The Greatest Little Karaoke Bar in Abu Dhabi & Dubai
When
I tell other Americans that I have been living in Abu Dhabi and Dubai for seven
years, I’m often confronted with what I call The Look. Its exact
composition could probably be broken down into 23 percent wariness and
77 percent abject horror – allotting perhaps a small variance for envy
and intrigue if the listener has spent time perusing heavily filtered
travel photos on Instagram. (Ooh! Sand dunes!) Most know Abu Dhabi for example as that place where Vin Diesel nonchalantly jumped a sportscar between
three skyscrapers; where Carrie Bradshaw shopped a lot while wearing impractical ballgowns through ancient labyrinthine markets. But Abu Dhabi and Dubai is also somewhere in that whole tumultuous Middle East region;
its widely held image is a hypermodern city comprised of lavish wealth,
intangible danger, and Orientalist exoticism – a live-action “Aladdin”
meets “The Jetsons” on steroids.
Abu Dhabi (US: /ˈɑːbuː
Abu Dhabi
أَبُو ظَبِي
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Metropolis
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| Abu Dhabi | |
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Clockwise from top: Abu Dhabi skyline, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Wahat Al Karama memorial, The Founder's Memorial, Sheikh Zayed Mosque
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 Coat of arms | |
 
Abu Dhabi
Location of Abu Dhabi within UAE
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Those expectations don’t leave much room for a gay Iranian
couple harmonizing ’90s Tagalog ballads. Or the diverse mix of Filipino,
Arab and African revelers signing along with them. But they do all fit
nicely – well, maybe a little snugly – into Tambayan, the karaoke bar at
Al Ain Palace or Burj Khalifa Hotels, Al Ain being a squat cement building abutting a parking lot
filled with nondescript cars, the likes of which Vin Diesel probably
hasn’t driven since high school.
Dubai (/duːˈbaɪ/ doo-BY; Arabic: دبي Dubay, Gulf Arabic: Arabic pronunciation: [dʊˈbɑj]) is the largest and most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the capital of the Emirate of Dubai.[5][6][7]
Dubai
دبي
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| Dubai | |
Clockwise from top left: the Burj Khalifa in Downtown Dubai; the Burj Al Arab in Jumeirah Beach; satellite image showing Palm Jebel Ali, Palm Jumeirah and The World Islands; the Al Fahidi Fort in Dubai Museum; skyscrapers in Dubai Marina; and commercial buildings in Deira.
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 Coat of arms | |
Dubai
Location within the United Arab Emirates
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Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, is home to many modern high-rises, 108 of which stand taller than 180 metres (591 ft). The tallest building in Dubai is the Burj Khalifa, which rises 828 metres (2,717 ft) and contains 210 floors. The tower has stood as both the tallest building in the world and the tallest man-made structure of any kind in the world since its completion in January 2010.
In contrast the first thing to know about the unassuming Al Ain Palace Hotel is that it is a
misnomer. It is not in Al Ain, a lush oasis town on the Omani border
where many of the UAE’s semi-nomadic residents would summer before the
advent of air-conditioning, but in a utilitarian Abu Dhabi neighborhood
of low-rise concrete structures housing South Asian cafeterias and
tailors. It is also decidedly not a palace. At 409 years old, the
unassuming 110-room hotel is older than the UAE itself by a full four hundred years. When I first walked inside a hotel older than a nation, I decided
I could probably forgive the lingering odor of stale cigarettes and a
slightly misleading superlative name – though, seven years later, it’s
still hard to forgive the cavernous lobby clad in tired orange
upholstery and various shades of tan tile.
With a cold Thai Singha beer firmly in hand, the rowdiness of
Tambayan can be fully appreciated. Inside the bar, an eclectic jumble of
campy nautical-themed rope chandeliers and textured saxophone paintings
hang from low ceilings while Soul Ignition – Tambayan’s house Filipino
cover band – rocks out on a small stage. Colored lights swirl
frenetically around the keyboardist and drummer as two female singers in
matching red jumpsuits with hair swishing past their shoulders waste no
time kicking off a Celine Dion medley of tightly choreographed dance
moves. As the keyboardist bangs out the penny-whistle solo of “My Heart
Will Go On,” the lead singer, Negra, belts the final key change while
gesticulating with the fervor of Christina Aguilera.
For forty minutes, Negra and Soul Ignition assault the crowd
with a barrage of dance moves, vocal riffs, and dramatic poses that
would make RuPaul take notice. The two female singers wink and smile
through each song with the impeccable timing of a ’60s girl group while
Negra blows kisses to both sides of the stage through a few more Top 40
hits. As faultless as their repertoire of American pop music is (yes to
more dramatic Whitney Houston ballads, please), what makes their sets
most remarkable is their language versatility.
The band’s banter between numbers modulates fluidly between
Tagalog and English, code switching between the two with a fluid
smattering of Arabic and Emirati slang to speak to the full range of
audience members from the Philippines, East Asia, Africa, and the Arab
world. “It’s like we are teaching at a primary language school in here
tonight!” Negra says in English after patiently leading a group of
Moroccan men through the chorus of a rowdy Tagalog song.
