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This vanishingly scarce compilation, originally confusingly titled An Evening With Samira Tufick, was apparently the last LP released on the Alkawakeb label in Newark, New Jersey run by Anthony M. Abraham (b. June 13, 1893 Aintourine, present-day northern Lebanon; d. July 1978). Abraham arrived in the U.S. in 1921 and worked for decades as a machinist and crane operator at Crucible Steel Works. His label primarily reissued or pirated Arabic-language material during the 1950s and ‘60s. This album mostly presents Lebanese traditional music with wonderfully cosmopolitan arrangements.

The Alkawakeb label often retitled material from its sources, making it complicated to track down the source recordings from which the album was made. We have retained the transliterated titles on the album jacket but we’ve given more commonly used transliterations of the artist names where we’re sure of them. We believe that the performances are derived from recordings made in Beirut ca. 1963-72.

early 20th century masterpieces (mostly) in languages other than English.

An hour in clamor and a quarter in rheum.

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