100 Copies: Interview with Mahmoud Refat and Hassan KhanInterview by Banning Eyre and Sean Barlow Cairo, Egypt,2011
Mahmoud Refat is the founder of a small, independent music label in Cairo called 100 Copies Music. As the name implies, they press just 100 CD copies of each release, showing true dedication to the “alternative” identity. The music is a range of experimental, electronic sound creations. One of the label’s first and most prominent artists is Hassan Khan. In fact, it was a year-long experimenting process between Refat and Khan that led to the creation of 100 Copies. In Cairo, in August, 2011, while researching Afropop’s “Cairo Underground” program, Banning Eyre and Sean Barlow visited both Refat and Khan in their home studios and discussed their work and the unusual musical niche they inhabit in Cairo. Both also spoke about the new techno-sha’bi sound emerging out of the wedding scene in poor Cairo neighborhoods. Refat and Khan consider this some of the most interesting new music in Egypt. Here are the two conversations. Mahmoud Refat: My name is Mahmoud Refat. I’m a musician and sound artist and music producer. My main concern is electronic, experimental, avant-garde music, electronic arts in general that are related to music in one way or another. I created 100 Copies Music in 2006 in Cairo focusing on the new line of emerging artists and the new generation of electronic musicians and experimental musicians. I started this label and I started in the very beginning releasing my own stuff, just to introduce the idea and to more or less define the line of the label without really explaining by words. In the past, there was never this concept of young, small labels that produced some kind of strange amount of CD’s, and then some kind of interest grows slowly from smaller things. This was not there because everybody wants to have the big picture: ‘I’m the big star.’ From zero. Everybody thinks it should go there immediately. Banning Eyre: How did you come to electronic, experimental music? Who influenced you? M.R.: I’m a musician – I play instruments. I played lots of music starting from maybe ’91,’92 as a drummer, and I played in lots of bands doing rock here, jazz there, funk here, psychedelic music there. A kind of development happened. Maybe I was not aware of the definition of avant-garde or experimental music. It was more about finding the good ideas that satisfy you somehow. It was not about having this concept and wanting to achieve it, but more about having good ideas and then forming a band around it. The influence was the musicians I was playing with; we gave each other ideas and pushed each other toward something. There I realized there is something happening. Slowly I started to know more about this music. B.E.: So you didn’t grow up with John Cage and Alvin Lucier. M.R.: No, no, not at all. I grew up with the rock music of the ‘70s, Hendrix and Led Zeppelin and, of course, some of the local stuff. I was never into this strange music. The psychedelic rock music in the ‘70s was very special for me but still it’s rock music, guitar music. There’s the beat and there’s the bass line and the lyrics. I don’t know where the transition happened from this to that. It was just happening. I didn’t have to plan it or direct it somewhere; it was just happening. Suddenly someone got interested in what I was doing on small four-track, Tascam, multi-track tapes. You really had to do things manually. It was great. I got introduced to the dance and theater scene, and there they were really excited about my music. This kind of music.
B.E.: The dance and theater people had a different mentality than the music people. That’s interesting. The feeling I’m getting about the arts scene in Cairo is it has these little niches, but in general, it does not seem all that interested or open to experimentation and change. Tell me your experience of that. Were dance and theater people really receptive to electronic music? M.R.: Back then, yeah. The major things that were happening in the music scene – it was rock music, big rock concerts, which was politically oppressed in one way or another. Or this new jazz fusion, “oriental jazz” scene. The rock scene really started to disappear because of the politics of the ‘90s. Rock was for me the most interesting music scene ever in Egypt. But it was more or less, ‘Yeah, rock is good’ and ‘Fusion is good.’ There was no space for this experimental approach. Except in theater. When I got introduced to the dance-theater scene, they just wanted me to come in. I started to do that a lot, like every day, for like years and years, going from this group to that group, producing this film to doing this experimental video and then going back on stage. B.E.: Now all this is happening at a time of political oppression, right? People are being sat on by the government. M.R.: Yeah, it was difficult. It always was difficult. I don’t remember politically it ever being very comfortable. You would find your own moment, with your friends or with your family, but nothing we could all share, the whole country. Back to the music story, a lot of things were happening in the theater and in film. Small galleries were showing experimental videos. Then some other people started appearing on the scene interested in this music. Then, in 2003 we started to play concerts. Without videos, without a theater theme or theater production – just concerts. We started to promote this a lot. Me and Hassan [Khan] started pushing this a lot. We’ve known each other a long time. When we wanted to do something about this, we met in 2002. In my house, we put two speakers and all the possible cables, all the equipment, all the devices. And we just sat there for like a year just doing things. We have all the recordings from this period. We always sit down and say, ‘This is the best work we’ve ever done. The best work done anywhere’. Then, after this good focused year, with lots of rehearsals, and lots of discovery, we started to organize these concerts and introduce this music. And then again there’s someone coming in. Then we meet and try to do an evening together. And then the label idea came and when we started in 2006, more people came.
