June 7, 2025 • 41 mins
Today, we’re diving deep into the rich tapestry of the United Arab Emirates through the lens of its national anthem, "Ishi Biladi" or "Long Live My Nation." This anthem not only serves as a symbol of national pride but also encapsulates the historical journey of a nation that transformed from the Trucial States into a modern marvel of tourism and culture. We’ll journey there and explore the UAE’s vibrant past, its cultural landmarks, and the remarkable records it holds. Along the way, we’ll meet the creators behind the anthem prove that creativity thrives under pressure. So, buckle up as we take this whirlwind tour of history, music, and a dash of humor, all while uncovering what makes this anthem resonate not just in the Emirates, but across the globe.
- https://www.khaleejtimes.com/uae/national-day-meet-the-man-who-wrote-uaes-national-anthem
- https://www.islands.com/1772450/world-fastest-coaster-thrilling-theme-park-abu-dhabi-ferrari-formula-rossa/
- https://dubaiverse.io/dubais-world-records/#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20Dubai%20holds%20over,records%20that%20Dubai%20has%20set.
- https://www.wam.ae/en/details/1395302806869
- https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/apr/14/thisweekssciencequestions.robots
- https://enhg.org/bulletin/b26/26_02.htm#:~:text=It%20comprises%20an%20unusual%20suite,than%2070%20million%20years%20ago.
- https://aeon.co/essays/palm-trees-amid-the-sand-the-origins-of-the-oasis-fantasy
- https://www.eolss.net/sample-chapters/c10/E1-05A-66.pdf
- https://web.archive.org/web/20220517070810/https://www.na.ae/en/pdfviewer.aspx?path=%2Fen%2FImages%2FLIWA01.pdf
- https://books.google.com/books?id=hxaKj3AjyfwC&newbks=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA78&hl=en&source=newbks_fb
- Sulṭān ibn Muḥammad al-Qāsimī (1986). The myth of Arab piracy in the Gulf. London: Croom Helm. ISBN 978-0709921066.
- https://www.qdl.qa/en/archive/81055/vdc_100000000884.0x000148
- https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/encyclopedia?docid=b-9781474295741
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Foreign hello and welcome tothe Anthems Podcast. I'm Patrick
(00:23):
and I'm here to tell you thestory of a song that helps to tell
the story of a nation. Todaywe are taking a 13,834 kilometer
trip. 8,590 miles. I don'tknow why, but we're in a hurry this
time. So maybe it's just anovelty of traveling through fiber
(00:44):
optic cable and arriving in 65milliseconds that gets us to be in
a hurry. But that means we'retraveling over 130,000 miles per
second, which is a speed thatwould likely kill a human in almost
all of the situations on theplanet. But it's way faster than
the fastest roller coaster inthe world, the Formula Rossa. This
(01:07):
coaster hits 149 miles perhour or 239 kilometers per hour,
and they issue you a pair ofgoggles before you ride this thing.
That means if you knew whereit is because it's real, then you
knew that we were talkingabout the United Arab Emirates. We
are in a country that used tobe a part of the so called Trucial
(01:30):
States, a British name. Sospoilers, I guess, mostly because
I have not yet taken us intothe Middle east properly. It's a
fascinating part of the worldand has a long history that we're
going to get to take somesamples of every time that we are
here. The uae, or simply theEmirates, I'll refer to it in a few
(01:50):
different ways, is a greatplace to go first in this part of
the world because they havethe most world records of any other
Middle Eastern nation. Thereare 429 of them in Dubai alone, a
place that you've almostcertainly heard of if you have access
to the Internet and arehearing this show, including the
(02:11):
fastest roller coaster,tallest building, largest fountain,
deepest pool, and many moreI'm going to refrain from listing.
It's a pretty amazing place.It's the result of the government
trying to make it a premiertourist destination for the planet,
kind of succeeding in a lot ofways. And you know, the most relevant
record, though I do have tomention it, was achieved on November
(02:35):
28, 2019, when people from 120different countries came together
and sang the national anthem,which is a great reason for me to
tell you about Ishi Biladi orLong Live My Nation. I can't claim
to have a deep knowledge ofthe Emirates prior to reading for
(02:58):
this episode, or really muchat all, apart from a little bit about
the food, because of course asmall but consistent theme creeping
into the show from my life isfood. Because I love food from all
the world's places. So yes, Ihave had the famed I can't get Kunafa
(03:18):
Dubai chocolate and yes folks,it is delicious. But more importantly,
I have had Lamb Uzi at a localhalal eatery. It's a spiced lamb
and rice dish that isdeceptively simple to make, although
it takes a very long timeovernight for marinade purposes,
but it manages to be anabsolutely joyful thing that you
(03:41):
get to eat. I'm gonna have toexperience it again soon, but now
we're gonna have to go andexperience a song My first thoughts
(04:57):
on hearing this were that Iliked the music, but I wasn't super
keen on the lyrics. They felta little bit formulaic. But I've
listened to it several dozentimes since the first one because
even in cases like this whereit was an easy choice of which version
to share, I want manyinterpretations of the song in my
head while I'm learning abouta particular anthem. So it has had
(05:20):
time to grow on me quite abit. Most of these do now anyway.
Or maybe I'm just starting tolike national anthem music in general
now that I'm fairly into theweeds with this stuff. Just like
watching camel racing has kindof done. Seriously, I got so sucked
(05:42):
into this stuff it's insane.Look it up on YouTube. It might seem
like a hard left turn topicwise, but that is the point. Sometimes
camels are faster than Ithought. They hit 40 miles an hour
or 60 kilometers, 65kilometers per hour in short bursts.
Fortunately, I discoveredcamel racing at a point in history
(06:02):
where they no longer subjectchild jockeys to human rights violations
and in instead they have movedonto robot jockeys that are controlled
by people remotely as theyride around the outside of the course
in tricked out sport utilityvehicles. Which might be the craziest
part I'd imagine. It's a sportthat, despite being hundreds of years
(06:24):
old, or perhaps in partbecause of it, it's mostly the parlance
of people with a bunch moremoney to spend than I've got. It's
also fascinating example ofsomething really old changing with
the times eventually. So wherein the world am I going to go if
I want to watch it live? Thisone is tricky to get a lot of people
(06:46):
in the US too, if you're under40 years old and you haven't paid
attention to geopoliticalevents in the past 30ish years, because
the Middle east is a part ofthe world that gets a Lot of hand
waving in the news here. Wetalk about it enough, but nobody
ever talks about where in theworld it is. For listeners of my
(07:08):
show, it won't be too hard tofind. I could find it because coverage
from the second Iraq war, Ipaid attention to that. It was the
first major news event that Iremember seeing on live television
in one of my friends kitchens.For people that don't remember this
stuff, let's assume we can allfind Africa and Madagascar is the
(07:32):
large island off the eastcoast of Africa, south of the equator.
It's a pretty big island. Fromthere head north past Seychelles
Episode four, then just pastthe Gulf of Aden. That's in between
Africa and the ArabianPeninsula of which the UAE is a part.
