Almost the same car turns through the gate and around the fountain, and almost (!) the same girl steps out, in the video clip of “Rah Ghani El Layli.” But this is not the somewhat stiff and sincere Abdul Majeed, it is the sly, bumptious, yet perhaps equally sincere and talented Lebanese singer Amer Zayan – a Rotana-produced clip for a track from his newly released album “2015.” And from his previous album there is the more representative “Al Akliya Al Sharkiya,” like a film short, with a wealth of wit and imagery: it is the delightful “crime” theme encountered, for example, in Arwa’s “Eineik” (produced not by Rotana, but by Melody). A still earlier clip, “Malla Warta,” is a more concise representation of Amer Zayan’s music.

“Al Akliya Al Sharkiya” is a vehicle for a particular style put forward by a given set of composers and arrangers. It would be unwise to name names, since it is customary for the artist to work in changing degrees with shifting personnel in the interests of generating the most suitable material. Clear traces of the style can already be detected in 2009 in the work of the Lebanese singer Jood (the clip “Leemaan”), and in 2010 with a Syrian, Hossam Jneid. The closest stylistic affinity, however, is with the recent non-album video by Nahwa, “Lahfor Esmak,” which approaches “Ajeela” as one of the finest clips of all. The artist is Lebanese, and the production group is Rotana. The connection between Nahwa and Amer Zayan is clear as regards material.

There is nothing particularly remarkable about the narrative content of the “Lahfor Esmak” clip: basically it has none. Rather, it is a study in audio-visual elegance, and its genesis seems to be the search for a fitting vehicle for Nahwa’s characteristic vocal capability, which is a sort of warble thrown in to create the effect of deeply felt emotion. To understand why such a vehicle would be desirable, one must consult Nahwa’s album of 2012, consisting of eight relatively brief tracks exploiting this vocal capability to the fullest. There is a video clip, “Majani Nom – Lansob Kheima,” which has a rough and unfinished quality, like some Arabic clips you may see from the end of the twentieth century, when analog television was prevalent and video-clip production values were only nascent. It is actually a very remarkable “retro” video featuring some of the most valuable Lebanese music of recent years.