One of the most popular talent shows to hit Arab television this year has some of the trappings of similar shows in Europe and the US: swaggering contestants, big budget sets, grizzled judges and the chance to become a real star.
But as the mostly mustachioed contestants stood on stage in their flowing gowns and traditional headdresses, half nervous, half eager, the Poet of Millions competition became an example of a shift occurring in Arab pop culture.
Instead of love ballads sung by scantily clad singers the contestants offered the rhyme and rhythm of a flowery style of Bedouin poetry known as Nabati, popular in the Persian Gulf, but largely forgotten in much of the rest of the Arab world.
"Some Arabs say his love borders on insanity," one contestant began in a lament to a fallen elder, as the audience roared. "He cannot describe the feeling no matter what it may be, each of its letters woven in silk to see. But death came to you, some said, and you remained patient. But why, why did you go to it?"
The cultural rise of the Persian Gulf is analogous to that of the US South in recent decades, when country singers and southern ways have become part of pop culture. Much like the southern drawl, the Gulf accent has fast entered the mainstream.
"Ten years ago the only dialect you heard in the media was the Egyptian one, and later the Lebanese," said Nashwa Al Ruwaini, executive producer of the Poet of Millions and several other shows and film series in Abu Dhabi.
"With satellite TV, the people in Egypt now hear and understand what people in the Gulf say. And the Gulfis started going to the Egyptian market and the mainstream," he said.
When people spoke of culture in the Arab world, they meant Beirut, Cairo or Morocco, the biggest producers of films and music. Cairo's streets were automatically the "Arab street" and what happened there often defined the mainstream.
Oil-rich states like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, resented for their sudden wealth and tainted by the stereotypes of spendthrift sheiks, were often ignored as little more than sources of cash.
Now, the sheiks and business titans of the region are seeking to come out in the open going past religious programming into pop culture that is increasingly being defined by them.
Throughout the Middle East, media companies and government projects have worked to elevate Gulf talent and bridge a longstanding divide between the region's conservative ways and the comparatively more liberal attitudes found elsewhere.
Gulf singers have also reflected a more appealing image to a region growing ever more conservative and refusing of the West's influence here. Where Lebanese and Egyptian singers show off skin and sex, Gulf singers are more covered and their acts often feature children.
The Poet of Millions, soon to be entering its second season, proved an instant hit that spawned similar poetry competitions and shows on Lebanese and Egyptian TV.
CULTURAL DRIVE
The show, produced for US$14 million, is part of a broader campaign by Abu Dhabi to build museums, sponsor book prizes and encourage publishers to relocate to the Persian Gulf emirate.
"People in the Gulf want to prove to the world -- to the Arab world especially -- to think past their pocketbooks," said Hussein Shobokshy, a columnist with the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat.
In Dubai, once a dusty trading town, the sprawling media city complex has turned the emirate into a center for broadcasting and publishing, hosting hundreds of Arabic and English-language publications and satellite TV channels beaming throughout the region. Deeper into the desert, the massive Production City is growing into a sprawling movie and TV production zone, seeking to do for Dubai what Hollywood did to Los Angeles.
In nearby Abu Dhabi, which produces the Poet of Millions as part of an initiative to preserve historic heritage, the oil-rich Emirate has begun a US$10 billion plan to build and operate branches of the Louvre and the Guggenheim museums on a sprawling arts and culture development meant to preserve Gulf culture even as it embraces the arts and culture of the West.
And in Saudi Arabia, Rotana Music, the region's largest media company, owned by billionaire financier Prince Walid bin Talal, has worked to acquire more than 80 percent of the Arab world's music libraries, and almost as much of its film libraries, and to put talent from the Persian Gulf in the spotlight.
With much of the Middle East mired in political turmoil and stagnation, many of the countries of the Persian Gulf have sought to show the region the way forward, offering a decidedly different formula of growth and aspiration, and seeking to take the reins of regional leadership.
Nowhere, though, has the effect been more pronounced than in music and entertainment.
In addition to legitimizing Gulf accents and dialects, record producers in the Gulf have encouraged singers to reach out to a broader audience by singing in a more neutral dialect.
"A decade ago, singers here used to try to reach only the local markets and sang in local dialects," said Salem al Hindi, president of Rotana Music.
With the rise of satellite TV and greater access to new technologies, however, many singers began reaching out to a wider audience that was not as comfortable with their accent.
"They entirely changed the language in which they were singing, and it became a commercial success," al Hindi said.
Gulf singers, with their more conservative ways, have also reflected a more appealing image to a region increasingly uncomfortable with the West's influence.
Male singers like Abdul Majeed Abdullah from Saudi Arabia and females like Ahlam from Bahrain sing wholesome ballads focused on crushes, but eschewing the skin and infatuation singers from other parts of the region may gravitate to.
Their look is modern but decidedly not Western; slick but clean and typically centered on family; and generally more optimistic.
"It is rare to find a Gulf singer whose voice is not nice or a female singer showing off her body," said Sarah Tabet, a writer with the Beirut-based Al Jaras magazine, who writes about Arab singers and artists.
"They are there because of their talents and it's quite possible that their audience will continue to grow because they are displaying real talent, beautiful music that we have not been able to produce, and lyrics that have deep meaning. We, on the other hand, often display only shallow words accompanied by seduction," she said.
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