It's the large chunk of landthat sort of resembles a big chunky
(07:54):
ski boot that sits in betweenAfrica and Asia. Now follow the peninsula's
coast along Yemen and thenOman all the way through the Gulf
of Oman. And right before youround the bend into the Persian Gulf
you reach the coast of theuae. The west, south and southeast
(08:15):
borders are with Saudi Arabia.Oman is to the southeast and northeast
with a disputed northwesternborder with Qatar. They enjoy about
400 miles of Gulf coast andsome disputed islands with Iran and
Qatar. The nation is entirelyin a desert climate and the first
(08:35):
time somebody saw snow in themountains, although I am sure it
happened before this, was in2004. The slightly more than 10 million
people that live there are ina country mostly successfully diversifying
out of an oil based economyinto things like tourism as I mentioned
earlier on, and they had atleast some people living in it for
(08:57):
130,000 years. The reason thatmany of them were able to live there
was something called an oasisbecause of the large expanses of
desert in the country. So thismonth's geology term is oasis. The
importance of them is foundright in the etymology of the word,
because they were called wahior a dwelling place in the Coptic
(09:23):
language. Why? Because youcould get water there and grow things
and you could not for manymiles around because of all the desert.
There are a few different waysthat water is accessible in oases,
but they are not alwaysthrough human means, just mostly
through human means becauselike things like lakes exist and
(09:44):
springs. But the places arevital to trade routes that have been
established thousands of yearsago and they've been instrumental
in shaping regions through theinfluence of migration routes and
sometimes direct militaryoccupation in order to control migration
routes. The ones on theArabian Peninsula tend to be spring
fed or through tunnel systemsthat are dug to tap aquifers. Despite
(10:09):
their importance in theregion, oases don't actually figure
into where we enter thetimeline here. Another thing in nature
that was important to thedevelopment of the Arabian Peninsula
and perhaps present to thetimeline are pearls. But we're not
going to get buried in thathistory with the Emirates because
(10:32):
it is a far more importantpart of Bahrain's history. So we're
going to enter the timelineafter the turn of the 19th century
with more British colonialism.We haven't been there in a couple
episodes at least, but becauseof the pearl industry, I gotta at
least mention the Portuguese.That empire certainly teed up a lot
(10:55):
of the problems that we'regonna kind of ram through going forward
in this episode by raiding abunch of the coastal towns and establishing
an exploitive tax system thatstayed there for a couple of hundred
years. So like a bunch of thisstuff, it has a lot to do with them
moving on. The British hadbeen calling the coast coast of the
(11:20):
Gulf the pirate coasts sinceat least the latest 18th century
because the Portuguese hadleft the inhabitants of the Arabian
Peninsula feeling kind ofhostile against Western ships in
their coastal waters. I'm surethere's a bunch of actual piracy
that was happening for sure.But I'm also sure that the British
(11:42):
were not trying to de escalatethe situation in a way that made
sense to literally anybody buta British guy in the Royal Navy.
As such, I'm also sure that asizable portion of the so called
piracy was legitimate defenseagainst British aggression. So by
the time we enter the storyproperly, the beginning of the Persian
(12:05):
Gulf Campaign of 1809, the AlQassimi regime had been attacking
the British Empire ships forabout a decade and change. The regime
controlled what is now theStrait of Hormuz. That's a dubbed
bit between the Gulf of Omanand the Persian Gulf. What was really
(12:28):
happening was the Al Qasimiregime didn't want Europeans doing
colonialism in their countrybecause colonialism sucks for your
country. And the Britishdidn't want anybody trading with
India that they weren't makingmoney from. And modern day Gujarat
is close to the Persian Gulf.For full disclosure, I will say that
(12:49):
I have not done any reading atall about India. My knowledge there
is also thin. I know timelinesare long, much longer in India than
they are in my country. AndGujarat might have been a State about
200 years ago. Probably was, Idon't know. I'll get there when we
go to India. The East IndiaCompany and the Royal Navy teamed
(13:12):
up in order to protect Britishinterests and force a cessation of
hostility by stabilizing thesituation with a hostile action.
However, because of theNapoleonic wars which seem to have
affected basically everythingthat happened near the wars in time
or geography, Britishresources were stretched quite thin
(13:35):
and they could not entirelydestroy Al Qassimi's pretty good
navy. As such, the attackswere able to continue in 1812 and
it was left to Oman tostabilize the region through methods
that I did not read about. By1815, the regime had begun capturing
(13:56):
British flagged Indianmerchant vessels and a couple of
times they killed everybody onboard. You don't have to do this
all the time to get people'sattention. Just a couple of ships
of complete slaughter and aprompted action by the Royal Navy
and the army when they putmore than 6,000 men there via sea
(14:16):
and land. Details of that canbe heard about on other shows and
in other books. I will notefrom the perspective of the people
that live there, it definitelylooked and felt like the British
were an invading force becauseof all the invading that they were
actively doing. But for ourpurposes, the functional endpoint
(14:37):
of more literal gunboatdiplomacy and which is a thing that
I did not realize that wasgoing to get so much use on this
show, it resulted in theGeneral Maritime Treaty of 1820.
It was an agreement betweenthe rulers of the five emirates and
the first of a series ofevolving treaties and deals that
(14:57):
had Britain all wrapped up inthe Middle east stuff. In 1847, the
empire banned the ships ofpeople it had agreements with from
supporting slaves andtransporting them. The original treaties
calm things down a quite a lotat sea. But it took until the middle
(15:18):
of the 1830s for the tribes tocome to a peace agreement on land.
But that peace agreement wasthen renewed every year until 1853
with the area becoming a fullprotector of the crown. In 1892,
there were continued figuringout of borders and political agreements
(15:39):
that resulted in nine emirateseach with distinct red and white
flags. Which starts to feelawful. A lot like a union of sorts,
if I must say. The rest ofthat solidification though, and then
separation from Britain willhappen in a few minutes because it
takes us into and through thelives of the poet and the composer.
(16:03):
More pens to remember. I meanjust the one because we're going
to pick things back up in the1930s. Saad Abdel Wahab was born
in Cairo, Egypt on June 16thin 1925. And true to the pattern,
I know essentially nothingabout the early years of this man's
(16:25):
life. I do know that Saad'suncle was Mohammed Abdel Wahab and
he was a strong contender formost important Egyptian composer
of the 20th century. I'm alsopretty sure we will talk about that
guy again on this show. Therecord picks up in 1949 when our
(16:46):
composer graduated from CairoUniversity with an agricultural degree.
From there he went intobroadcasting, but he could sing really
well and someone noticed apresence and gave him the acting
bug. Throughout the 1950s,Sod's acting skills caught up to
his musical capability withhis last two films receiving largely
(17:10):
positive critical acclaim. In1957, he did the last of his seven
films and walked away to be aconsultant in the radio business.
Eventually he relocated to theEmirates for some time and worked
with radio stations onnational music. I'll note that my
(17:31):
sources on Wahab were few andthe dates in most of this stuff were
vague. So read mostly notthere, but if he composed the anthem
in the UAE like the sourcesread, he was there late 1960s going
into 1970. So after the songwe're learning about right now, he
(17:55):
moved back to Cairo, raisedtwo sons and passed on November 23rd
in 2004 in a Cairo hospital.Palestine Hospital actually. After
losing a three year battlewith an unspecified illness, he left
a legacy of hundreds of songs,eight movies and a national anthem.
(18:16):
I have not seen any of hismovies, but I have a bunch of his
songs in rotation now on myalgorithm. You should listen to him.
Guy's got quite a voice. It'sa shame that I have been unable to
locate a copy of him singingthe anthem. Let's talk about a poet.