B.E.: What kind of places did you perform? M.R.: We played in art galleries, at the American University sometimes, or in a small studio somewhere downtown. We tried to convince some commercial clubs, but it was not really the most exciting thing for them. Even if we brought our own crowd, good business for them, they did not really want to do that. B.E.: When we talk about electronic music, it runs the gamut from very experimental, music that’s completely free, to techno club music that’s basically for dancing or transing out or whatever it is that people want to do in clubs. Given the universe of electronic music like in Egypt, tell us where your label focuses. M.R.: I was never interested in putting myself and this label in this or that box. I thought I would deal with all types of music, any kind of music. It could be anything. It could be dance music; it could be experimental noise, very minimal field recordings. It could be folk music, some guy with an oud doing something, but there has to be an exception, something more, something extra, something adventurous. Because with this boxing thing, I would only produce all this drone music, or all this—I don’t know—dance stuff. It dies. It dies somewhere. Because here in Egypt, we don’t have a history of avant-garde, house music, experimental rock or electronic pop. We don’t have this history. This music is just new. We are creating this together—musicians, producers, audience. It is different than you would hear in another similar scene in Europe or the States. Different ideas because you have different influences. The spectrum of the label is pretty wide. I have a DJ from a commercial club [Ramsi Lehner], but he produced something for the label with this concept, taking his dance music, turning standard beats into something else. I have another guy from the rock scene. He plays guitar – very powerful, very proud, very loud. I have the drone guys, the minimalist guys - I have everybody. It could be someone shouting. Whatever. Tomorrow, maybe I do Indian music. Something from the river. It just has to be new, and exceptional. That is experimentation for me. I take this music and I put my own environment in it. And if you really hear it, you will hear the difference. Egyptian stuff, it’s really different. I’m not trying to give it extra credit here, but... B.E.: You mentioned the oud and the tabla. Are those examples of the Egyptian identity in the music you release? M.R.: I try to open the doors to anything. I don’t necessarily ask for one thing, one direction. Just promote the ideas of experimentation – just something new. You don’t have to be stuck in this picture of being afraid of the market, this fear that ‘Oh, no one will come to my concerts’. Sometimes people send me stuff. I talk to them. I always say it’s good. We have to get energy, encourage people. It’s fine if I have someone doing something with strings and basic beats and they think it’s exceptional. And it is exceptional for them. I have to deal with that and respect that somehow. I can direct this in a subtle way, but not put my hands inside the production. I can discuss things with my friends about the music, but it always stays general, conceptual. Never “Do this” or “Do that.”
