The Five Best Things About Zenga Zenga [BONUS VIDEO]

Noy Alooshe

The New York Times reported on a viral You Tube video of Libyan Strangeman Mohammar Qaddafi’s speech in Green square set to trance music and accompanied by a go-go dancer.

The video has garnered over a half-million hits on YouTube, and hundreds of comments.  Check it out below.  Meanwhile, here are the five remarkable, literally phenomenal things about it:

1. “Zenga Zenga was conceived, composed, mixed and edited by Tel Aviv resident Noy Alloshe, a 31 year old Jewish Israeli.

Mr. Alooshe spent a few hours at the computer, using Auto-Tune pitch corrector technology to set the speech to the music of “Hey Baby,” a 2010 electro hip-hop song by American rapper Pitbull, featuring another artist, T-Pain. He titled it “Zenga-Zenga,” echoing Col. Qaddafi’s repetition of the word zanqa, Arabic for alleyway.

2. The video went viral among Libya’s youth, seemingly before it became well-known that an Israeli made it.  Like most in the Arab world, Libyans have been unremittingly fed one-sided anti-Israel propaganda for 40 years.  Now, through the internet, they are being exposed to Israeli culture, Israeli points of view, Israeli people—all of which may rock their world view.

3. The video shows that the vast majority of Jews and Israelis support the uprisings in the Arab world.  Not that there aren’t fears of eventual Islamic takeovers, of chaos, of broken peace treaties—but on a person-to-person level, exemplified by Noy Allooshe, it should be clear that Jews and Israeli stand hand in hand with those in Tahrir Square and Green Square, and anywhere people throw off the yoke of oppression.

4. The power of the Internet to democratize the Middle East and break down borders is astonishing.  Years ago it took months of phone calls, third-party intervention, and letters to get Israelis and their Arab neighbors together.  Now with YouTube, Facebook and a quickly improving Google Translate, the walls are coming down. (Yes, kneejerk Lefties, insert Separation Wall diatribe here). Now the next generation can connect instantly through the Net.  I suspect once Arab youth get a load of Noy’s other videos from his band Hovevei Zion, he might just become the first post-Tahrir crossover hit. 

5. The New York Times wrote hundreds of words about this phenomenon, investigated it to a fare thee well, but failed to answer the most pressing question of all: Who’s the dancer?

Here’s “Zenga Zenga:”

And here’s a bonus, Noy’s soon-to-be-viral and very sexy “Tell Me”