A side of Baghdad that even most Iraqis probably don’t ever see…
Digg it here.

Also, Hometown Baghdad was featured on All Things Considered, a program on NPR (National Public Radio in America). Listen to it here. For those of you outside of America, NPR does incredible work. The quality of their reporting is remarkable. And they made special mention of a conversation between Ed and Zaid in the comments of this blog. Kudos to you guys! So everyone please continue to watch, continue to think, continue to talk, continue to spread these stories from Iraq.

In other news, “Symphony of Bullets” was made popular on Digg today!

Episode seven is here. Gunfire has become the soundtrack to life in Baghdad…and owning a gun seems like a necessity. My close friend and Hometown Baghdad producer extraordinaire Fady once said that at this point standing on a street with a gun in Baghdad is safer than standing on the street with a camera. Please let us know what your reactions are both in the comments on this blog and on the comments on youtube. And help these stories spread by Digging this video here.

From now on, our episodes will debut here at the same time they appear on Salon.com. Youtube also will begin featuring our videos in a more prominent way. This is so important for us because these stories are beginning to reach a bigger and more mainstream audience. I want to see how these extra viewers react to the lives and struggles of Adel, Ausama and Saif.
Update: I had to switch out the youtube with a new version in preparation for their publicizing this video. So please watch it again at youtube and leave comments, favorite it, and rate it. Thanks!

Tags: baghdad, iraq, vlog, series, war, peace, youth,

Adel just sent me a new song that he has recorded. It’s called Blood River. As you might suspect with Adel, it’s a shredding metal riff. I think it’s pretty awesome and hope his band can record it one day. There is something about Metal that makes it one of the most internationally popular forms of rock music. You never hear about Japanese or Iraqi emo-heads. But Metal seems to be huge everywhere. I don’t know what it is. You?
Click on the picture to hear it.
Update: Adel sent a redone version of the song. Check it out below. If you want to hear the previous version, it’s here.

And I would love for someone to write a bass part or a guitar solo to go over this rhythm section. If anyone sends me something, I’ll combine it with Adel’s part and post them to the blog later. Imagine a metal song co-written through the internet with an Iraqi…let’s do this.

And if you haven’t heard it, check out this song from Saif and his friends that I posted a while ago. Read the full post here.

Episode six of Hometown Baghdad is up on salon.com. Let us know what you think of it in the comments.

Tags: baghdad, iraq, vlog, series, war, peace, youth,

Salon.com has posted the fifth video of Hometown Baghdad. It’s called “Songs of Pain.” This one hits home for me as a musician. The way he speaks of letting out your emotions with rock and roll really resonates with me. And as a fan of heavy metal like Adel, I want to say….sweet riff.
Don’t forget to leave comments here and on Youtube.

Tags: baghdad, iraq, vlog, series, war, peace, youth,

We have been getting some really nice feedback from viewers of the series. And I’m happy to see the…uhhh…active conversations in our comments. I’m putting together a post with some particularly interesting posts to the comments. Thanks to everyone for sharing their stories and their opinions. And here are some updates:

• Ausama from Hometown Baghdad wrote an article on the always great Alive in Baghdad.
• With all of the great viewer feedback coming in, I decided to make an aptly titled “Viewer Feedback Page.” See it here.
• Thanks to Harkle.com who has made closed-captioning versions of the videos available here.
• Our video podcast is ready to go! You can subscribe to it by clicking this url- http://hometownbaghdad.com/podcast.xml - or copying it into your favorite feed reader. Or you can search for us in iTunes.
• Speaking of iTunes and video podcasts, we picked a winner in our Podcast logo contest. His name is Ahmed Naji and he manipulated the pictures we posted in a really interesting way. Thanks to everyone who submitted. Check out his contribution below and click it to subscribe to the podcast using iTunes.
  
  

The fourth episode of Hometown Baghdad is live on Salon. This episode is a bit different than the rest in that it features all three of the subjects. Here they are dealing with something that lives with them constantly, threatening to strike unexpectedly at any moment - the loss of power. I really like the way that Salon described it…”Life in the heat — and in a rock band — with no control over electricity.”

Tags: iraq, series, vlog, documentary, baghdad

Salon has posted the first three videos of Hometown Baghdad. Check out their dedicated page for the series here. And we’re also on the homepage. For ease of viewing, I’m embedding the videos below. And remember, with today’s technology viewers are the new distributors. Help us tell the story of today’s Iraq by linking back here.

Adel - “Brains on Campus”

Saif - “The Dentist”

Ausama - “Forbidden Salad”

Update: For those of you who missed us as the top story on Salon.com, check this out!
Tags: baghdad, iraq, documentary, video