Our next featured dancer is the legendary "bint el balad" Fifi Abdou. Take a look at these YouTube videos:
A terrific baladi even though the video and sound are a little degraded (probably from an old videotape). Watch from the beginning but mainly from the 1:00 mark where the accordion comes in, until the 3:45 mark where the official baladi ends and the drum solo kicks in. This is the main video I'll be drawing the technique points from.
The accordion baladi is from 3:40 to about 5:00, so focus on that in terms of any questions - but the rest of her set is great too! The film clip is slightly choppy but you can still see her movements, and we'll work with a few from here. This video has not been seen as many times as the other one, so I thought it would be fun to include it.
Now, the video quality is not ideal on these, so you may want to check out some other Fifi videos that are clearer, to get a more detailed view of her technique, but these videos at least enable us to really hone in on Fifi's taqasim baladi style: the "street-style" she preferred. Master accordionist Nabawy (who played in Fifi's band) also spoke about this in a Q&A session we had with him.