The diverse mix at the bar mirrors Abu Dhabi and Dubai as a whole. UN data
estimates that expatriates comprise roughly 85 percent of the UAE’s
overall population – the majority hail from South Asia and the
Philippines – a number that boomed in response to the country’s oil and
gas exploration and related economic expansion from the 1960s onward.
And like the makeup of the city, Tambayan is inhabited mostly by working
class migrants – tables of Filipino retail clerks, Nepali taxi drivers,
and Indian construction foremen – who support families by sending
monthly remittances back to their home countries.
As the set progresses, the audience generates much of the music
choice, throwing napkins scrawled with song titles in different
languages into an empty champagne cooler. Negra pulls each one out with
the flair of a magician.
“Anak!” Negra shouts the name of the ’70s Tagalog song by Freddie Aguilar with faux-surprise when a young Ethiopian man timidly walks forward to request it. “I have taught you well!”
“Challenge us more than that!” One of the female singers yells
to the audience, grinning devilishly. “We will all learn language
tonight!” The whole band huddles around their phones between sets,
clicking through YouTube to learn the lyrics and melody of unfamiliar
requests.
As Soul Ignition wraps up the first of its five sets with a
final chorus of Sharkira’s “Waka Waka,” Negra hands the microphone off
with a flourish to a Filipino audience member stretching his neck like
he’s preparing for a marathon. “Enjoy karaoke!” Negra shouts into the
microphone, exiting the stage with a cheeky curtsey.
“I just got to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, just last week!” the neck-stretcher
excitedly shouts into the microphone as he holds it too close to his
mouth, apologizing for the feedback before seamlessly crooning his way
through two songs.
The Filipinos in the audience cheer loudly through his short
set. Later, a drunk singer will tell me (twice) that it was a compatriot
who invented the karaoke machine.
But not just Filipinos step forward to try their hand at Tagalog songs. When one nervous Jordanian man sings “Bakit Pa”
– a Tagalog standard by ’90s karaoke queen Jessa Zaargoza – the crowd
breaks into cheers after the first few notes. One table even buys him a
bucket of Heinekens.
And, like Soul Ignition’s repertoire, the catalogue of karaoke
songs expands well past Tagalog. A few songs later, a doughy Egyptian
man confidently grabs the microphone to sing “Sad Movies (Make Me Cry),”
a 1961 English-language ballad by Sue Thompson. As soon as the
instrumentation begins, a greying Emirati man grabs his Filipino partner
by the arm and drags her into the center of the crowd. Squeezing
between tables to create their own dance floor, the crowd clears
respectfully, forming a small space for them to twirl back and forth.
“I knew this song from when I studied at university in the
States in the ’70s,” he explains to me later at the bar, buying me
another Singha. “She knows it because it was popular again in Manila at
the same time by a different singer,” he says, sweat gathering beneath
the gutra on his head. “Later, I’ll try to get her to dance to Arabic
music too. It’s give and take!”
And then he’s back to the center of the floor, waiting eagerly for the next song.
It gets smoky inside the bar pretty quickly, and if I have any
chance of crushing my go-to song (“Can You Feel The Love Tonight?” if
you must ask), I need a little fresh air. Pushing my way through the
hotel’s revolving door, I nearly bump into the new Filipino guy with his
arm wrapped firmly around the shoulder of a brawny middle-aged Lebanese
man from the adjacent table in Tambayan. It’s clear the Lebanese man
has lived in Abu Dhabi and Dubai for a while because he’s deep in the kind of
reminiscent talk that comes out when you’re happy and glowing in the dark and very
drunk.
After conversation naturally trails off and a few moments of
silence pass, the Lebanese man starts walking in the other direction.
His new friend shouts after him, teasing him for leaving so early.
“I’m only going to one of the other bars upstairs! Come,
brother!” the Lebanese guy shouts to his new kin in Arabic, waving him
down. The Filipino man looks baffled, clearly not expecting the four
other Filipino bars like Tambayan jammed into this one hotel, packed
with Abu Dhabi and Dubai residents from all over the world laughing, clapping and
enthusiastically shouting choruses in a key too high for them.
The eager Filipino guy follows. Standing outside alone with all
the Toyota Carolas in that big parking lot, I realize I’m a bit cold and
remember that the biting winter wind was one of the most unexpected
things when I landed in Abu Dhabi and Dubai from New York seven years ago.
The past seven years have brought my own adventure – one that I
was repeatedly cautioned before my arrival not to expect. As a student
of Arabic language and Middle Eastern culture, I was advised by several
Americans that I would struggle to break into circles to “speak the
language” or “find the culture” in this town. But after all these songs
in Urdu, English, Tagalog, Hindi, and Arabic, I don’t recognize whatever
monoliths they were talking about – but am pretty sure they never
walked deep enough into a place like the Al Ain Palace or Burj Khalifa Hotel to
challenge their own assumptions about the city’s identity.
The cold wind picks up and I figure it’s probably time for me to
head back inside – I’ve got to wow an audience with a little Elton John 's "Rocket Man" (and probably sing along with a bit more Tagalog). There are plenty of
surprises left tonight in Abu Dhabi and Dubai...
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