Ali Najm: Voice with light-speed success
10% of the issues he focuses on concern and touch the 100%
I have always wanted to write about a star named Ali Najm who has achieved with his voice a light-speed success. Yet I have always hesitated, not because of the lack of information or words, never ... but because I tried hard to find a better correlative in the spacious world of information, in the hope of making a meaningful addition so that my words are more than the customary praise.
Among the factors that prompted me to think of that correlative was the very long queue of young males and females waiting patiently to have him sign their copy of his first book “ZahmatHaki”(Talk Rush) in the Book Fair during the days of this annual cultural event. I was also equally driven by the immense interaction with his social media writings or his talks on radio which he preserves as a successful and living citadel at a time when most citadels have become traditional historical relics and, ruins of the past and nostalgia.
Since my early days, I loved the laws of mathematics and their equations which produce accurate logical results. So what factors have combined to give us the result as personified in Ali Najm and to offer us an explanation?
Before writing these words I had watched him closely. One of the reasons that encouraged me to join him in a radio talk on “Marina FM” last June was the chance to have an exploratory face-to-face encounter with him. The interview was not a duel. I was asked realistic, practical, sequenced and purposeful questions without any prior discussion or preparation. They were geared towards giving some piece of information or analysis and not meant to be provocative. Until this day, I still think about that encounter which pleased me and proved to be a victory to radio as a platform and space for expression, and the continuity of its influential role and active presence when it has the proper and studied content.
I also followed Ali’s appearance in the Ramadan drama Al-Yaum Al-Aswad in which he raised, through two appearances at the beginning and the end, wide reactions.
I was present at the signing of his book “ZahmatHaki” which later topped, with its simple style and the easy flow of its thoughts, the bestseller lists of all book fairs it participated in. The book is not built on an exceptional language or super tales, but rather on conveying with uncompromising realism human situations that are direct and spontaneous.
It was then that I wondered about what made a work of such simplicity achieve that degree of success. And why does the same person repeat the same success in writing, in the drama and on radio, thus utterly refuting the hypothesis of chance and luck?
There must be, behind such a level of excellence, a great deal of intelligence and commitment which make the difficult easy and the impossible possible. Ali ran his media course in the style of an election campaign with the aim of winning votes and numbers. Winning votes is predicated on the ability to persuade voters. Winning them to your side requires understanding them, what they need, what they miss, providing them continuously with what they like to hear, see and read, all in their own feelings and language and through their own perspectives.
Instead of the path of tradition, Ali Najm chose with perseverance and insistence on perfect preparation the path of comprehension and understanding which led him a majority he called the “Silent Majority” which began to express itself through him, to have trust in him and to defend his logic and style. He made that majority talk: we do not want your complications, your philosophizing, your tiring deep or clever analysis. We want his simple, meaningful and understanding talk even if his talk is devoid of politics, sports, economics and the topics that occupy 90 percent of public debates. In reality, 10 percent of the issues he focuses on concern and touch the 100 percent. That is why Ali won a seat among the majority.
We might have different views on disputed issues, on the other hand we all share in humanity, love, human relations, the need to talk about betrayal and faithfulness, rebellion and submission, strength and weakness, remembrance and forgetfulness, pain and hope .. and all that Ali Najm writes and continues to write about.
In the realm of the media, theoretically and practically, what is needed is charisma, intelligence, “true understanding” of others and persistence through any available modern or traditional platforms, and the 10 percent will be at least 50 percent+1.