staalplaat soundsystem performing at the 100LIVE ELECTRONIC MUSIC FESTIVAL in 2008 B.E.: Fathy [Salama] was telling us about some new work you are doing that involves sha’bi DJs. Tell us about your interest in that music. He talked about guys from poor neighborhoods with DJ rigs, mixing sounds, vocals, and Egyptian beats. M.R.: It’s the most exciting thing that’s happening in Egypt, if not in the Middle East, if not in pop music on any scale. This is very original stuff. It has everything – It has the Egyptian culture, it has the aggression of hip hop music, it has the dynamics of dance music, It has the concept of radical music – repetitions in beats and cutting and doing and looping. It has lyrics – it has everything. It’s not just sha’abi, popular music, not just world music. It’s a new form B.E.: How did you discover this music? M.R.: It’s not only wedding music, it’s the music for the majority. The music will be in weddings, in the car, in the house, on TV, at parties, in everything. For them it’s wedding or not. It’s the music. This is what we like. What they listen to. B.E.: Wait. You say TV is paying attention to this too? M.R.: Oh, no. Of course not. It’s not class enough, it’s not chic. It’s threatening a lot of stupid pop music. It’s not that clean. It’s not pretty. But it’s very good music. It’s real. It’s serious music. They do everything with it. You have this guy with a very cheap Chinese DJ rack and thousands of CDs. And they cut samples like hell and they just do it, with a drummer, of 18 years old, without metronome without headphones, without anything. And they just rock the night. I mean not even one single mistake you hear in this. There is something happening with them inside there. They just see something that I can’t. It’s new. It’s very new, and it kills everybody. If you are there, you just see. Everybody is touched, and moved, and reacting. B.E.: Is there always a singer? M.R.: Not always. Sometimes you have someone saying something, sometimes not at all. It’s full of dynamics. Sometimes you have a drummer, DJ singer, sometimes only the DJ. It’s different. B.E.: So you say it’s new. 5 years? 10 years? Less? M.R.: Maximum 5 years. Maximum. B.E.: You’re not going to hear in on the radio. Fathy Salama went on the computer and showed us this stuff. From YouTube. Are there CDs? M.R.: No. They have their own stuff. They find the kids with good ideas. Just print a few CDs. 5 pounds or 10 pounds and give it out to some people. B.E.: Are there key artists? Tell us about some of the individuals. M.R.: There are some good artists, yes. DJ Figo, DJ Beckham, DJ HaHa. HaHa is the development of an expression, very dialect. If you get stopped by the police for drinking, they ask you to say “Ha Ha.” But it’s also someone who is just a weak personality. Someone not really a man. Not the big picture. Not really a loser, but someone below, that no one to trust. It’s really strange. Its something I can understand, but I can’t say what it means exactly. It means something to everybody. It’s very dialect.
Dj Chipsy playing at El Azhar Park B.E.: Do these artists come to you?
M.R.: After lots of discussions, I’m trying to promote this now with all the other stuff I’m working on with my label, but these artists are really difficult with organization. I’m trying to find a way to get them to understand what I’m doing, but they have one gig in London and one gig in Hamburg... For them, it’s a bit like, “OK, where is the money?” I’m trying to establish good communication. I have a good relationship with some of these guys. I have this festival I organize every year. It’s called 100LIVE Music Festival. I always organize the festival in the springtime. We had a visual artist who made a project with these guys. I was really very happy about it. Then it was introduced it at the festival and everybody was shocked – it was amazing music and beautiful. This is art. This is advanced art. There was this feeling of exploding. Together with the guy doing all the noise and doing everything that they do, I heard lots of comments like, “Oh, this is not art! This is just street’…” It is art. B.E.: This is really exciting to us. We keep asking, “Where is the new music?” Most of what we’ve been pointed to doesn’t sound all that new. M.R.: What we're doing in this scene is the future, for me. I’m not defending my scene, but honestly, you were at that street festival last night. [We had attended a monthly outdoor festival the night before, featuring local rock and traditional acts.] called This is out of the game like 15 years. When you play songs like this (pop music), it’s not fair. A lot of Egyptian audiences are not educated in terms of music and art. It’s not fair that this is all they are exposed to apart from the commercial pop on 24 hour TV. All the productions, it’s just one thing. It’s not fair that this is the only thing that you provide. You give them the wrong idea. You make them even worse then what they were. B.E.: Fathy Salama and others we’ve spoken to made the same point about education. Fathy’s point was that you couldn’t have equivalent of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra because you don’t have the population that is well educated that could create something on that scale. There’s some broad sense of people having to be educated. Not that you went to a conservatory, but... That’s all you expect because that’s all you know. M.R.: I’m not sure if this is correct. For me, successful music in a place is reflecting the culture. If it’s high culture, low culture, advanced, ignorant, any kind of culture. If the music is reflecting this culture in an honest way, it is success. We don’t all have to be well educated and smart. This is not my case. My case is my culture and how I can interact with it – how can I reach it and how can I express it. That’s success for me. We don’t have to make something musically sophisticated. That was another setup. Two million people living in Cairo maybe. It’s totally different dynamics. Now you have something and you deal with it. It looks like this, like that. If you can reach this crowd, this culture – that is success for me. It could be as big as Mozart. That is high standards for me. Not an academic measurement. It’s what you have, what you are. That is success.