Arif Sheikh Abdullah Al Hassanwas born in Dubai in 1952 and despite
(18:41):
being a well known man, I am acan aware of very little before that
familiar point when hiseducation starts. In 1997, Dr. Arif
Al Sheikh completed his PhD inIslamic Studies at Al Azhar University
after studying in Dubai andMecca. A note about the word chic
(19:04):
is that it is a title thatmeans different things in different
cultures in differentcontexts. Abdullah is an Islamic
scholar and sometimes they aregiven the title as an honorific.
Our poet worked for some timeas a teacher and was quickly tapped
to join the Ministry ofEducation where Al Sheik obtained
the post of Director ofEducational Services before resigning
(19:27):
with the department in 2002.I'm not sure what he's been up to
since then because Hassan isalive and well as of this release,
but activities have includedwriting and deep thought because
the terms poet and scholar arecorrect. Descriptions of this man
in addition to his work as aSharia notary and years as an advisor
(19:49):
on the Council for CommunityService. The man has no less than
14 collections of poetry. Theyrange from work in 1977 to 2018 publications.
They are from a variety ofscholarly disciplines as well, including
education, Sharia law andcontemporary royal history. Like
I mentioned, he is still withus and in fact, after a time jump
(20:14):
back to catch up to history,we are going to hear from an interview
with the good doctor himselfabout how he wrote the anthem. The
seven emirates that make upthe modern UAE are all older than
the country itself by at least100 years. Up until about the 1930s,
the British Empire did not paya ton of attention to the so called
(20:36):
Trucial States and left themto fight amongst themselves to figure
out the order of things. Andas long as the peace was generally
kept, they kind of didn'tbother them. Of course this ceased
to be true once oil was foundthere. After preliminary surveys
onshore and offshoreconcessions were made in 1939 and
(20:59):
1953 respectively. Oil waslocated in 1958 under an old pearl
bed in the Gulf and in thedesert in 1960. And by the time oil
was discovered in Abu Dhabilater in a decade, the US started
to take British contracts outthe leaders of the various sheikdoms.
(21:20):
I told you it was a variableword formed the Truchall States Council
on the skeleton of the Britishdevelopmental structure once the
Brits had begun to abandon. Ittook London from 1966 until 1971
to officially admit that theycouldn't govern the area there anymore
(21:41):
and withdrew completely inMarch of 1971. The official historical
record states that Britainjust couldn't afford to have a protectorate
military presence in the areabecause by this time the presence
of a protector had becomesomething that the crucial states
(22:01):
wanted to keep. Actually, theoffer for the Emirates to pay the
cost of keeping the ships wasrebuffed by the Crown and following
from that there was a seriesof events that was super complicated,
so I'm just going to say allof it happened and it yielded a draft
constitution in what mighthave been record time. The seven
(22:22):
emirates form the uae. Theyapparently had Saad compose the anthem
and they wanted to make surethey met the constitutional requirements,
which do include having ananthem. Initially. I can find no
specific information on whythey picked the type of anthem they
had or had composed exactlywhat he did. We do have specific
(22:48):
information about the writingthough, because our poet has said
in interviews that in 1986 theActing Minister of Education at the
time thought that it was quitea letdown for children to silently
hold a flag during the anthemwhen they should be patriotically
chanting lyrics and waving theflag. Recall that national anthems
(23:12):
are at their corenationalistic tools. It's just an
interesting moment when peopleare accidentally direct about what
that is. But to be fair, thisminister was probably genuine. They
probably genuinely wanted thekids to have something to sing and
(23:33):
they were not thinking aboutgeopolitical theory at the time.
They moved ahead with the ideaand decided that they would use the
tune that Saad had composedand have a poet write lyrics for
it. Dr. Arif Al Sheik wastapped because he worked at the Ministry
and developed school anthemsand curriculum previous to that date.
(23:58):
And he was also a well knownpoet at the time already because
Recall this was 1986, so he'dalready been writing and publishing
for about 10 years. Theminister wanted the anthem in a hurry
though, and based on mysources, he didn't really have a
reason for that other than,you know, just wanting the decision
(24:18):
to be completed. So the poetwas given a cassette tape in three
days. Initially he had troublewith the task because they'd never
written for existing musicbefore and instead just had music
set to what had been written.But after listening 60 or so times,
they were able to produce asong and his wife gave him a no note
(24:42):
situation and said, you shouldjust submit that because it's pretty
good. And of course that iswhat the Ministry chose. With that
we've got our anthem. We'vegot more to say about it, but we've
got it. And I can go on totalk about the song itself. Musically
(25:03):
speaking, we are a again inthe familiar territory of a march
like tune in 44 with a majorkey. Every time I hear an anthem
composed in it, my associationbetween that and an uplifting patriotism
are strengthened. It's gotkind of a ceremonial brightness to
(25:24):
it that makes it feel prettygood. In a variety of arrangements
from solo piano to a fullbrass military band. A purposeful
tune with bold rising linesthat does not vary. There is no swing
and sway in the purpose drivenmelody that this song represents.
Solid, confident and finishedstuff. I like it. I've got very little
(25:47):
else to say about surprises methough, because it almost seems like
sod was filling out a form tocompose this thing. It's like Mad
Libs for composition fornational anthems. Except not crazy
like Mad Libs content to get.Honestly though, there are people
who are pretty sure that hisuncle composed this song. I don't
(26:10):
think so. It is not Arabfanfare. And that will not make sense
for an undetermined number ofepisodes. Spoilers in that sentence.
Now, this is a different styleof music. It should maybe feel generic
to me, but I find myselfenjoying anthems more often than
(26:30):
not now. Maybe especially asong that if I heard it and I knew
nothing else about it ornothing at all about it, I would
think that's gotta be ananthem. With another song in the
Arabic language, I am again upagainst contextualism. A contextual
language which is verydifferent from the language that
(26:53):
I speak or languages that Ikind of know makes it tough for me
to translate things. I am alsovery much and very clearly not a
linguistic scholar, whichmeans that I've got a few translations
of the song and I've read alot about it. But ultimately I got
to pick something that I'mjust going to trust. So I'm going
(27:17):
to go with an approximation ofthe version of the Arabic language
Wikipedia article, becausebased on the edit history, there
are several people there thatare paying attention. This is another
poet that understood theassignment but was given very little
time to get it done. Whatmight have been written on Erif's
(27:43):
schedule? It's impossible forus to say, but I bet it would be
pretty great. It's so itshould not be a shock that a scholar
of Islam was heavily inspiredby traditional Islamic poetic meters
and wrote something that isvery easy to chant, almost close
to not a poem. My sources sayit's likely informed by Al Ramal
(28:08):
or Al Camille meter. But alllooking into that got me was lost
in the shocking complexity oftraditional Arabic poetic meter.
It's like such a rabbit hole.It's unbelievable. Actually. The
Internet is an amazinglearning tool, but I suffer from
fascination stuff. I'mfascinated by pretty much everything.
