Art and Culture in Jordan

As a fresh person to the arty world, I’ve always heard criticism related to the art and culture movement in Jordan. I thought it to be severely true… but as I got introduced to more Jordanian artists I began to feel that the picture wasn’t gloomy as people portrait it…
To start up with literature… one of the types that Jordanians are known for are the art of writing short stories…
No one can argue about the beauty of novels where a person leave her/his place and go to another world… where she/he become part of a story that somehow must’ve happened once upon a time… but… short stories has another charm related to it… it is highly conceptual… using less words to convey much more… condensed images… strong poetical phrases… quickly you read it and you are transformed… I believe that less is more… but more is more as well… so the difference is what is it more of?! And in that answer lays the magic of words in a short story… one of my favorite short stories Jordanian writers is Khalil Qandeel...
As for Architecture… though Amman is under massive changes which mostly are “junk architecture”, there is a couple of good architects who really respect their work and manage to stop the outside chaos from effecting their inside serenity… and still we can spot some masterpieces every once and awhile… among my favorite architects in Jordan are Sahel Hiari and Ammar Khammash...
Now moving into the visual arts… this is so hard for me to be impartial since working for a whole year in the faculty of Art and Design in the University of Jordan has introduced me to some of the good artists who became my work partners… however I must say that there is something in their lines, colors and compositions that struck me deeply… among my favorites are: HRH Princess Wijdan Ali, Dr. Ali Al-Goul whom I was privileged to be his student in my second year in Architecture Dep., and Hakim Jamain whom I was privileged to work closely with, he even tried to teach me some graphic art techniques. The list of visual artists goes on and on…
Finally coming to the audio art… and that’s where we hear the most of criticism, some would say that we don’t have [Arabically] recognized singers and performers. This for me is praise rather than censure. In the turbulence of commercially driven musical arts, Jordanians pause and give out the best. I should say that I’m not yet well exposed to what is going in this field in Jordan but I still have two favorites whom I always listen to their soul touching music with the originality of the melodies, the softness of the instruments and vocals and the conceptual realization of music as a universal language. These are: Rum, and Nawzen Elia Khoury.
So… the art and culture movement in Jordan is very promising… there is something different about it… Jordan was the stage for many events that took place and still is. And though Amman is relatively a new city it has inspired many to produce art objects that can only be described as masterpieces.
At a time where everything is driven by mass production… some Jordanian artists stand out and give us a single light that can last for a while…