Sean Barlow: That’s great, I’m so glad you said that. I was kind of pushing back on Fathy a little bit. Great music often comes from people who are not educated – they’re just inspired. He was pushing back, saying, “You’ve got to have this education or you don’t have a chance. Egyptian music is doomed.” Pretty pessimistic. M.R.: It’s one way of making music. I will teach you things and then you will provide it. It’s safe, it’s good, it’s honest. But culture is not happening in this way. Then everyone would do the same thing and you wouldn’t be here talking to me. There would never be any definition anywhere anymore. B.E.: I think he was also talking about, like, guitarists not knowing how to tune up their guitar. M.R.: I agree with that. If you decide to make organized music, you really have to tune your guitar. There’s no other choice. If you don’t… It’s your decision. If you choose it, then do it. You can come onstage, go like this [makes gesture], I will respect that. I will not ask for tuning. I will ask for other things maybe. B.E.: Do you know the music of Tom Zé of Brazil? He does this music with a woodcutter, power tools. Experimental music, very interesting guy. He really shattered all these expectations of Brazilian music in the ‘70s. You should check him out.
M.R.: And one more thing I want to say about this sha’bi music. There is a huge difference of the concept of production. The production happens in a very simple way. They don’t ask you for anything. They have a cheap computer from home and they start to cut the music there. Very basic software, a microphone with a line-in. Kids get attracted to that. Just sit in a small room and spread it. They don’t need anything. And they just do it. And it’s big. I’m talking about majority. So if all the kids are into the music, I can see its future. I can see this development of an understanding of this music. It going somewhere. They do it because they like it. They don’t do it because they want to be onstage, watch the girls, get some money. It’s not this at all. Sean: We were down south in Upper Egypt. There were one thousand people, including young people to see the Sufi singer Mahmoud El Tuhamy. This was a mouled, a Sufi saint celebration. The question is this: If there is a good Muslim boy or girl coming up with a father who is Salafi, a conservative religious person, would he be told, “No, you cannot listen to this’ because the lyrics are too radical or obscene, sexy etc?” Is there a sectarian divide with this music between those who come from a very religious background and those who don’t? Do religious groups oppose this new kind of sha’bi music? M.R.: This music penetrates everyone and goes through every door. And once you hear this music and have a group standing there, they will react almost in the same way. I’m not sure about generalizing this exported idea of Muslims. It’s like the Americans talking about Marilyn Manson. This sensitivity can happen anywhere. Any society can be conservative. They have their own ideas about music and religion. They don’t want to see naked women. That’s OK. In another society, they don’t want to hear swearing. Conservative societies are similar towards art. It’s just what hurts you more in different places. I am not worried about this music. Maybe the Islamics see the music in another way, but I would be happy to have that discussion. I don’t think this discussion will be there. In this moment you really need to think about how you make alliances with other groups to attack the government or attack pop music. That’s a bit my idea. But what I want to say is I’m not sure if the Islamic point of view will have much to say about this kind of music or any advanced music. Advanced music is not exactly about erotic ideas or things like that they would be offended by. They actually have very special music, especially the Salafists. Now I start to hear it, because before I didn’t know this was anywhere in Cairo. They have some interesting songs they sing. Yeah, they don’t want any instruments when they are singing. They still have a music structure in their ideology. It could be drumming, it could be vocal. There were in the square last night, if you remember, someone singing. It’s beautiful. Maybe you like it or not, but still it’s music. B.E.: Interesting. I missed that. Was it singing or Koran