(28:29):
So I have to like, putblinders on when I'm online because
I get lost learning aboutthings. However, my show would be
harder, probably impossiblewithout other people thinking like
that. So let's read throughthe translation and then I'll get
into what the doctor istelling us. The piece is written
(28:51):
and sang in Arabic and I amreading an English translation. Long
live my country. Long live ourUnited Emirates. You lived for a
people whose religion is Islamand whose guide is the Quran. I have
fortified you in the name ofGod. O homeland, my country, my country,
(29:17):
my country, my country. MayGod protect you from the evils of
time. We swore to build andwork. I work, be sincere, Work, be
sincere. As long as we live,we will be faithful. May security
(29:37):
last and the flag Live long Oour Emirates, symbol of Arabism we
would sacrifice our blood foryou we sacrificed our souls for you
O homeland. We have a directLike I alluded to before, almost
not a poem. It's kind of astack of declarations. The nearly
(30:00):
not a poem part comes throughmuch more clearly in the translation
than it does if you'relistening to it sung in Arabic due
to the rhyming aspect, butthat's only true if you don't understand
Arabic, I think is something Idefinitely understand better if I
(30:20):
knew a bunch of differentlanguages, but that's a limitation
of this show. As with thecomposition, it gets a little bit
of a checklist vibe for me. Iwill say that this is not an uncommon
thing in anthems, and it doesnot automatically make an anthem
bad or good or any otheradjective. You're allowed to not
like these songs because musicis subjective. All I'm saying is
(30:45):
that there are anthems we'vecovered that were winners of contests
with very strict checklistsand for what had to be left in and
out of them that are alsosongs that I happen to really much
enjoy. To be fair, we alsoneed to understand that our poet
was given three days, so he'sin a tight time frame here, and he
(31:07):
was asked to write a song inthe reverse order of how he would
normally have done things.There are 10 lines, and we're gonna
go tackle it as 10 themes,because I think that's almost gonna
work for us. The piece openswith a strong and direct statement
of national pride and unity.I'm going to say again that our writer
knew the assignment andapplied his considerable skill to
(31:28):
writing the correct anthem.It's a good opening line, actually.
Stirring and direct are on myanthem checklist. Then the second
line continues with direct asa theme, but this is pride in Islam
and the teachings of the Quranand not the country so much. It's
not a surprise in a veryheavily religious country whose official
(31:52):
religion is in fact Islam, andwhere several of the ruling families
have very good claims todescendants of the Prophet Muhammad.
If you're interested in thatstuff, I'm going to direct it to
the Wikipedia to start,because that particular lineage is
well documented and highlycontentious in certain areas and
(32:13):
not a topic that I am wellqualified to talk about. Regardless,
anchoring the country inIslamic tradition does speak directly
to core Emirate values and theroots of the people there. Following
this close would lead a morecontemporary believer to think of
this stuff as blessings,rather than the older sounding fortified
(32:37):
that I used but that's thebetter translation, so I've read,
is fortified. But the theme ofdivine protection is in fact a direct
beseechment for followsdirectly from the religious traditionalism
in the previous verse. Verse 4continues to imply a strong preference
(32:58):
for chantability, but I willsay that it works well for me as
sung, the verse, coupled withthe fifth verse, kind of picking
up the theme of divineprotector rather than developing
on it, are what gets the wordsformulaic checklist and filler sprinkled
throughout. A lot of what Iread about this song, Evils of Time
is a nice touch, though it's agreat line, and protecting a nation
(33:22):
from the ravages of the agesdoes seem different from fortifying
it or strengthening it withdivine power, which is where I run
into the complications of alanguage that I'll get better with,
because there's a bunch ofArabic countries, but this is only
number two for me. Onward toline six and a theme that we see
(33:43):
again and again in an anthem,but is also one of the things that
make this song work as well asit does literal nation building through
duty, labor, and the sheerwill of national effort. The general
consensus in my reading isthat sincere is the right translation,
but it feels kind of like astodgy descriptor of the diligence
(34:05):
that the vocal tone implies.That is, I think, the very first
time that I've used the wordstodgy as a descriptor of anything
mildly fun. It's not the wrongword, though, because the seventh
verse takes a stab at loyalty,which is again not uncommon for anthems,
since it fits well in thegenerally nationalistic intent of
(34:26):
the things. But reinforcingdevotion, despite being on theme,
is something that maybe youshouldn't use the same phrase again
twice to do again. It actuallyworks here in a lot of ways. It adds
to the rhythmic chantavailable in this anthem, and it
drives the verse along. So itsort of. It sort of does what it's
(34:50):
supposed to do, but you know,it's the same thing. Then a swing
even deeper into anthemterritory as the song asks for safety
and the flag. There are goodterms for the medium, since the flag
really means patriotic spiritand safety is peace. That leads well
(35:10):
into regional identity in thepenultimate theme, symbol of Arabism,
in case we've gotten losthere, even though I think this is
the line that lacks the mostin the song, it's a short, declarative
statement, and according tothe people that can read Arabic,
it just sort of states inabstract and has no contextual grounding
(35:33):
all in all, I I think IshiBeladi it finishes strongly though
it's an anthem territory. Thelast verse is a great sacrifice that
has been made and will be madein the name of the nation. A lot
of western listeners will balkat the talk of violent sacrifice,
but come on, anthems exist atall is a pretty western concept,
(35:57):
and lots of these things arefull of violence. Where do we get
to? France? Someday I'll writesomething that addresses anthems
in a more general sense, butI'm not there yet, so we're putting
a large pin in that statement.As far as violence, like I said,
this is nothing. Wait, wedon't spend time glorying in violence
(36:19):
on the anthems podcasts. Butas far as violence goes, I've got
no choice but to talk aboutthe current anthem. And it's not
even close to the worst thatwe've read so far. And you know there's
more violent ones coming. Atleast I think not yet, because a
(36:39):
lot of what I do isasynchronous. Overall though, we're
gonna get back on track here.Overall, I don't dislike this, even
though I recently said on aCAN fundraiser live stream that it
is my least favorite anthem sofar. But I think I'm just starting
to like anthems. It's alsoearly days. There's more than 160
(37:03):
of these things to go, so I'vegot some time. There's gonna be bad
ones, there's gotta be. Butperhaps more importantly, my taste
and knowledge are growingconstantly. I try to make that a
point. I'm understandinganthems better as I learn. So this
goes on the list as far asgood anthems go, despite me thinking
it's mid level inspired and itbut it's exactly what it's supposed
(37:28):
to be stuff. The slightemotional distance and historical
feel of the anthem gets prettyright for the uae, despite the criticisms
that it brings. Maybe that'swhat we want in an anthem. Sometimes
you can consider that duringthe credits the writing, recording
and production for the showare done by me and I wrote and played
(37:52):
the theme music. The music wasused with my permission. Unless otherwise
noted, the anthems I play arepublic domain. Some other equivalently
free license, a thing that Igot permission to play or have at
least made a good faith effortto get permission to play this time.
I played the audio of theanthem performance on December 2nd
(38:14):
in 2024. It's clipped out of apublicly available television clip
that celebrates IndependenceDay equivalent in the uae. My sources
are contained in the shownotes and the most direct way to
get to those Show Notes isanthems podcast.com I can be found
(38:34):
on Facebook and WhatsApp,although WhatsApp I've never been
contacted on ever. As theAnthems podcast I was thinking about
the whole social media thingand maybe someone could reach out
to me and let me know whichnetwork it would be good to get this
show onto. Someone elsedefinitely knows more than me about
(38:56):
this so drop me a line. Untilthen. My advertising budget is limited
so I am asking you to help meget the episodes onto whatever platform
you can with the hashtaganthemspod. Think Instagram, Mastodon,
Blue Sky, Twitter or any ofthe other ones. All you cool kids
(39:16):
around that I have no ideaabout because I'm a guy in my 40s
in the US. It'd be cool if youshared this content with others and
perhaps it will somehow leadto lingering human rights issues
in a post child camel jockeyworld getting dealt with. As always,
you can email me corrections,comments, concerns, suggestions,
(39:38):
ideas, instructions on how todo stuff, and ask me questions@anthemspodmail.com
perhaps you want me to hearexactly how mad or happy you are
with my content or text meplus 1203-759-8375 or better still,
(39:59):
leave me a review wherever youcan so more people can hear me or
give me a rating on whateveryour podcast app is or wherever you
can do that because all thatstuff matters. This show is can credentialed,
which means you can reportincidences of harassment, abuse or
other harm on their content at617-249-4255 or on the website@creator
(40:25):
accountability network.org youcan even volunteer your time there,
join up as a creator or throwthem a couple bucks. Maybe you are
forced to confront whether ornot you think color is real by somebody
and you have been frozen bythe because the answer you have involves
some really complicatedthoughts about quantum chromodynamics
(40:49):
and it's impossible to havethat conversation in the time that
you have been allowed. So yousettle for recommending this very
episode of the Anthemspodcast. I would take that. But even
if all that happens is thatyou listen to one more of these shows,
I sincerely thank you for yourtime and I'll see you somewhere soon.
