BY SALEH ABDULBAQI
YEMEN TIMES STAFF
Internationally renowned Yemeni rap star –of American nationality- Hagage Masaed, known as AJ in the music industry, is currently paying a first visit to his original village Guban in Dalae. Ever since he started singing in the USA, Hagage has been continuously on the rise and has become a prominent rap star widely known in the USA and elsewhere.
Born in 1963 in Youngstown, Ohio, Hagage -or AJ- developed a unique and spectacularly new rap music style that combines Arab tunes and words with English rap.
AJ was influenced by such artists as Cameo, Parliament Funkadelik, Zapp and Ohio plays in his high school years. He used to go to Dearborn, a city in SE Michigan, near Detroit, which is heavily populated with Middle-Easterners. During his stay in Dearborn, AJ was influenced by Yemeni and Arab culture and was inspired by artists like Abu baker Salem Balfaqeeh, Ahmed Al-Sunaidar and Sameera Towfiq. AJ was encouraged to learn Arabic by his cousins who supported his efforts to form Yemeni songs in English language. Influenced by the rap music industry which emerged in 1978, AJ started writing his own rap music and songs with an Arabian touch.
Through his poetry and songs, AJ attempted to introduced Islam and monotheism. However, he faced serious criticism by the Arab community that strongly rejected this attempt. Consequently, he stopped singing religious songs that he insists were “purely to help in spreading Islam and its traditions among Americans”. He then shifted to songs dealing with Arab and Yemeni cultures, which were the subject of his poetry later on. His song “Yemen, my great country”, in which he describes the historical and tourist features of Yemen was warmly welcomed by the Yemeni and Arab community in the USA. Encouraged by his success in this album, he revolutionized Arab rap music in 1995 by mixing Arabic and English words and melodies using popular Yemeni musical instruments such as the ‘Mizmar’ –a special Yemeni flute. His first musical album was produced in 1996 by Rolar Company in California. The album was a tremendous success in both the American and expatriate markets.

AJ participated in many musical festivities which increased his popularity and paved the way for him to produce other albums by major companies in the USA. However, the September 11 attacks affected his production due to harassment caused by American authorities to Arabs resulting in the hesitation of major production companies dealing with artists of Arab origin. Those negative developments came in a time he was planning to record a new song with a Persian female artist named Suhaila but the terrorist attacks and other circumstances prevented him from implementing his plan.
It is worth mentioning that AJ benefited from being at home and distributed his first album here in Yemen. The Yemeni singer also recorded in prominent broadcasting stations such as Francisco and Brooklyn Radios.
In sum, we can safely assume that AJ is a Yemeni artist trying to bridge the gap between civilizations and of course expose Yemen to the West with beautiful melodies and fascinating poetry.

Written by Abdulrahman Mutahhar
Translated by Janet Watson
Ma – What on earth can I do, Mus’id? Look after your grandchildren, or look after you, or do the housework, or should I just shout out for the emergency services!
M – You know best. See what’ll help you out most, and do that!
Ma – How on earth I am going to find help when I’m bearing all this responsibility and you’re simply sitting there looking on as if nothing was wrong!
M – What can I do? Go and hire a cannon and force my daughter-in-law to return to her children, or get the police to order her to take the children to live with her. What do you think? Which would be easier, Mus’ida?
Ma – Come on, do you want the truth? I tell you, I’ve never seen anything like those in-laws we’ve got, and I don’t expect I’ll see the like of them again in my lifetime!
M – They say your daughter-in-law is one of the family!
Ma – Exactly! And the fact is that this daughter-in-law of yours has not become part of the family, and no-one in her family has a beard we could pull!
M – We don’t want to pull anyone’s beard. Either the mother comes back to look after her children, or she takes her children to live with her and we make sure she has everything both she and the children need.
Ma – Only a proper gabili would understand that type of speech. Not everyone who has girded their loins is a good, upright person.
M – That’s right. Not everyone who’s girded their loins is a good, upright person. The good person is one who can prove themselves beyond reproach. But I’ll tell you one thing, entirely between you and me, all the blame and criticism so far can be directed to you.
Ma – If I’m to blame for anything, or it turns out I’m in the wrong, I’ll slaughter a cow for them, Mus’id!
M –It’s gone beyond that stage. Your daughter-in-law told me in no uncertain terms in front of her family, ‘I would rather share a cave on the mountainside with the baboons than live with Mus’ida, even if she lived in Bilgis’s palace with her throne and all the crown jewels!’
Ma – So now what? The mountains are full of baboons! The only thing I’d be worried about is the baboons having a heart attack at the sight of her, and they’d be no one to resuscitate them!
M – Honestly, I could have laid down my jambiya in front of them when she said she’d rather live with baboons than with you, but her mother is the daughter of a proper gabili. She slapped her daughter over the head, shoved her out of the room, and locked the door.
Ma – This isn’t the time for poetic description, Mus’id. I want a solution. Either she comes back for her children, or she takes them away with her and takes care of them properly. Please think, Mus’id! Her children are still very young – one’s only a year old, and the other’s still crawling. The only person they’ve got is their mother!
M – Exactly! But they told me they would only bring her back if she had a house of her own. If not, the children can stay with you and their daughter with them, and we’ll all have to figure a way out!
Ma – A way out fighting over two babies! Are we supposed to be bringing up a generation for the state to be proud of, or are we rearing sheep and goats, Mus’id?
M – What options do we have? You really pestered me to marry the boy off so that you could celebrate his wedding and ululate from the door and out of the window, and I was still supporting him at the time. That’s the first thing. And the second is that with your meanness and greed you’ve put a proper embargo on the poor woman – sugar, tea, coffee and flour only ever emerge when you dole them out. That’s the second thing. The third thing is that she told her husband to get off his butt and do a proper day’s work. He said, ‘Fine!’ turned over, and went back to sleep. The fourth thing is that when she fled to her father’s house to give birth to the two children, she had to sell half her gold for her birth celebrations and the things she needed for herself and the children, because of your miserliness, and my lack of means. The fifth thing is that she became really fed up because her husband was unable to earn enough to keep himself and his family, and he’s built like an ox! And all this, Mus’ida, is due to the difficulties of married life and the problems of bringing up children. And you’re at the root of it, because you’re the one who got me to marry our son off before he was capable of earning his own living. Listen to me, Mus’ida. I’m going to bring our daughter-in-law back to live under our roof and look after her children. And I’ll make sure she gets everything she wants. You can then get up early and pull our son out of bed, and give him an axe so he can go and chop wood and sell it. And tell him he needn’t bother to show his face until he’s got himself a house for his wife and children. Marriage isn’t something to be taken lightly in order to please your son. Marriage is about having children, and responsibility, and providing security. It sorts out the men from the boys. As the Arab proverb goes, ‘Not everyone who has ridden a horse can call himself a rider.’