Arabic Music’s Rise In Global Popularity Must Come With A Rise In Cultural Preservation And Activism

With its swift turnarounds and the virality prospects on TikTok, the music industry is the canary in the cultural appropriation coal mine. According to the IFPI Global Music Report 2025, the “Middle East & North Africa (MENA) was the fastest-growing region and saw recorded music revenues increase by 22.8% in 2024.” 

In the last two years, I attended well over 100 MENA events throughout the greater Los Angeles area, the majority of which involved fundraising for Palestine. I have seen people gather in earnest to support Palestinian and larger MENA region cultures, and the resulting boom has been bittersweet, something I am calling a “MENAssance” – a diaspora-fueled resurgence of art, music, and cultural tradition from the MENA region.

Our collective culture has hit a relevance high in the diaspora, especially noted in music as Arab artists reach ever-bigger, global audiences. Elements of this “MENAssance” have been fast-tracked by the pro-Palestine movement. We see it in the rise of values-based SWANA club scenes, viral DJ sets, the endless rolodex of MENA artists entering the scene or speaking out online, as well as new regional magazines — like Rolling Stone MENA. As exciting as this may be for the third culture community, history begs the question: How do we stop the avaricious commodification of our culture?

American music has long utilized Arabic influences, most famously with Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin” sampling Hossam Ramzy’s version of Abdel Halim Hafez’s “Khosara.” The uncredited underbelly of so much popular music has been rooted in MENA artists, carving out a storied place in Western pop culture. Yet how we have been represented in the West has set the stage for the atrocities faced by MENA communities over the last few decades. Non-Arabs singing along to Arabic songs may be a welcome surprise to our weary friends and family, but there is always a cost to mainstream relevance in the West. 

Underrepresented groups have faced their fair share of culture vulture behavior, and when it comes to comparisons, many have been made between Arab and Latino cultures. Between the Moorish influence on the Spanish and mass Arab migrations through Mexico and South America, we have Shakira, shared words, shared food, and often shared values. What the US calls “Latin music”—a flattening term for the depth and diversity of Mexican, Spanish, Caribbean, Central, and South American music—skyrocketed with a big boom in the 90s, with Ricky Martin and his hit record, “Livin’ La Vida Loca.” This became the foundation for artists like Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, and Daddy Yankee, and shaped pop culture in the early 2000s through today, where the region’s artists like Bad Bunny have reached a new zenith in a reported “Latin Music Takeover.” 

Hitting record profitability, this takeover is unsurprisingly timed with the vilification of Latino and migrant communities. ICE is targeting Latinos regardless of citizenship after the reported Latino music boom. Their safety has not been guaranteed just because their musicians are breaking new ground, because what ultimately matters is that it makes corporations their money. Music may be a doorway to greater cultural understanding, but its popularity alone will not resolve racialized issues in the US without being backed by community action and solidarity.

Few communities know the struggle of violent commodification, especially regarding music, as intimately as the Black American community. Black influence on music can be traced back to the origins of most major American genres, like rock, jazz, blues, hip hop, rap, and more. An apt story is that of the blackface performer who invented the name Jim Crow, Thomas Dartmouth Rice: a white man who built a successful career stereotyping Black people to such a degree that this very caricature denoted decades of legalized racism. The way the Black community has been stolen from for the sake of a music corporation’s next big buck is simply a continuation of the stolen Black labor this country’s global relevance was built upon – the Black experience in music, plus the African diaspora’s experience as Amapiano and Afrobeats hit new heights, are ones I urge us all to understand and learn from.

Like many ethnic groups whose pain presupposes their Western commercial value, the plight of the Palestinian people has given MENA communities a cause to rally behind, and all our communities have been clear: loving our music and culture should mean loving our right to exist safely. It is no wonder Bad Bunny is refusing to tour in the US, as his latest album focuses on anti-colonialism and the rapid gentrification of his home, the occupied island of Puerto Rico.

The commodification of culture steamrolls innovation: making art solely for consumption and revenue is a hollow venture, and gives audiences an increasingly shallow, monolithic reference for our diversity. If that is all people get access to, it makes it so much easier to treat us and our issues just as shallowly. If they see us as “other,” they feel no claim to empathizing with our pain. And yet, even some MENA artists toy with these tropes and walk an incredibly fine line between representation and self-orientalization. Whether that’s Elyanna’s snake dancing, the latest trend with the Bedouin coin face veils – traditionally meant to represent a woman’s dowry – or leaning too much into ancient imagery for Western viewership à la Mohammad Ramadan at Coachella, these visuals can become more caricature-like as they become appropriated and removed from the source, subverting cultural authorship just to make entertainment palatable for Western audiences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_huGPVigwmI&list=RD_huGPVigwmI&start_radio=1

However, there are levels to this, and if the prior examples are on the more subjective end, watch the “ARABI” music video for an idea of what’s more objectively problematic. Resisting exoticization requires unique, nuanced depictions of cultural identity that break the racist expectations of the MENA experience, not enforce them.

Diaspora MENA artists have struggled for recognition in a Western industry structure that does not value their lives, let alone their voices. Artists like Omar Offendum, NARCY, Thanks Joey, Soof, and now Nemahsis have come up in hostile territory, curating a musical presence that honors their roots and their source culture without exploiting it – what will that look like for the MENA artists continuing to come of age now? Educating one another about our shared heritage, archiving ancestral wisdom, and maintaining culturally authentic art forms are ways we can build a baseline of connectedness.

Additionally, this gives us and the creative industries ample opportunity to hire culturally relevant creatives, leaving them with no excuses for appropriation. We are all trying to stay afloat through fascist regimes, a sharply downturning economy, and a livestreamed genocide, and yet, undeniably, it is made all the more endurable in company. We must work to legitimately heal wounds, not just in ourselves, but in our communities here and back home. We must confront internal racism, hold one another accountable, and build long-term solidarity across ethnic lines through sustainable practice rather than competition. 

There can be a world where we listen to indigeneity alongside modernity, seek internal respect and appreciation over external validation, and ultimately set a standard for MENA portrayal in media and music that cannot be undermined. Our liberation, our joy, and our representation in this cacophonic melting pot cannot come at the cost of the lives of our brothers and sisters back home. Therefore, only by choosing community over profit, collaboration over competition, can we expect to stand in unison against empire for a truly free and creatively vibrant future.