(41:10):
Somewhere different.
Foreign hello and welcome tothe Anthems Podcast. I'm Patrick
(00:23):
and I'm here to tell you thestory of a song that helps to tell
the story of a nation. Todaywe are taking a 13,834 kilometer
trip. 8,590 miles. I don'tknow why, but we're in a hurry this
time. So maybe it's just anovelty of traveling through fiber
(00:44):
optic cable and arriving in 65milliseconds that gets us to be in
a hurry. But that means we'retraveling over 130,000 miles per
second, which is a speed thatwould likely kill a human in almost
all of the situations on theplanet. But it's way faster than
the fastest roller coaster inthe world, the Formula Rossa. This
(01:07):
coaster hits 149 miles perhour or 239 kilometers per hour,
and they issue you a pair ofgoggles before you ride this thing.
That means if you knew whereit is because it's real, then you
knew that we were talkingabout the United Arab Emirates. We
are in a country that used tobe a part of the so called Trucial
(01:30):
States, a British name. Sospoilers, I guess, mostly because
I have not yet taken us intothe Middle east properly. It's a
fascinating part of the worldand has a long history that we're
going to get to take somesamples of every time that we are
here. The uae, or simply theEmirates, I'll refer to it in a few
(01:50):
different ways, is a greatplace to go first in this part of
the world because they havethe most world records of any other
Middle Eastern nation. Thereare 429 of them in Dubai alone, a
place that you've almostcertainly heard of if you have access
to the Internet and arehearing this show, including the
(02:11):
fastest roller coaster,tallest building, largest fountain,
deepest pool, and many moreI'm going to refrain from listing.
It's a pretty amazing place.It's the result of the government
trying to make it a premiertourist destination for the planet,
kind of succeeding in a lot ofways. And you know, the most relevant
record, though I do have tomention it, was achieved on November
(02:35):
28, 2019, when people from 120different countries came together
and sang the national anthem,which is a great reason for me to
tell you about Ishi Biladi orLong Live My Nation. I can't claim
to have a deep knowledge ofthe Emirates prior to reading for
(02:58):
this episode, or really muchat all, apart from a little bit about
the food, because of course asmall but consistent theme creeping
into the show from my life isfood. Because I love food from all
the world's places. So yes, Ihave had the famed I can't get Kunafa
(03:18):
Dubai chocolate and yes folks,it is delicious. But more importantly,
I have had Lamb Uzi at a localhalal eatery. It's a spiced lamb
and rice dish that isdeceptively simple to make, although
it takes a very long timeovernight for marinade purposes,
but it manages to be anabsolutely joyful thing that you
(03:41):
get to eat. I'm gonna have toexperience it again soon, but now
we're gonna have to go andexperience a song My first thoughts
(04:57):
on hearing this were that Iliked the music, but I wasn't super
keen on the lyrics. They felta little bit formulaic. But I've
listened to it several dozentimes since the first one because
even in cases like this whereit was an easy choice of which version
to share, I want manyinterpretations of the song in my
head while I'm learning abouta particular anthem. So it has had
(05:20):
time to grow on me quite abit. Most of these do now anyway.
Or maybe I'm just starting tolike national anthem music in general
now that I'm fairly into theweeds with this stuff. Just like
watching camel racing has kindof done. Seriously, I got so sucked
(05:42):
into this stuff it's insane.Look it up on YouTube. It might seem
like a hard left turn topicwise, but that is the point. Sometimes
camels are faster than Ithought. They hit 40 miles an hour
or 60 kilometers, 65kilometers per hour in short bursts.
Fortunately, I discoveredcamel racing at a point in history
(06:02):
where they no longer subjectchild jockeys to human rights violations
and in instead they have movedonto robot jockeys that are controlled
by people remotely as theyride around the outside of the course
in tricked out sport utilityvehicles. Which might be the craziest
part I'd imagine. It's a sportthat, despite being hundreds of years
(06:24):
old, or perhaps in partbecause of it, it's mostly the parlance
of people with a bunch moremoney to spend than I've got. It's
also fascinating example ofsomething really old changing with
the times eventually. So wherein the world am I going to go if
I want to watch it live? Thisone is tricky to get a lot of people
(06:46):
in the US too, if you're under40 years old and you haven't paid
attention to geopoliticalevents in the past 30ish years, because
the Middle east is a part ofthe world that gets a Lot of hand
waving in the news here. Wetalk about it enough, but nobody
ever talks about where in theworld it is. For listeners of my
(07:08):
show, it won't be too hard tofind. I could find it because coverage
from the second Iraq war, Ipaid attention to that. It was the
first major news event that Iremember seeing on live television
in one of my friends kitchens.For people that don't remember this
stuff, let's assume we can allfind Africa and Madagascar is the
(07:32):
large island off the eastcoast of Africa, south of the equator.
It's a pretty big island. Fromthere head north past Seychelles
Episode four, then just pastthe Gulf of Aden. That's in between
Africa and the ArabianPeninsula of which the UAE is a part.
It's the large chunk of landthat sort of resembles a big chunky
(07:54):
ski boot that sits in betweenAfrica and Asia. Now follow the peninsula's
coast along Yemen and thenOman all the way through the Gulf
of Oman. And right before youround the bend into the Persian Gulf
you reach the coast of theuae. The west, south and southeast
(08:15):
borders are with Saudi Arabia.Oman is to the southeast and northeast
with a disputed northwesternborder with Qatar. They enjoy about
400 miles of Gulf coast andsome disputed islands with Iran and
Qatar. The nation is entirelyin a desert climate and the first
(08:35):
time somebody saw snow in themountains, although I am sure it
happened before this, was in2004. The slightly more than 10 million
people that live there are ina country mostly successfully diversifying
out of an oil based economyinto things like tourism as I mentioned
earlier on, and they had atleast some people living in it for
(08:57):
130,000 years. The reason thatmany of them were able to live there
was something called an oasisbecause of the large expanses of
desert in the country. So thismonth's geology term is oasis. The
importance of them is foundright in the etymology of the word,
because they were called wahior a dwelling place in the Coptic
(09:23):
language. Why? Because youcould get water there and grow things
and you could not for manymiles around because of all the desert.
