In our online classes we sing our own adaptation of “Wala WaHed,” an electrifying song by Hakim, one of the main superstars of the Egyptian genre called SHAABI, which arose in the 1970’s as the “music of the streets.” Hakim, who was born and raised in the small, working class Egyptian town of Maghagha, aspired to be a singer from a young age. He related to Shaabi as pioneered by Egyptian musician and film star Ahmed Adaweya. The song “Wala WaHed” is the passionate declaration that the object of the singer’s love is a one-in-a-million catch. Technicaly, in increasingly overpopulated Egypt, that would indicate that there are roughly 100 of them . . . but I think we know that the song means.
Tag Archives | Egypt
Takin’ it to Egyptian street…with Hakim
Let’s meet music of the Egyptian “working class” with our dear friend Hakim.
In the 1970s, when recordable cassettes made popular music accessible to people all over the world who had little money, several genres of “cassette culture” music developed around the world–punk music in England, for example, rai in Algeria, Jamaican reggae and, in Egypt, shaabi (translated as “music of the common people.”) Today’s famous shaabi singers, like Abdel Hakim Abdel Samad Kamel — Hakim! — continue this tradition by using their lyrics to skewer politicians and confront social problems in an artistically direct way. Watch Hakim wow an audience — delightfully, with the aid of bubbles.
Nubian music
Le’ts go way down to “Upper Egypt” to make Nubian music with Mohamed Mounir.
Primarily hailing from southern Egypt and northern Sudan, though also present in communities all over North and East Africa, Egyptian-Nubian musicians have become known worldwide for blending ancient Egyptian folk with contemporary forms. Ali Hassan Kuban and Hamza al Din are known and well-respected on the “world music scene,” and Mohamed Mounir become especially popular in Egypt because of his outspoken support for the Egyptian pro-democracy movement. Watch Mounir performing with a stellar band (Mounir comes out about 2 minutes into the video)
Egyptian Music Goes Waaaay Back
Egyptian music is ancient…as Sheikh Ahmed Al Tuni of Egypt will show us in this Islamic (Sufi) ritual.
When historians of music say Egypt has always been at the musical forefront in the Middle East, they may as well mean always–according to ancient Egyptians, the god Thoth invented music and the god Osiris used it as a tool to help him civilize the world. Egyptian music may not have originated at the dawn of time, but it certainly did begin a long while ago–fifteen hundred years or more–as we know from the remnants of ancient Egyptian rhythms and melodies still present in ancient Sufi Muslim dhikr rituals. Dhirk rituals take place at Muslim and Coptic traditional celebrations called mulids, which are held to celebrate particular saints. Watch this video of Sheikh Ahmed Al Tuni, one of Upper Egypt’s most accomplished ritual singers.
Not “Drink the Water”
Traditional Bedouin Music at Wadi Rum, Jordan.MOV
This week in class we sing “Drink the Water,” our version of a song from the Bedouin of Egypt’s Sinai desert that gives us the chance to impersonate desert animals. The music in this video isn’t that one, but it’s a Bedouin-Jordanian song that is amazingly great. Despite the sand and the strong desert wind, don’t you want to be sitting right there with them, clapping?