reciting? M.R.: Singing, singing. Nothing religious. Maybe a few words, praise of God, love of human beings, but yes, they have music. So we can discuss. If we arrive at the point where we sit down, we can discuss. Maybe you get offended when you see a woman jumping around with her tits on TV. I understand. I think if we talk about music with them, something would happen. Something positive, I think. B.E.: Someone told us that this new sha’bi music is often played at weddings and parties in the neighborhoods where the Muslim Brothers are the strongest. You have this situation of this very exciting, crazy music. It’s required at these weddings that they serve beer and give hashish to the men. It’s the furthest thing from what we would imagine of our conception of the Brothers. Do you agree with that? M.R.: I understand what you’re talking about, but I’m not fully aware of what they like and dislike, these Islamic parties appearing now. I think everybody with our different backgrounds agree that we have a social situation here. We have something in common. I do this and you don’t like it, but we accept it. There is a social agreement somewhere. If you are a person like this, and you want to have a party in that way, OK. Have it under my balcony. Even if you put the megaphone here and disturb me all night, I understand you. In this sense, it doesn’t become a crime, a religious wrong. This is our culture and we all understand it. Maybe I will do it in a totally different way, but I won’t stop you. I don’t really want to argue your opinion of the Muslim Brothers now, but I’m telling you that the view of the Muslim Brothers is not exactly as it is exported. There are many of them. They are strong and others are way much stronger than them. These skits in the street – they bring the speakers, and yes, we can go and fight, yes, if you want this type of confrontation. They can stand there and do what they have to do. But if it gets to this, they will also protect themselves. The Brothers are not really all over us with the machine guns. No, it’s not like this. They are there, but it is not like this at all. B.E.: Nobody really knows where this process of revolution will end up politically. I’m interested in where you think this revolution is going culturally. You seem to have a more optimistic perspective than other people we have talked to. You do see things that you are excited about, where you can say, “This is the future.” Let’s start with the uprisings in Tahrir Square. Did any of these new sha’bi musicians go there, or perform there? M.R.: Yes, a lot. It was the only acceptable thing other than the speeches and revolutionary songs. If I would go there and put on my I-don’t-know-what, or any other DJ, or even just a pop song, it would never be accepted. It happened in front of my eyes several times. They tried to put songs, like new songs, or something cheerful everybody said, “No. Stop. Don’t do it!” Many people. You put the revolutionary songs. Or else you put these guys onstage with their PC laptop and just “dit-di-di-dit-di-di-dit” all night, and everybody’s happy and it’s accepted.
B.E.: That’s fascinating. M.R.: They really sense the vibe of the crowd. They are really from the majority. It’s some kind of agreement. It’s not from scratch too. It’s the development of existing popular music that was always there since the ‘70s. It’s a totally different form now, but it’s coming from there. Then this development went somewhere in the ‘80s, then the ‘90s – Now it’s the development coming from this and all this modern technology for modern music. How to produce beats without drums, danceable beats. The maxim is to make you dance with words that can touch you. It could be an extremely danceable track but the lyrics make you cry. Still, it’s very up and hyper. They can sense the crowd. They know what works. They know where it hits and they just do it.
B.E.: It seems like the Egyptian music has been divided into these little camps: there are the sha’bi people, the old classics, the heavy metal groups, the artists on your label, the Sufis, the folkloric musicians at a place like Makan. These are separate groups in Egyptian music. Little islands. I don’t get the feeling that they really come together anywhere. So, given that fragmentation, what is your vision for the future of Egyptian music?