There are a few different waysthat water is accessible in oases,
but they are not alwaysthrough human means, just mostly
through human means becauselike things like lakes exist and
(09:44):
springs. But the places arevital to trade routes that have been
established thousands of yearsago and they've been instrumental
in shaping regions through theinfluence of migration routes and
sometimes direct militaryoccupation in order to control migration
routes. The ones on theArabian Peninsula tend to be spring
fed or through tunnel systemsthat are dug to tap aquifers. Despite
(10:09):
their importance in theregion, oases don't actually figure
into where we enter thetimeline here. Another thing in nature
that was important to thedevelopment of the Arabian Peninsula
and perhaps present to thetimeline are pearls. But we're not
going to get buried in thathistory with the Emirates because
(10:32):
it is a far more importantpart of Bahrain's history. So we're
going to enter the timelineafter the turn of the 19th century
with more British colonialism.We haven't been there in a couple
episodes at least, but becauseof the pearl industry, I gotta at
least mention the Portuguese.That empire certainly teed up a lot
(10:55):
of the problems that we'regonna kind of ram through going forward
in this episode by raiding abunch of the coastal towns and establishing
an exploitive tax system thatstayed there for a couple of hundred
years. So like a bunch of thisstuff, it has a lot to do with them
moving on. The British hadbeen calling the coast coast of the
(11:20):
Gulf the pirate coasts sinceat least the latest 18th century
because the Portuguese hadleft the inhabitants of the Arabian
Peninsula feeling kind ofhostile against Western ships in
their coastal waters. I'm surethere's a bunch of actual piracy
that was happening for sure.But I'm also sure that the British
(11:42):
were not trying to de escalatethe situation in a way that made
sense to literally anybody buta British guy in the Royal Navy.
As such, I'm also sure that asizable portion of the so called
piracy was legitimate defenseagainst British aggression. So by
the time we enter the storyproperly, the beginning of the Persian
(12:05):
Gulf Campaign of 1809, the AlQassimi regime had been attacking
the British Empire ships forabout a decade and change. The regime
controlled what is now theStrait of Hormuz. That's a dubbed
bit between the Gulf of Omanand the Persian Gulf. What was really
(12:28):
happening was the Al Qasimiregime didn't want Europeans doing
colonialism in their countrybecause colonialism sucks for your
country. And the Britishdidn't want anybody trading with
India that they weren't makingmoney from. And modern day Gujarat
is close to the Persian Gulf.For full disclosure, I will say that
(12:49):
I have not done any reading atall about India. My knowledge there
is also thin. I know timelinesare long, much longer in India than
they are in my country. AndGujarat might have been a State about
200 years ago. Probably was, Idon't know. I'll get there when we
go to India. The East IndiaCompany and the Royal Navy teamed
(13:12):
up in order to protect Britishinterests and force a cessation of
hostility by stabilizing thesituation with a hostile action.
However, because of theNapoleonic wars which seem to have
affected basically everythingthat happened near the wars in time
or geography, Britishresources were stretched quite thin
(13:35):
and they could not entirelydestroy Al Qassimi's pretty good
navy. As such, the attackswere able to continue in 1812 and
it was left to Oman tostabilize the region through methods
that I did not read about. By1815, the regime had begun capturing
(13:56):
British flagged Indianmerchant vessels and a couple of
times they killed everybody onboard. You don't have to do this
all the time to get people'sattention. Just a couple of ships
of complete slaughter and aprompted action by the Royal Navy
and the army when they putmore than 6,000 men there via sea
(14:16):
and land. Details of that canbe heard about on other shows and
in other books. I will notefrom the perspective of the people
that live there, it definitelylooked and felt like the British
were an invading force becauseof all the invading that they were
actively doing. But for ourpurposes, the functional endpoint
(14:37):
of more literal gunboatdiplomacy and which is a thing that
I did not realize that wasgoing to get so much use on this
show, it resulted in theGeneral Maritime Treaty of 1820.
It was an agreement betweenthe rulers of the five emirates and
the first of a series ofevolving treaties and deals that
(14:57):
had Britain all wrapped up inthe Middle east stuff. In 1847, the
empire banned the ships ofpeople it had agreements with from
supporting slaves andtransporting them. The original treaties
calm things down a quite a lotat sea. But it took until the middle
(15:18):
of the 1830s for the tribes tocome to a peace agreement on land.
But that peace agreement wasthen renewed every year until 1853
with the area becoming a fullprotector of the crown. In 1892,
there were continued figuringout of borders and political agreements
(15:39):
that resulted in nine emirateseach with distinct red and white
flags. Which starts to feelawful. A lot like a union of sorts,
if I must say. The rest ofthat solidification though, and then
separation from Britain willhappen in a few minutes because it
takes us into and through thelives of the poet and the composer.
(16:03):
More pens to remember. I meanjust the one because we're going
to pick things back up in the1930s. Saad Abdel Wahab was born
in Cairo, Egypt on June 16thin 1925. And true to the pattern,
I know essentially nothingabout the early years of this man's
(16:25):
life. I do know that Saad'suncle was Mohammed Abdel Wahab and
he was a strong contender formost important Egyptian composer
of the 20th century. I'm alsopretty sure we will talk about that
guy again on this show. Therecord picks up in 1949 when our
(16:46):
composer graduated from CairoUniversity with an agricultural degree.
From there he went intobroadcasting, but he could sing really
well and someone noticed apresence and gave him the acting
bug. Throughout the 1950s,Sod's acting skills caught up to
his musical capability withhis last two films receiving largely
(17:10):
positive critical acclaim. In1957, he did the last of his seven
films and walked away to be aconsultant in the radio business.
Eventually he relocated to theEmirates for some time and worked
with radio stations onnational music. I'll note that my
(17:31):
sources on Wahab were few andthe dates in most of this stuff were
vague. So read mostly notthere, but if he composed the anthem
in the UAE like the sourcesread, he was there late 1960s going
into 1970. So after the songwe're learning about right now, he
(17:55):
moved back to Cairo, raisedtwo sons and passed on November 23rd
in 2004 in a Cairo hospital.Palestine Hospital actually. After
losing a three year battlewith an unspecified illness, he left
a legacy of hundreds of songs,eight movies and a national anthem.
(18:16):
I have not seen any of hismovies, but I have a bunch of his
songs in rotation now on myalgorithm. You should listen to him.
Guy's got quite a voice. It'sa shame that I have been unable to
locate a copy of him singingthe anthem. Let's talk about a poet.
Arif Sheikh Abdullah Al Hassanwas born in Dubai in 1952 and despite
(18:41):
being a well known man, I am acan aware of very little before that
familiar point when hiseducation starts. In 1997, Dr. Arif
Al Sheikh completed his PhD inIslamic Studies at Al Azhar University
after studying in Dubai andMecca. A note about the word chic
(19:04):
is that it is a title thatmeans different things in different
cultures in differentcontexts. Abdullah is an Islamic
scholar and sometimes they aregiven the title as an honorific.
Our poet worked for some timeas a teacher and was quickly tapped
to join the Ministry ofEducation where Al Sheik obtained
the post of Director ofEducational Services before resigning
(19:27):
with the department in 2002.I'm not sure what he's been up to
since then because Hassan isalive and well as of this release,
but activities have includedwriting and deep thought because
the terms poet and scholar arecorrect. Descriptions of this man
in addition to his work as aSharia notary and years as an advisor
(19:49):
on the Council for CommunityService. The man has no less than
14 collections of poetry. Theyrange from work in 1977 to 2018 publications.
