With its multicolored souks, its sensually draped belly dancers, spinning to the rhythm of the darbukka and the Arabic orchestra, the Oriental dream has long shaped the imagination of travelers and musicians. Unprecedented journeys and migrations, urban diversity and hyper-connectivity characterize the post-colonial and post-modern world of recent decades. Whether based in London or Beirut, artists from the Middle East have also experienced the new forms of lounge music, blending neo-classical compositions, electronica, nu-jazz, bossa nova, and slow-tempo musical atmospheres with grooves and Arabic instruments. The diversity of the tracks selected by The Rough Guide To Arabic Lounge reflects the breadth of these experiments, from the Iraqi Munir Bachir’s early adaptation of 'Johnny Guitar' into a bolero on his oud, to the contemporary arabo-bossa compositions of Lebanese composer Ghazi Abdel Baki, via the Afro-Kabyle rumba of Djamel Laroussi, the neoclassicism of Charbel Rouhana and the Moroccan electro-melhoune of Azzddine.