M.R.: I don’t know what it will look like, honestly. I just believe in hard work even if it’s small islands, true. It’s true for reasons. I believe that even if it’s small islands, if people just keep doing it and not going to big commercial companies. Doing some stupid things and transforming yourself. Be who you are, do what you do. You don’t have to go somewhere else. Where is this all going? I don’t know. It’s all so difficult. Pop music – it will always be there. The small heavy metal guys – they will always be there. I’m hoping for the electro sha’bi guys. Hopefully some guys from the traditional scene will come up.
B.E.: When we went to that mouled and saw Mahmoud El Tuhami, we heard very powerful singing, so deep. If you could take a singer like that and get them to work in a genre that you’re talking about, the possibilities are very exciting. Don’t you think?
M.R.: This is the thing that could happen. There are all the means and the tools. It’s great, but it’s also very busy and very crowded with things like what you saw last night. The culture scene is full of this crap, and all the money and efforts go there. It makes me sad with all of this stuff happening. I don’t understand why in an event like yesterday, why don’t you get one of these DJs? It’s in the streets, its outside.
B.E.: I’ve talked to some of the people involved in these different musical islands. A lot of them seem to have resentments toward one another; this one doesn’t like that one. I hear it’s difficult to get all the representatives from these different groups into one room and get them to feel like they’re part of one thing. In the past ten years, there have been all these developments. These are the sprouts of a new universe of music in Egypt, if it’s nurtured correctly and the right things happen. Every time I say this though, I see that look – there’s skepticism. Do you feel like Egypt is on the verge or reinventing itself musically?
M.R.: First of all, I would consider the past ten years as past. It’s old school, old fashioned. Over. Thank you. Good job. Second, you can’t deal with conservative people. You can’t go anywhere with someone that is extremely conservative about new ideas. You can fight for your one idea all your life, yes, but you can’t just kill everything around it. You can’t say, “Oh no, this is not up to my standard.” No, you can’t. Yeah, fight for your one idea all your life. But don’t just put everything else around it down. It’s not good, and it’s not helping. Of course, you can’t put everyone in one room, go hand in hand, “Let’s conquer the world.” No, you can’t do this. Because, then, the person next to you doesn’t believe in your existence. How can you talk? How you can you discuss? Makan is focused. Okay, this is clear. The guy is very clear about it. I’m just doing this [Egyptian folkloric music]. And I will just do it. Okay. Fine. But if you have an open stage and you say, “I’m not doing rock music because it’s a Western influence played by young Egyptian guys living in Heliopolis.” I mean, this is Egyptian. How can you put this away, take it out of the picture? You can’t go anywhere with this kind of personality, this kind of attitude. Plus these things did good things in the past 10 years. I think it’s fine here. We don’t have to make a big story about it. Now, I don’t want to see music like Wust al Balad again, and this is for many people, not only me and experimental/alternative/conceptual artists. For many people the revolution was about things like this, because of this shallowness, this naïveté that kills the culture that does not respect the human being’s intellect. The revolution came out of things like this. So this is one… The past ten years are somewhere else. I totally agree that the people working in this field should sit down and look and see what should be done, yes, but I still believe in the separation of these islands, that each island has to be strong. Because if we have different strong scenes, then something will grow together. But I’m not sure if we have to consider the old crew as part of this coming thing or not. I’m not sure. It’s not for me to judge. B.E.: If people have rigid categories – this is right, this is wrong – they can’t easily collaborate on building a new future. That goes for art as well as politics. M.R.: You have to be open. I still go to concerts that I do not support. I support the action. I don’t say, “I will not put my money there.” We can discuss about music taste forever. We can even fight. Okay. But if this is what should happen, we all have to support it, we have help each other. However, if from the very beginning of the conversation, you just kill my existence, where can we go? The past ten years are gone, the good things and the bad things. “You really helped a lot in killing a lot of good things, and you did some bad things. But you’re gone.” It’s about other things now. It’s not about getting some money from the EU and making a development center for music. What is this? Is this art? Is this culture? Are we retarded people going to listen to music? With all my respect to special cases, it’s really already killing the idea of culture, of any idea of creativity. I’m dealing with you like a totally helpless, poor, undeveloped person. What is this? And this was happening for the past ten years. What kind of creativity is this?
