Mike's Oud Forums

Oud on Arthur the Kids show

Elie Riachi - 1-4-2005 at 01:59 PM

Here is something interesting and eductional. My 4 year old son likes to watch the kids shows on PBS kids here in Kansas. One of the shows he watches is Arthur and they had the whole show thsi afternoon devoted to Lebanese and MiddleEastern traditions (mainly Leb.) and the oud was the major feature of the show along with desserts, debkeh and the tradidtional Eastern church. I must say it was well done and in a very good taste. We need more shows that bridge cultures and advocates tolerence. The oud that was in the show was one of those with the whole bowl done with the mosaic pattern of MOP (for better visual effects probbably.)

Has anyone else seen this show?

oudplayer - 1-4-2005 at 05:34 PM

hey elie that so funny bc i thinki saw that along time ago but not sure . and if you guys rent the movie around the world in 80 days by jackie chan there is a part where they go to istanbule and they have belly dances and arnold shwrasinager playing the oud i am telling you he sounds great and i heard that he practiced along time to play the oud
u should see it i likes the movei
thx sammy

Elie Riachi - 1-4-2005 at 07:50 PM

I'll have to watch that movie.

Something peculuar about the way the oud was played in the cartoon. They had the real oud and a cartoon replica of it. In the show they have real people but they also go back to the cartoon characters. The oud player is a cartoon character and I noticed that he plays the oud left handed and without changing the order of the strings, just turned the oud 180°, so the bass ends up on the bottom of the oud which was correctly strung with 11 strings and remained consistent throughout the whole show.

Multi Kulti - 1-5-2005 at 05:05 AM

I play this way :D

Elie Riachi - 1-8-2005 at 02:15 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by oudplayer
.... and if you guys rent the movie around the world in 80 days by jackie chan there is a part where they go to istanbule and they have belly dances and arnold shwrasinager playing the oud i am telling you he sounds great and i heard that he practiced along time to play the oud
u should see it i likes the movei
thx sammy


Hello Sammy,

To be frank, I will probably never watch an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie in my life. Unfotunately, this man has made a large chunk of his fame and fortune by stereo-typing certain ethnic groups, particularly Arabs. If it would have been any other ethnic group, the media would have screamed foul. So you see, in my opinion, Arnold's movies are not about building bridges between cultures, they are about blowing them up to kingdom come.

eliot - 1-9-2005 at 01:44 PM

A student of mine burned a .avi of the movie to show me "our" governor playing the oud (scary!)

If you look closely, you will notice that in the distant shots, when you can identify Arnie's features, he's not actually connecting the pick with oud. He's truly playing "air oud." In the closeup shots, the arm that is playing the oud is a different color and thickness than in the distant shot. They didn't do a great job in creating the illusion of "the Governator" playing the oud.

And yes, the movie revolves around particularly offensive stereotypes of Arab sultans with their harems... the director of the movie defended this by saying they were just doing a faithful recreation of the original book. Which is kind of like saying "well everyone else is telling (insert highly offensive material here: holocaust, tsunami, genocide, Ashey Simpson) jokes, why can't I?"

Elie Riachi - 1-9-2005 at 02:56 PM

The saving grace in this country, the USA, is that there are elections and even the President gets changed by elections after a term or two max. Not sure about term limits on governors though, but still they have to be re-elected by the people to stay in office.

eliot - 1-9-2005 at 09:32 PM

It's very disconcerting when you live in a part of the state where only 7% of the people voted for the B-film hero-cum-politician. And even more disconcerting when he can't even learn to play the oud.

I'm not sure on the term limit possibilities for Arnie, since he wasn't technically elected in a regular election. There will be some messy politics come election time, for sure.