‘Our voice is tremendous’: The sing-along craze taking over Arab society in Israel
The crowd singing in Karmiel, July 2025
Sheren Fallah Saab reports in Haaretz on 16 July 2025:
At the entrance to the performance by the Bayat choir at the Karmiel Auditorium last weekend, a man in his 30s was handing out leaflets. The brochure was headlined “Ghannu Maa Bayat” – “Singing with Bayat.” “We are opening the doors for you into a fascinating world, where your voices merger with the sounds of the orchestra. On this special night, you will be more than just listeners: You will become the stars of the show,” the brochure said.
Two women in their 50s, Salma and Umayma, have come from Nazareth with their mother, Nayla. They helped her down the stairs and went with her to the second row. “We have been to a previous performance by them, and the experience was extraordinary – to sing along to old-time songs,” Umayma recalled. “Our mother wanted very much to come. We got tickets, and then war broke out with Iran, and we were afraid they will cancel. But here it is, at last.”
Aisha, 43, from Tur’an, came with friends. She was wearing a dress in deep blue and a white celebratory hijab. “We have been waiting for it anxiously,” she said. “I came because I heard a lot of positive responses from people who have been to the previous show, and I saw videos on Instagram. I debated a lot whether to come, because I am not used to singing in public, but I decided to try.”
Even before the evening started, there was a sense of quiet expectation in the air. More couples joined, and the 780-seat hall reached full capacity. The night’s presenter, Radio Al-Shams presenter Rania al-Alam addressed the audience: “This is an unusual night. Why? Because the stage is not just over here, and the audience is not just over there. Today, we are all part of the stage, and we are all singers.
“I wish you could stand here and see the beautiful picture – smiling faces and shiny eyes, longing for music. We came here to dream, to awaken memories and enrich them with our voices. Your singing along to a song is not just optional – it is the mainstay of this performance. Be who you are, and raise your voice from the heart.”
The curtain opens to the first notes of Fairuz’s “Nassam Alanyal Hawa.” On stage was a musical ensemble and an 18-piece choir conducted by Darwish, a musician and composer from the town of Rameh who plays the violin, the oud and the bouzouki. Together with the powerful singing by the audience, the sounds turned into a deluge of voices, accompanied by hundreds of hands up in the air. For two and a half hours, the border between stage and audience was erased – a collective human celebration of belonging, yearning and power.
“When Fairuz’s song started, I just closed my eyes and sang. I did not care who was next to me. I felt at home,” said Razan, 32, from the village of Iksal. “There is something almost therapeutic about everybody singing the same words together. It is calming, funny and joyful.”
Amal Markus, a singer from Kafr Yasif, in 2020.
One big choir
The Bayat Choir was founded in 2006 in the Galilee village of Mi’ilya with the intention of reviving classical Arabic music, especially Lebanese music, through rich vocal arrangements for choir and ensemble. Over the years, its members performed all over Israel, but over this last year Bayat has been presenting a new format: singalong-based performances that quickly became a hit among Arabic speakers in Israel.
More than 10 performances have already been held in Nazareth, Jaffa, Tarshiha, Haifa and Karmiel – sometimes twice in the same venue, by public demand. Every performance sold out. The audience, comprising elderly people and young, women and men, seems to have yearned for an opportunity to sing together.
The performance in Karmiel was also attended by groups from the Golan Heights. “We drove for almost an hour and a half to be a part of this evening, and it was worth every minute of it,” said Siham, 36, from Majdal Shams. “In the last part, when we sang Umm Kulthum’s ‘A Thousand and One Nights,’ it felt like intoxication. Body and mind were hypnotized by the connection between audience and musicians.”
Siham’s remarks underscore the growing thirst for spheres where the audience doesn’t just listen but is also present, creative and heard. The success of Bayat’s sing-along nights is no isolated incident; rather, it is part of a phenomenon that has been making waves all over the Arab world – from Morocco through Tunisia to Egypt and Lebanon – in which performances are held without a led singer, and the audience is responsible for the singing.
This began on August 2023, when conductor Amine Boudchar of Morocco led a sing-along performance at Tunisia’s Carthage Festival that included, in addition to his musical ensemble, some 40,000 participants. Boudchar, 35, drew inspirations from previous events where women of different ages came together in cultural centers to sing together, and he had upgraded sing-alongs into an actual performance. Boudchar took pains about the quality of the music, the instrumental ensemble, lighting and production, and succeeded in attracting attention all over the Arab world.
Journalist Hanan Mabrouk addressed Boudchar’s move last year for the London-based Al-Arab newspaper: “The Arab public was always a music-loving public, but the pattern of behavior in performances was well-known in advance,” she wrote. “In the past, audiences bought tickets in order to enjoy the voice of their favorite singer, rather than the other way around. People who came to performances by Umm Kulthum or Abdel Halim Hafez to sing out loud were few and far between.”
Boudchar had introduced a real innovation, she explained. “He created a new relationship between conductor, musicians and the audience, turning them into one big choir. His experiment met with success around the Arab world thanks to videos he uploads from his performances. This raises curiosity and a desire to become a part of this.” Mabrouk added that “Digital media succeeded in overturning the principles of the music industry and in giving control to the public that is embracing what it sees online with dizzying speed.”
