Camel band rehearsal. 1975/Estate Of Keith Morris/Redferns/Getty Images
Qalam strives to explore the interpenetration of different cultures. To this end, we have decided to launch a series of playlists in which music mediates between different geographical and ideological spaces. Our first playlist is called ‘West to East: One Hundred Best Songs’. It will be updated several times a week, and its curation will focus on how Western pop culture has reflected the realities of the East, whether they are musical, geographical, religious, or political. (The terms ‘West’ and ‘East’ should be taken as broadly and arbitrarily as possible.)
Camel are representative of the old-school ethos of noble British progressive rock—moderately brilliant, moderately nerdy, much like this song from their late 1999 album, which was also called Camel. Rajaz, one of the oldest metrical forms of Arabic poetry, literally means the cramping of a camel's hind legs when it tries to stand up. Since the camel is obviously the band's totem animal, the effect of a slowly moving caravan (interestingly, Caravan is the name of another classic British art-rock group) is quite striking. This is not the band's first reference to the Orient. In 1981, Camel released a conceptual album titled Nude, which was dedicated to the fate of that Japanese soldier who hid in the Philippine jungle for thirty years after the end of the Second World War, refusing to surrender.