They are from a variety ofscholarly disciplines as well, including
education, Sharia law andcontemporary royal history. Like
I mentioned, he is still withus and in fact, after a time jump
(20:14):
back to catch up to history,we are going to hear from an interview
with the good doctor himselfabout how he wrote the anthem. The
seven emirates that make upthe modern UAE are all older than
the country itself by at least100 years. Up until about the 1930s,
the British Empire did not paya ton of attention to the so called
(20:36):
Trucial States and left themto fight amongst themselves to figure
out the order of things. Andas long as the peace was generally
kept, they kind of didn'tbother them. Of course this ceased
to be true once oil was foundthere. After preliminary surveys
onshore and offshoreconcessions were made in 1939 and
(20:59):
1953 respectively. Oil waslocated in 1958 under an old pearl
bed in the Gulf and in thedesert in 1960. And by the time oil
was discovered in Abu Dhabilater in a decade, the US started
to take British contracts outthe leaders of the various sheikdoms.
(21:20):
I told you it was a variableword formed the Truchall States Council
on the skeleton of the Britishdevelopmental structure once the
Brits had begun to abandon. Ittook London from 1966 until 1971
to officially admit that theycouldn't govern the area there anymore
(21:41):
and withdrew completely inMarch of 1971. The official historical
record states that Britainjust couldn't afford to have a protectorate
military presence in the areabecause by this time the presence
of a protector had becomesomething that the crucial states
(22:01):
wanted to keep. Actually, theoffer for the Emirates to pay the
cost of keeping the ships wasrebuffed by the Crown and following
from that there was a seriesof events that was super complicated,
so I'm just going to say allof it happened and it yielded a draft
constitution in what mighthave been record time. The seven
(22:22):
emirates form the uae. Theyapparently had Saad compose the anthem
and they wanted to make surethey met the constitutional requirements,
which do include having ananthem. Initially. I can find no
specific information on whythey picked the type of anthem they
had or had composed exactlywhat he did. We do have specific
(22:48):
information about the writingthough, because our poet has said
in interviews that in 1986 theActing Minister of Education at the
time thought that it was quitea letdown for children to silently
hold a flag during the anthemwhen they should be patriotically
chanting lyrics and waving theflag. Recall that national anthems
(23:12):
are at their corenationalistic tools. It's just an
interesting moment when peopleare accidentally direct about what
that is. But to be fair, thisminister was probably genuine. They
probably genuinely wanted thekids to have something to sing and
(23:33):
they were not thinking aboutgeopolitical theory at the time.
They moved ahead with the ideaand decided that they would use the
tune that Saad had composedand have a poet write lyrics for
it. Dr. Arif Al Sheik wastapped because he worked at the Ministry
and developed school anthemsand curriculum previous to that date.
(23:58):
And he was also a well knownpoet at the time already because
Recall this was 1986, so he'dalready been writing and publishing
for about 10 years. Theminister wanted the anthem in a hurry
though, and based on mysources, he didn't really have a
reason for that other than,you know, just wanting the decision
(24:18):
to be completed. So the poetwas given a cassette tape in three
days. Initially he had troublewith the task because they'd never
written for existing musicbefore and instead just had music
set to what had been written.But after listening 60 or so times,
they were able to produce asong and his wife gave him a no note
(24:42):
situation and said, you shouldjust submit that because it's pretty
good. And of course that iswhat the Ministry chose. With that
we've got our anthem. We'vegot more to say about it, but we've
got it. And I can go on totalk about the song itself. Musically
(25:03):
speaking, we are a again inthe familiar territory of a march
like tune in 44 with a majorkey. Every time I hear an anthem
composed in it, my associationbetween that and an uplifting patriotism
are strengthened. It's gotkind of a ceremonial brightness to
(25:24):
it that makes it feel prettygood. In a variety of arrangements
from solo piano to a fullbrass military band. A purposeful
tune with bold rising linesthat does not vary. There is no swing
and sway in the purpose drivenmelody that this song represents.
Solid, confident and finishedstuff. I like it. I've got very little
(25:47):
else to say about surprises methough, because it almost seems like
sod was filling out a form tocompose this thing. It's like Mad
Libs for composition fornational anthems. Except not crazy
like Mad Libs content to get.Honestly though, there are people
who are pretty sure that hisuncle composed this song. I don't
(26:10):
think so. It is not Arabfanfare. And that will not make sense
for an undetermined number ofepisodes. Spoilers in that sentence.
Now, this is a different styleof music. It should maybe feel generic
to me, but I find myselfenjoying anthems more often than
(26:30):
not now. Maybe especially asong that if I heard it and I knew
nothing else about it ornothing at all about it, I would
think that's gotta be ananthem. With another song in the
Arabic language, I am again upagainst contextualism. A contextual
language which is verydifferent from the language that
(26:53):
I speak or languages that Ikind of know makes it tough for me
to translate things. I am alsovery much and very clearly not a
linguistic scholar, whichmeans that I've got a few translations
of the song and I've read alot about it. But ultimately I got
to pick something that I'mjust going to trust. So I'm going
(27:17):
to go with an approximation ofthe version of the Arabic language
Wikipedia article, becausebased on the edit history, there
are several people there thatare paying attention. This is another
poet that understood theassignment but was given very little
time to get it done. Whatmight have been written on Erif's
(27:43):
schedule? It's impossible forus to say, but I bet it would be
pretty great. It's so itshould not be a shock that a scholar
of Islam was heavily inspiredby traditional Islamic poetic meters
and wrote something that isvery easy to chant, almost close
to not a poem. My sources sayit's likely informed by Al Ramal
(28:08):
or Al Camille meter. But alllooking into that got me was lost
in the shocking complexity oftraditional Arabic poetic meter.
It's like such a rabbit hole.It's unbelievable. Actually. The
Internet is an amazinglearning tool, but I suffer from
fascination stuff. I'mfascinated by pretty much everything.
(28:29):
So I have to like, putblinders on when I'm online because
I get lost learning aboutthings. However, my show would be
harder, probably impossiblewithout other people thinking like
that. So let's read throughthe translation and then I'll get
into what the doctor istelling us. The piece is written
(28:51):
and sang in Arabic and I amreading an English translation. Long
live my country. Long live ourUnited Emirates. You lived for a
people whose religion is Islamand whose guide is the Quran. I have
fortified you in the name ofGod. O homeland, my country, my country,
(29:17):
my country, my country. MayGod protect you from the evils of
time. We swore to build andwork. I work, be sincere, Work, be
sincere. As long as we live,we will be faithful. May security
(29:37):
last and the flag Live long Oour Emirates, symbol of Arabism we
would sacrifice our blood foryou we sacrificed our souls for you
O homeland. We have a directLike I alluded to before, almost
not a poem. It's kind of astack of declarations. The nearly
(30:00):
not a poem part comes throughmuch more clearly in the translation
than it does if you'relistening to it sung in Arabic due
to the rhyming aspect, butthat's only true if you don't understand
Arabic, I think is something Idefinitely understand better if I
(30:20):
knew a bunch of differentlanguages, but that's a limitation
of this show. As with thecomposition, it gets a little bit
of a checklist vibe for me. Iwill say that this is not an uncommon
thing in anthems, and it doesnot automatically make an anthem
bad or good or any otheradjective. You're allowed to not
like these songs because musicis subjective. All I'm saying is
(30:45):
that there are anthems we'vecovered that were winners of contests
with very strict checklistsand for what had to be left in and
out of them that are alsosongs that I happen to really much
enjoy. To be fair, we alsoneed to understand that our poet
was given three days, so he'sin a tight time frame here, and he
(31:07):
was asked to write a song inthe reverse order of how he would
normally have done things.There are 10 lines, and we're gonna
go tackle it as 10 themes,because I think that's almost gonna
work for us. The piece openswith a strong and direct statement
of national pride and unity.I'm going to say again that our writer
knew the assignment andapplied his considerable skill to
(31:28):
writing the correct anthem.It's a good opening line, actually.
