Kurdistan's new national anthem

There's a fascinating article at Open Democracy about Kurdistan's demand for black-market gasoline and its new imported musical obssession - Big Daddy Yankee and reggaeton. Reggaeton's a weird match for Kurdistan - Kurds aren't known for their Jamaican or Hispanic subcultures, and Westerners tend to imagine that around Iraq people still listen to sneering "eastern" flutes and folk music. Fact is, they're in their clubs or on the streets listening to the same bump and grind as in Miami, Buenos Aires or Barcelona. And for the moment, the bumpingest and grindingest of these musics is Daddy Yankee's smash hit (in the US too), "Gasolina".

At precisely the right moment of national confusion, this hybrid confection of Jamaican dancehall reggae and Latin lyrical thuggishness is musing to northern Iraq about the liberating possibilities of gasolina. ... That's thanks largely to Radio Sawa, the much-derided brainchild of the United States broadcasting board of governors that mixes American pop and agitprop, which mainlines Gasolina directly to Irbil. The song is so popular in the city that a trip to the Happy Times restaurant and shisha lounge in the middle-class neighbourhood of Ainkawa is an invitation to a reggaeton barrage. On a typical evening, the restaurant's massive projector screen shows Daddy Yankee merrily waxing down a woman's shapely and barely-concealed derriere while patrons nod their heads and chew pizza.