Hi everyone!!

Some background: I'm a history student, and I'm focusing my research on the music industry of the Middle East in the mid-20th century, particularly focusing on the impact of radio stations and radio music. The radio stations of the Middle East would have artists and up-and-comers record songs for them, they would "own" the song and play it whenever/sell it to other radio stations. One such Arabic artist who had her start like this is Fairuz.

There was a considerable repertoire of songs that Fairuz and other radio artists recorded at the time that were originally non-Arabic in origin. Almost largely from Europe, particularly France, the UK, Italy, and some other European folklore origins. These songs would get Arabized, and what that process entailed was the song getting Arabic lyrics (in some cases, almost a direct translation of the original lyrics), and although the song's rhythm and melody would stay the same, the composers would include some instruments and exclude others to give the song an "Arabic" sound.

One such song that we know of is called in its Arabic version "Maya". Researchers and historians more successful and experienced than I have searched left and right and have failed to find the original, non-Arabized version of this song. With these songs usually credit is appropriately given, and we are able to trace the song back to its original version. However, in Maya's case, we weren't so lucky, so I'm turning to you guys for help. If you recognize the rhythm or the melody of this song, please do let me know, and you'd be doing a small group of archivists a huge favor!

We couldn't find a pattern for which songs were chosen to be Arabized, but we know that one thing they almost all had in common was that they were contemporary hits in the 50's. These songs were big in their time and that's how they grabbed the attention of the Rahbani Brothers (the composers who worked on Arabizing this song).

Please give Maya a listen and let me know if you recognize it or think it's close to another song of its time.

Because we don't know the original version of Maya, putting an exact date on when it came out has been tough, we know that it would've come out sometime in the mid-50's, which means that the original song would've been a hit sometime from 1950-1957. Sorry for the big time window.

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Thanks for all your help, and here's Maya.