Stirring and direct are on myanthem checklist. Then the second
line continues with direct asa theme, but this is pride in Islam
and the teachings of the Quranand not the country so much. It's
not a surprise in a veryheavily religious country whose official
(31:52):
religion is in fact Islam, andwhere several of the ruling families
have very good claims todescendants of the Prophet Muhammad.
If you're interested in thatstuff, I'm going to direct it to
the Wikipedia to start,because that particular lineage is
well documented and highlycontentious in certain areas and
(32:13):
not a topic that I am wellqualified to talk about. Regardless,
anchoring the country inIslamic tradition does speak directly
to core Emirate values and theroots of the people there. Following
this close would lead a morecontemporary believer to think of
this stuff as blessings,rather than the older sounding fortified
(32:37):
that I used but that's thebetter translation, so I've read,
is fortified. But the theme ofdivine protection is in fact a direct
beseechment for followsdirectly from the religious traditionalism
in the previous verse. Verse 4continues to imply a strong preference
(32:58):
for chantability, but I willsay that it works well for me as
sung, the verse, coupled withthe fifth verse, kind of picking
up the theme of divineprotector rather than developing
on it, are what gets the wordsformulaic checklist and filler sprinkled
throughout. A lot of what Iread about this song, Evils of Time
is a nice touch, though it's agreat line, and protecting a nation
(33:22):
from the ravages of the agesdoes seem different from fortifying
it or strengthening it withdivine power, which is where I run
into the complications of alanguage that I'll get better with,
because there's a bunch ofArabic countries, but this is only
number two for me. Onward toline six and a theme that we see
(33:43):
again and again in an anthem,but is also one of the things that
make this song work as well asit does literal nation building through
duty, labor, and the sheerwill of national effort. The general
consensus in my reading isthat sincere is the right translation,
but it feels kind of like astodgy descriptor of the diligence
(34:05):
that the vocal tone implies.That is, I think, the very first
time that I've used the wordstodgy as a descriptor of anything
mildly fun. It's not the wrongword, though, because the seventh
verse takes a stab at loyalty,which is again not uncommon for anthems,
since it fits well in thegenerally nationalistic intent of
(34:26):
the things. But reinforcingdevotion, despite being on theme,
is something that maybe youshouldn't use the same phrase again
twice to do again. It actuallyworks here in a lot of ways. It adds
to the rhythmic chantavailable in this anthem, and it
drives the verse along. So itsort of. It sort of does what it's
(34:50):
supposed to do, but you know,it's the same thing. Then a swing
even deeper into anthemterritory as the song asks for safety
and the flag. There are goodterms for the medium, since the flag
really means patriotic spiritand safety is peace. That leads well
(35:10):
into regional identity in thepenultimate theme, symbol of Arabism,
in case we've gotten losthere, even though I think this is
the line that lacks the mostin the song, it's a short, declarative
statement, and according tothe people that can read Arabic,
it just sort of states inabstract and has no contextual grounding
(35:33):
all in all, I I think IshiBeladi it finishes strongly though
it's an anthem territory. Thelast verse is a great sacrifice that
has been made and will be madein the name of the nation. A lot
of western listeners will balkat the talk of violent sacrifice,
but come on, anthems exist atall is a pretty western concept,
(35:57):
and lots of these things arefull of violence. Where do we get
to? France? Someday I'll writesomething that addresses anthems
in a more general sense, butI'm not there yet, so we're putting
a large pin in that statement.As far as violence, like I said,
this is nothing. Wait, wedon't spend time glorying in violence
(36:19):
on the anthems podcasts. Butas far as violence goes, I've got
no choice but to talk aboutthe current anthem. And it's not
even close to the worst thatwe've read so far. And you know there's
more violent ones coming. Atleast I think not yet, because a
(36:39):
lot of what I do isasynchronous. Overall though, we're
gonna get back on track here.Overall, I don't dislike this, even
though I recently said on aCAN fundraiser live stream that it
is my least favorite anthem sofar. But I think I'm just starting
to like anthems. It's alsoearly days. There's more than 160
(37:03):
of these things to go, so I'vegot some time. There's gonna be bad
ones, there's gotta be. Butperhaps more importantly, my taste
and knowledge are growingconstantly. I try to make that a
point. I'm understandinganthems better as I learn. So this
goes on the list as far asgood anthems go, despite me thinking
it's mid level inspired and itbut it's exactly what it's supposed
(37:28):
to be stuff. The slightemotional distance and historical
feel of the anthem gets prettyright for the uae, despite the criticisms
that it brings. Maybe that'swhat we want in an anthem. Sometimes
you can consider that duringthe credits the writing, recording
and production for the showare done by me and I wrote and played
(37:52):
the theme music. The music wasused with my permission. Unless otherwise
noted, the anthems I play arepublic domain. Some other equivalently
free license, a thing that Igot permission to play or have at
least made a good faith effortto get permission to play this time.
I played the audio of theanthem performance on December 2nd
(38:14):
in 2024. It's clipped out of apublicly available television clip
that celebrates IndependenceDay equivalent in the uae. My sources
are contained in the shownotes and the most direct way to
get to those Show Notes isanthems podcast.com I can be found
(38:34):
on Facebook and WhatsApp,although WhatsApp I've never been
contacted on ever. As theAnthems podcast I was thinking about
the whole social media thingand maybe someone could reach out
to me and let me know whichnetwork it would be good to get this
show onto. Someone elsedefinitely knows more than me about
(38:56):
this so drop me a line. Untilthen. My advertising budget is limited
so I am asking you to help meget the episodes onto whatever platform
you can with the hashtaganthemspod. Think Instagram, Mastodon,
Blue Sky, Twitter or any ofthe other ones. All you cool kids
(39:16):
around that I have no ideaabout because I'm a guy in my 40s
in the US. It'd be cool if youshared this content with others and
perhaps it will somehow leadto lingering human rights issues
in a post child camel jockeyworld getting dealt with. As always,
you can email me corrections,comments, concerns, suggestions,
(39:38):
ideas, instructions on how todo stuff, and ask me questions@anthemspodmail.com
perhaps you want me to hearexactly how mad or happy you are
with my content or text meplus 1203-759-8375 or better still,
(39:59):
leave me a review wherever youcan so more people can hear me or
give me a rating on whateveryour podcast app is or wherever you
can do that because all thatstuff matters. This show is can credentialed,
which means you can reportincidences of harassment, abuse or
other harm on their content at617-249-4255 or on the website@creator
(40:25):
accountability network.org youcan even volunteer your time there,
join up as a creator or throwthem a couple bucks. Maybe you are
forced to confront whether ornot you think color is real by somebody
and you have been frozen bythe because the answer you have involves
some really complicatedthoughts about quantum chromodynamics
(40:49):
and it's impossible to havethat conversation in the time that
you have been allowed. So yousettle for recommending this very
episode of the Anthemspodcast. I would take that. But even
if all that happens is thatyou listen to one more of these shows,
I sincerely thank you for yourtime and I'll see you somewhere soon.
(41:10):
Somewhere different.
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