Thread: eMusic Recommendations?

What do you recommend on eMusic for belly dance? What is the best way to find belly dance music if you don't know the name of the artist you are looking for? Thanks!

There's TONS of stuff. I'm not even sure where to begin with a recommendation. What kind of music do you usually look for? You can search under Middle Eastern, or under bellydance.

I have downloaded absolutely every kind of bellydance music you can imagine. From retro Eddie the Sheik to "modern vintage" like Middle Earth Ensemble to Solace to Hossam Ramzy to Jalilah's Raks Sharki series to original recordings of Ghawazee music and Oum Kalthoum. It's a goldmine.

I use eMusic a lot but found it challenging at first. eMusic classifies Middle Eastern music as international (too vague to be useful) or reggae (?!?) which makes it very hard to search by category. Once I found some artists I liked, I used the label search for similar acts. The suggested links and similar artists are usually pretty helpful, too, but first you have to find a starting point.

For instance, you might start with The Doom-Tek Project (Hamdi El-Khayyat) for drum solos. Then if you click on his name, you'll get links to other albums he's on, leading to more artists, and they'll offer recommended playlists that other members have put together (including a number of belly dance lists). And from there it's down the rabbit hole until you realize it's ten hours later and you've spent $50 on booster packs as you keep finding stuff (or maybe that's just me). There are about half a dozen Jahlilah belly dance compilations there as well, just for another path to start.

Hope this is useful. I'd love to hear recommendations from other dancers on good finds at eMusic, as I'm not bankrupt yet and still have space on my hard drive.

Thanks to Asra, I already learned something new. I didn't realize you could break smaller categories out of "International" when you're browsing eMusic. That makes it a lot easier.

Thanks, I will try searching again. I typed "Middle Eastern" into the search window on the main page and only one group came up. So far I have found the Sultans, Flamenco-Arabe and some others by Hossam Ramzy,, 10 Songs Every Belly Dancer Should Know, and Faun which isn't Middle Eastern or belly dance, but I love it.

I search song titles for works like 'Raks' or 'habibi' or 'mezmar' or 'baladi'

I usually find dozens of songs and then I check out the albums they come from. That usually leads me to lists other dancers have compiled.

I usually look for the name of tunes I am interested in, which tends to bring up a list of interesting artists.

I also often check the recent arrivals list, where for my preferences, the covers are a strong cue for quickly sifting through things. A messy cover with an awkward group shot tends to be correlated somewhat with nice Turkish music, for instance.

On the right, if you scroll down below the tracks on most CDs, it will give you suggestions for other music you might like, or indicate one or more member lists that include that CD so you can check out the list.

Sedonia has a great list on e-music but I don't know how to find it.

Here are two lists from other dancers that might get you started, though.

You probably need to be logged in to see these:

eMusic Lists - MP3 music downloads at eMusic

eMusic Lists - MP3 music downloads at eMusic

Ah, here's Sedonia's list

eMusic Lists - MP3 music downloads at eMusic

Cool, thanks for the lists.