…and here’s Banning’s conversation with composer Hassan Khan. It took place in Khan’s Cairo apartment, overlooking a busy—and loud—street.
B.E.: I like the automotive language of Cairo, the beeping of taxis, in the background. Have you ever used that as inspiration?
B.E.: Why don't you introduce yourself?
B.E.: What was your musical background?
B.E.: Who inspired you in the beginning?
B.E.: So feedback and guitars led to …
B.E.: You were telling me the other day about a particular kind of synthesizer that you work with now. Tell me your path to that discovery.
B.E.: Tell me how you went from experimenting with the sounds to creating actual works, pieces. Even when me and Mahmoud [Refat] worked together for a few years, and there was a lot of improvisation in that. We always designed the concert, and we gave it a title. We had a score of sorts, a score that could be a diagram, or it could be notes and drawings and stuff, but a score that both of us could understand, and that we performed, even though it was not absolutely dogmatic. So every time you would perform that score, it would be a largely different piece. I became more and more involved with the idea of structure itself in the music.
B.E.: Mahmoud mentioned that performance was central to what you do. When you talk about soundtracks, what kinds of productions are you talking about?
B.E.: Experimental theater?
B.E.: One of the things we've been talking to a lot of people about is the way that Egypt in Cairo in particular has evolved from being like the center of theater film music production for the Middle East, in the sort of mid-20th-century, and something of a decline since then. I guess I have two questions. First, what is your sense of that process, the part of it that you've lived through? And then also, where do you see your artists fitting into those of larger Egyptian musical tableau?
B.E.: Okay. So if we take the business angle away from it, and just talk about artistic flourishing, creativity, what would be your description of sort of the arc of the last hundred years, and where they have lead? Are there new ideas, creative stuff, worthwhile art, completely apart from what sells and what the industry is promoting? I think with the advent of that, this kind of monolithic structure slowly started to crumble. The pace has picked up with time, of course, as things become easier or, as forms of communication become faster. Of course, as things pick up, mutations are more visible, and faster. I think in terms of popular culture, which is not "pop", but in terms of popular culture itself, there has been a disintegration of this monumental structure that was dominant in the ‘60s, and also, interesting strands keep rising—kind of on their own. This is a form of cultural mutation, which is a bit different from the way someone like myself operates. Although I can be influenced by that to an extent—and I would argue I could also influence it to in another way—I don't exactly operate under the same conditions. I do not operate in that economy. And my background, my musical background itself, is different. The arc itself is quite different. So I wouldn't identify myself within that niche, although I have an affinity to it, and I see something positive in it. My work is not easily identifiable as belonging to a specific genre, and that is very different from what happens within generic forms that mutate and develop and become highly original, sometimes in highly radical ways. But in the end, what's happening is related to cultural shifts, and I would make some distinction between this and people who are working on developing an individual language that is not tied to that so directly.
B.E.: So the cassette is an important beginning in sort of breaking this cultural monopoly. It's portable. People can put it in their car, their home, whatever.
B.E.: Right. You can copy it, make it your own, take out a song you don't like, and you can share it. And this leads right up to the world of the flash drive and the Internet, which is just a continuation of the same process.
B.E.: So tell me a little bit about what your career has been like with that as the background. Have you been able to find places to perform here in Egypt, venues that are receptive? First, because you do make a claim for independence, and you demonstrate it. That means you can propose things that are quite out there. The lack of a clearly identified subculture means that what you do, whether it's completely out there or not, does not have to be labeled in a small slot. And therefore, it can infiltrate other sides more easily, and kind of pass more easily, even if in the end what you do will never be incredibly popular. But that's not its goal in the end. Its goal is to build a close relationship, and a very engaged relationship with an audience. And I think that over the years this relationship has been established. I do see other younger musicians who are doing things that have a relationship to what I'm doing. And so there is some kind of progression, and some kind of context that is born, and exists out of the joint labor of all these people.