Moroccan conductor Ahmed Baro adopted the concept of sing-along-based performances, as did Lebanese conductor Elie el-Alia. El-Alia’s latest performance was in Beirut a couple of months ago. “This is a notion I wanted to pursue for a long time, to have the audience lead the singing,” he said in an interview with Lebanese music channel Aghani. “Nowadays there is a daring willingness to pursue such ideas. It stems from a desire to be closer to the audience and to make a connection. To me, this is a type of therapy, as well as an opportunity for the audience to merge with the music – with classical, folk and contemporary songs.”
Singer Amal Murkus, also a TV and radio host, agrees. “There is a kind of therapy in sing-alongs. It excites and empowers the audience and invokes the feeling that we are together, and that our voice is tremendous,” she told Haaretz. Murkus, too, ascribes the success of such performances to the power of social media, especially viral videos. “This perpetuates a notion that is currently developing – that anybody can be a star. Everybody can open an Instagram page, upload videos, create content and be famous. The audience is no longer content with just sitting and listening to a singer. They want to sing and be heard.”
The link to social media stardom is evident in the Bayat choir’s performance in Karmiel. Women were pulling out selfie sticks and streaming the performance live on Instagram and Snapchat. Every man and woman were the stars that night, sharing the performance with those who were not in attendance. “Shares on social media are part of this event,” says Aya, 29, of Majdal Krum, when asked why is it important to her to record and upload these videos.
“This is not an everyday event. Look around you – people are singing, their heart is opening up. I believe that music, especially when everybody is singing together, bridges the gaps between us. Each person here comes from a different religious background, from different places, towns or villages, but Bayat succeed in creating a unifying musical atmosphere.”
“People today don’t need someone to mediate between them and the ensemble or the conductor,” says Souheil, 28, of Nazareth, who came with his family. “They upload a picture on Instagram, tag the singers or the instrumentalists, put out the good word and share their feelings about that evening. This activity repeats with every participant who uploads and tags. This is how you create a community around an event, how you get people to want to come again.”
Not like the kibbutz
Murkus points out that multi-piece singing was part of the cultural landscape of Arab society in the past. It developed from life in agricultural communities – weddings, olive harvest, fishing and field work. People used to gather to sing folk songs together, sometimes accompanied by a flute. “I remember when I was a child, on the night before a wedding, people all used to sing together,” the Kafr Yasif native recalls. “Someone with a flute would sit in the middle, surrounded by the voices of the neighborhood.”
However, changes in Arab society – such as the transition from an agriculture-based economy to a trade- and services-based economy – have marginalized this tradition, turning it into a nostalgic memory.
Sing-alongs in Arab society are distinct from those in Jewish society, according to Nili Belkind, an ethnomusicologist from the Hebrew University. “Sing-alongs in Israel took shape around a canon of songs promoted by the culture policy of the Histadrut [national labor federation], for example, and after the establishment of the state of Israel, by the Ministry of Education. The idea was that through singing together, we will become a people that feels and experiences together – that is, that singing together creates a collective.”
She stresses that “Sing-alongs were not designed for professional performances; rather, it was predicated on the notion that all you need is a guitar or an accordion in order to sing together, with the content comprising mainly classical Eretz Israel songs,” referring to early Zionist folk music that emphasized agricultural themes. “Along the way, songs were added to the original canon, such as songs by Naomi Shemer and by others who created songs that were suitable to the Eretz Israel songs genre. The songs were intended to shape a collective consciousness, and with time became an artifact of nostalgia for old-time Eretz Israel, believed by people to have been better or more innocent or more beautiful.”
On sing-along performances by Boudchar, Bayat and others, the repertoire includes songs from the golden age of Arab music: songs of longing, love and emotion that click one’s nostalgia gland. Umm Kulthum, Fairuz, Abdel Halim Hafez, George Wassouf all headline the lineup, alongside classics such as Majida El Roumi’s “Kalamat,” with lyrics by Nizar Qabbani. There is not a whisper of nationalist or political songs, nor of love songs to the land.
The discrepancy between the two cultures, Arab and Jewish, is not limited to practice but also extends to essence. Sing-alongs in Jewish Israeli culture were born as an instrument for constructing a national identity. In contrast, sing-alongs in Arab culture seem to stem from a seething desire to create a safe space for self-expression. At a time when Arab society in Israel is facing a sense of political suffocation and growing uncertainty, Bayat succeeded in offering this alternative space, an evening where the Arabic language is not a cause for fear or concealment, but a source of pride; a direct link to the musical world that exists in Arab countries.
Alongside the sense of celebration, Murkus also points out the price of overindulgence in the past. “With all due respect to them doing joyful things, they are really perpetuating only what used to be, rather than creating new things. This is disheartening to musicians such as myself and others who wish to make original music. There is a fear of doing new things and not enough media that spreads new works. How much airplay do I get in the Arab world?” she wonders.
“Gulf countries have monopolized Arab music and have been buying all the record companies. They manage the digital arenas, and they decide what music to play – they do not support songs for children who are victims of war; rather, they support songs about simple love. In this situation, there is a vacuum and a longing for music that our parents grew up on. This allows big choirs to revive the legacy of Arab music.”
This article is reproduced in its entirety