“Here comes the frogman again,” I said to myself as I was forced by a friend of mine to listen to a Western singer who sounds like he’s swallowed a frog and decided he can sing without taking it out. The lyrics he sings, if I dare call them lyrics, are so full of obscene words that I wonder if there is any law against using such words in songs.
And yet, I discovered later, this singer was only part of a whole wave of new music that is being adored by the young, here and abroad. This singer and his clan are on satellite TV all the time, something that would have caused an uproar 10 years ago. But here we are in the 21st century where ugliness is greeted as “being different”.
Is it the whole atmosphere of this century, or am I being prim and proper about it, as a relative of mine who happens to adore this wave once called me.
So maybe I am, but I just cannot think of the sort of baggy and ripped jeans worn by lots of this generation as looking nice. Nor of the way they to make themselves look ugly in the every possible way. Their hairstyles and clothes don’t have anything to relate them to any concept of attire. It could be that tastes have simply changed, but to me it seems that his is a reflection of a new spirit, and boredom with the norm is one of its signs.
Looking around in the streets of Jeddah, and away from the young and hip, still ugliness rules. Buildings that don’t have anything in common except for cell-like windows, and absolutely no balconies, or if they want to be daring they can do with a hint of a balcony, a very small hole that doesn’t serve as nor resemble a balcony, but for some serves as storage with a view.
Telephone cords hanging everywhere, not to mention laundry and satellite dishes. If you miss all that because you are now accustomed to the not-so-attractive street scenes, then colors have to play a role in attracting attention. Now people have different tastes, and accordingly building have different colors to go with their owners’ tastes.
Some buildings are yellow; others are green, blue, velvet or even stark red. Now we have the freedom of the world in deciding which color will strike people most, it doesn’t have to go with any architectural style because we simply don’t have any.
This is exactly why some of us adore the old buildings of Balad, since they at least stand for our cultural heritage. And some attempt to keep that style by building their own houses in the same style. But on the other end of the scale there are those who think that Greek architecture is more representative of their culture. So this is where we see all those building that attempt to be copies of, say, the White House everywhere. If you pass by those buildings you might expect the American president waving to you from the balcony.
But it’s not really fair to blame people for all that. After all there doesn’t seem to be a law that controls building styles in our country.
I remember a debate in the British papers about a new building in London that people called the gherkin, because it looked peculiar and was very different in architectural style from the surrounding buildings.
That happened in London, but here it is always OK to have any ugly building in whatever color and adorned with whatever accessories the inhabitants choose. By the same token it seems to be OK for young people to wear tattered clothes and listen to people whose only relationship with music is that they happened to be at the studio at the time when somebody decided to produce a song.