B.E.: Who is your audience?
B.E.: When you say that some of the new artists also came out of the art world, are there some names?
B.E.: Let's talk about your music. Are there any works on there that you would particular like to draw attention to? [Note: you can video of some of Hassan Khan’s performances in the Feature for the program “Cairo Underground” at www.afropop.org.] And so, I shaped these audio bits into new sound blasts by structuring in these new beats, and in the end, what you have, or what my ambition was, is that you are listening to music that makes sense in a way because its references are recognizable, and yet its grammar is different from the music that you associate with that sound. That's kind of the idea.
Still from Khan's film 'GBRL'
B.E.: Interesting. So that was a 2001 project. Another set that is completely different is called The Big One, and it's based upon the sha'bi genre. I composed and arranged beats and sections in the studio, with session musicians and arrangers who work within that genre. So there are musicians who play the music professionally, for recordings etc. I'm attracted to this music, and I am reiterating it with my own motives and my own accents, basically.
B.E.: What attracted you to that music in particular? It is not about fusion. They are not trying to fuse this with that. It's just about using whatever seems interesting to you. And that is a different logic. You are not driven by this goal of making things work together. You are driven by your interest to do something without having to be constricted by a set of rules that have other purposes. So all these things attracted me to this music.
B.E.: I love the idea that sha'bi is itself already borrowing things and using them its own way, and that you were just taking things one step further by using it. But we talk about the new sha'bi, the new wave of sha'bi, when would you date that?
B.E.: Talk about some of those.
B.E.: Tell me about the nabatchy. A third genre is the song itself, also mutated. So the song remained, but mutated into new forms that had to do a lot with studio wizardry in a way, using effects and kind of using highly compressed beats. These were usually songs that came out of the sha'bi repertoire, or were new additions to it, so that was a new strand. I guess these are the kind of three main directions. B.E.: We heard about a sub genre called "mahragane."
B.E.: Which means party or celebration, but I gather this also became a kind of sub genre of his wedding music. Is that right? So these are three very different projects, Tabla Dubb, Incidence, and The Big One.
B.E.: Fantastic. Very interesting stuff. I look forward to hearing it. Let me ask you this about The Big One. Was it difficult to get the nabatchy to play by different rules? These are probably people who are used to doing things their own way.
B.E.: You told me that you don't like performing at Sawy Culture Wheel. So where do you perform in Cairo? B.E.: Let me ask you this more philosophical question I mentioned earlier. How important is it to you in projects like Tabla Dubb and The Big One that you are putting an Egyptian stamp on what you're doing? Obviously you are drawing on traditions that have not really flourished here, but how important is it to you to make it feel or be Egyptian?
B.E.: Let me come finally to this question of where the larger tableau of music in Egypt is. Are you optimistic? Is this something you think about, care about? Do you go along at all with this notion I mentioned that there has been a lot of new interest and creativity bubbling up in different areas, and maybe we are on the verge of seeing some exciting new developments in Egyptian music, something that might defy the kind of monopolistic industry control over popular culture? What do you see as the future for Egyptian culture?
B.E.: And if the underbelly becomes the mainstream, then it will quickly be replaced by another underbelly, right?
B.E.: Do you think this new sha’bi has any possibility of breaking out internationally, and becoming a sound identified with the new Egypt?
B.E.: Not necessarily headed for Carnegie Hall right? B.E.: But definitely headed for larger audiences. It's very exciting music, so there is some room for growth.
B.E.: And that is also a development of the past decade, isn't it?
B.E.: Well, that's great. So that has legs as well. Maybe we will see you at Carnegie Hall.
B.E.: It's a network that is defined by genre, not ethnicity. As opposed to the “world music” universe which imposes all this kind of ethnic and national thinking, which is problematic.
B.E.: Most of the artists who live and die by the “world music” tag, also hate it. So you're stuck with it, you can’t avoid it, but it is very problematic. Thanks very much for talking with us.
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