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When I got the call asking if I wanted to interview Natacha Atlas, a belly dancer and singer who makes ethno-fusion dance music both on her own and with a network of producers, DJs, and players known as Transglobal Underground, I was a bit skeptical. It seemed too perfect: get a belly dancing writer/singer (moi) to do a story on a singing belly dancer. But I was afraid that a layperson's idea of what a belly dancer did would clash with my own reality. I mean, I don't buy into those "Arabian Nights" fantasies the way a "civilian" would. I know a lot about Middle Eastern culture, have twice visited Egypt to study music and dance, and work in Arabic clubs and restaurants an average of five nights a week. If Natacha wasn't the real thing, I was going to be able to sniff it out, and the resulting article might not be pretty.
"Okay," I sighed with resignation, "Send me her new CD."
When her album, "Diaspora" arrived, I played it immediately. Then I played it again - a lot. It's complex and textured, arty but danceable, full of cool mixes, crazy samples and haunting, ethereal music that remains full of light while staying grounded in an earthy funk. But what really stands out is her voice, which dips and soars. Pure and high, she sings in French, Arabic, and English, but her voice is always transporting. Now I was dying to meet her.
When she visited LA with Transglobal Underground cohort, Alex - an Anton LaVey lookalike with a great sense of humor and a well-informed familiarity with world music - we went to Al Andalus, an Egyptian nightclub with a killer band, and to Cafe El Nile in Hollywood, a friendly little hole-in-the-wall where one can get atomic-powered Turkish coffee and smoke Egyptian "sheesha", a waterpipe filled with honey-soaked tobacco slowly burning atop hot coals. We compared notes on everything from Om Kulthoum (known as Egypt's greatest female singer) and such modern pop singers as Lebanon's heartthrob Wael Kfoury (whose hit "Min habibi ana" we both adore) to veils, women's rights in the Middle East, James Brown and Moroccan hot sauce. We yakked about the transformational power of dance, belly dancing specifically, about such famous aRabic dancers as Fifi Abdou and Nagua Fouad, about Turkish and American style belly dancing, and about NAtacha's days singing and dancing in the Arabic clubs of Brussels, Belgium.
Born to an Egyptian Palestinian father and an English mother, and raised in Belgium, Natacha lived in an environment that was (before the buzzword became so popular) a haven of multiculturalism. She began singing rather late in life (at the age of 26, ten years ago), but took to it immediately. She'd been working Turkish and North African cabarets, but left that world behind when she discovered salsa music.
"It was so wild and free," she says, "You could really let your hair down, kind of like punk rock or something. I loved it! And I was also getting tired of nightclubs, physically sick from the hours and all the smoke, so I went to London."
There, she hooked up with Transglobal Underground, a loose collective of DJs who debuted with "Dream of 100 nations", and have since released three other discs fusing trance, dance and ethnic stylings. Natacha's first solo album , "Diaspora", was produced by Transglobal, and features their trademark dense mixes and funky melodies. Compounded with Natacha's gorgeous, soaring instrument of a voice, the overall effect is astounding.
It's also a breath of fresh air, because though there's always been a conspicuous lack of women doing what is now conveniently lumped into the "world beat" category.
"There's plenty of men sort of experimenting with musical mixtures and ethnic fusions," observes Alex, "Like Hassan Hakmoun, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and all the rai artists, but there's almost no women."
Natacha attributes this to the repression in the Middle East and North Africa. "In the Middle East, women are taught that it's not acceptable to do this sort of thing in public - or at all, for the matter. And there are a few women doing things with rai, but even the guys are looked upon as extreme rebels. So female rai is looked upon as being extremely rebellious, but that's where I'm different - I don't really "want" to be particularly rebellious. In fact, I'm more interested in going back to the classical."
"There's more a crossover between North African music and funk than anything mixed with Egyptian music," says Alex.
"And that's what I'm more interested in," Natacha adds.
She digs through her bag and dredges up a tape of her newly recorded album, called "Halim" in a tribute to Egyptian composer Abdel Halim Hafez. Recorded with forty-piece Egyptian band, it sounds like one of those beautiful, classic Egyptian albums made during the days when Om Kulthoum ould do a six-hour concerts, and it was "all one song." In fact, speaking of Om Kulthoum, Natacha recorded in the very studio where she used to record, which would be an honor akin to a young rackabilly group working at the original Sun Studios in Memphis.
"Oh, I was humbled by it!" Natacha laughs, "I mean, there was so much history in there. I felt like I wasn't worthy!"
The album, slated to be release in early summer, originally sort of... well, put off the record company.
"They were expecting something much more dancey," shrugs Natacha, "And more like Diaspora. What they didn't realize was that I made Diaspora that way on purpose, with only a couple of classic-sounding Egyptian style tracks on it, because I thought it would be a good way to... ease into what I really wanted to do, which was work with a full, classic Egyptian orchestra."
Oddly, past few years have seen a number of Middle Eastern and North aFrican artists going for a more "modern" fell. But Natacha, like precious few other musical purists, is sorely gainst this. Ironically, American and European audiences are getting musically sophisticated and want to hear "real" music, not some watered-down, westernized pap, not only because the ethnic instrumentation and vocal stylings are so unique, but also because of an interest in Eastern culture that we occidentals have been flirting with at least since The Beatles hooked up with sitarist Ravi Shankar. Which, of course, includes belly dancing.
"It was reaaly an ingenoius thing to sort of sell your images as a belly dancer to the press," I comment.
"To anyone!" Natacha shoots back, giggling. "Men love it, women love it - everybody in the Middle East loves it..."
"Though they wouldn't want their wives and daughters doing it," I add.
"Exactly" Natacha says, "It's the whole virgin/whore thing."
"It's a king if like the phenomenon of Pamela Anderson Lee, "points out Alex, only half sarcasticcaly.
"As long as it gets them to listen to my music, and hopefully then go back to the original sources," Natacha says with the look of a determined crusader, "I don't care what I have to do. People have to know how beautiful this music is."

By Pleasant Gehman (Princess Farhana)
Photograph: Jeffoto