also if they are out of the ordinary. I probably would have noticed Liz Taylor's violet eyes to die for, and certainly I would notice the red eyes of an albino, but for the most part, I'm just kind of clueless. Sorry ladies...

Today's random tune is by Amr Diab, who is an Egyptian singer and composer of pop music. A winner of the multiple music awards, he is known as the "Father of the Mediterranean Sound," referring to his blend of Egyptian sounds and textures with Western rhythms and instrumentation. When you listen to his music, you can catch touches of flamenco and raï blending with Western pop and traditional Arabic music. He is also a pioneer in video, being the first Egyptian artist to appear in music videos and helping to popularize them in the Arab world. He has also appeared in film. He was recently criticized during the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt for maintaining his silence and moving to London during the tumult, but after Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak was deposed he recorded a song called Masr A'let (Egypt Has Spoken) and released it in conjunction with a video showing many of those who had died, and established a charity he established to help rebuild Egyptian society. He has released 28 official albums. This song, Nour El-Ain, extols the eyes of a lover and the glow she puts into his eyes. It can be found on his 1996 album of the same name, and on the Putumayo North African Groove CD (2005).