A very alert reader asked what Belly Dance music I’d recommend. It’s a very personal choice and one dancer can rave about the most amazing song that another dancer will actually find plain annoying! It’s as varied as our choice in men. 🙂

In a show I like a variety that mixes traditional with more modern Arabic/Egyptian pop music to keep from letting your audience get bored of the whiny sound most very traditional songs have. Of course you should spice it up with drum solos of which I’ve never heard a bad one, just more challenging (with less predictable beats and changes) and more standard (which are just as fun to play with since you always know what’s coming next).

First off, here are some great sites where you can easily buy the music online from Amazon, thankfully most albums let you preview them so you can see which ones match your taste:

You can see “Best of Bellydance-Art of Love” for a more traditonal collection and “Bellydance Superstars” have about 7 CDs of their music which have a very nice variety and Music for Modern Bellydancers” is a big selection of music.

Yasmina does a very extensive review of some belly dance albums on her blog Joy of Bellydancing. IAMED who produces some of the best Belly Dance tutorial videos have quite a few on their site including “10 Songs Every Bellydancer Should Know” which is a collection of all time classics.

Individual songs I usually collect from fellow dancers so don’t always know the artist or name as we tend to retitle them ‘fire song’, ‘veil song’ etc.. to organize for shows but some artists and songs to look out for are:

Artists:
Amr Diab an amazing Arabic male singer who has some beautiful songs with great beats.
Hayat Transglobal Underground vs. Mercan Dede is great for heavy tribal styles
Aynali Koruk Feryal Oney
Dalida’s album Le Reve Oriental
Sabah El’s album Khair DJ Fantastic Cafe’ Arabia

Songs:
Leyli Ley
Naguas Tabla
Hay Hay (Turkish)
To Narkotiko nou
Henna
Leik El Wawa

If you still need some more here’s a great list compiled from yahoo answers…

My mantra is: ‘A good song is one you can’t sit still listening to.’ Happy Dancing!