One of Egypt’s most beloved singers has been visiting New York this summer. In recent years, Hakim has recorded songs with American soul and funk legends Stevie Wonder and James Brown. This year, he’s reaching out to a new generation of American pop culture in an ambitious collaboration with R&B and hip hop artists. New York has been buzzing over a young R&B singer named Karina, whose Dominican roots, New York savvy, and unbelievably versatile voice give her what it takes to tackle music in any language or genre. Fittingly, her Def Jam debut will include a collaboration with Hakim, is produced by Gordon Marshall, and integrates rapping and microtonal Arabic vocals to arrive at a sensational blend of Egyptian shaabi, R&B and hip hop. It’s bold new work, taking Hakim to the sort of cultural crossroad where he feels most at home.
Banning Eyre spoke with Hakim during the June, 2006, recording session. Then, on July 8, 2006, Hakim returned to New York with his own juggernaut band to play Central Park Summerstage. The show was electrifying with Hakim’s band slamming hard shaabi grooves, and he providing some of the most theatrical singing this side of… well, Broadway. Here’s the June interview with images from the July concert. Author Joseph Braude translated Hakim’s Arabic into English.
B.E: For starters, uh, welcome to New York, welcome to Afropop, I hear you had a great show in Detroit the other day, tell me about that?
Hakim: Thanks a lot for the beautiful interview and welcome. First time I’m on this broadcast. I’m very happy to be with you. Praise God, the Detroit concert had about 95,000 attendants.
B.E: Well, we’ll try to match that when you come to New York!
Hakim: I hope that they succeed with us as well, so that we can extend the bridges of love between the two peoples, because the media and art are the beating pulse of this culture. The pulse of the street.
B.E: The pulse of the street. I remember when we spoke the first time, you told me about your beginnings of doing music that was very much “of the street,” things that people say on the street.
Hakim: Probably because what I sing about, the words that I use, come from the people. They are of the people. I feel that it’s the pulse of the Arab street, because these words make people in the Arab world sing. It makes them happy, it’s in their nature to sing, these people are a singing people, and so it comes from that. And they very quickly learn the words by heart and repeat them and sing them again.
B.E: That’s great. I’m wondering, now that you’re such a big star, is it harder to be in touch with life on the street and those sort of humble beginnings that were the inspiration in the early days?
Hakim: I’m still not a star, I’m still just starting out. I always keep in mind that I’m just getting started, so that I do not forget those people that you’re talking about.
B.E: Tell me about some of your newer records. Tell me about some of the most important songs, the ones that…?
Hakim: If you’re talking about the songs that people love, or the songs that we, as in I, love?
B.E: Let’s do both – first you.
Hakim: All the songs are really close to my heart, if they weren’t I wouldn’t sing them. The ones that are close to the hearts of the people are many. I can’t define exactly what, because every society, every group of people likes a specific thing, and it’s not easy to nail it down, you know from one, who likes what song, what segment of this community likes a particular song.
B.E: Can you give me a couple of examples maybe, of like what kind of person would love?
Hakim: The songs are such that people, if they hear them only once, it’s not enough, they have to really hear them over and over again before they start to really sink it. There’s a song, “Between you and me is a step and a half,” there’s a song called “Leila” that I sang with James Brown, I sang a song, there’s a song called “Ah-elbee” which means, “Oh, my heart,” which I sang with Stevie Wonder called, “Oh how sweet he is, Oh his sweetness.” That was one of the songs that people really loved in the Arab world.
B.E: I like this song from the Leila album, “Hasd Halena.”
Hakim: It’s a song about time, and how time reckons us and it causes us to contend, and it’s hard, you know, to deal with how time passes. We’re afraid of the days that are yet to come, we’re afraid of the future. Because nobody knows what will happen next.
B.E: It’s true. Tell me about this project that you’re doing here. What has been your experience here in this studio working with young American singers?
Hakim: They are doubtless very huge artists, very important artists, and I am very happy about this opportunity, this experience, and surely this experience will add something to me personally and add to my own experiences and abilities. Because contact, interaction with artists from the West, between those artists and artists from the Middle East, is demanded, is necessary, particularly these days. Because we have to make clear to the whole world that politics are one thing and the love that people have for one another is something else. And we are here today in order to extend the bridge of love between all peoples.
B.E: You’ve done a lot of this, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, and now Karina. It seems like it’s very important to you to make that statement.
Hakim: These days we’re living in a time of great tension, and very strange things are happening. Nobody knows what’s right, and who’s right. So let’s just love each other. Let’s love each other and be interested in the spirit that comes of music.
B.E: You’re working with rap musicians here. On a certain level, shaabi music and rap music, they share something because they’re very much a street view of life, as opposed to high poetry or something like that. Do you feel that connection?
Hakim: Music is one language. One universal language. It does not distinguish between the high and the low, the important and the unimportant, the rich and the poor. Music is emotion, one type of affection, one type of reception, and it’s a language that everybody understands.
B.E: What’s the reaction of your public at home? Because I know the image of Americans right now is not very good, in a lot of countries in your part of the world, and in Egypt, so when they see you come here and perform with James Brown and Stevie Wonder, what kind of feedback do you get?
Hakim: They’re really enjoying; they like the fact that these kind of joint ventures are happening, that we’re getting closer to the Western music. They’re especially happy about that, because they know there are difficulties.
B.E: It doesn’t change the world, but it shows that there’s another side to life.
Hakim: Certainly. Yes, certainly there are different perspectives…and there’s something I’ll tell you: When God distributed cognitive thinking to all people, everybody was happy with their own brain. But when God distributed money, and revenue, to people, nobody was happy with their share.
B.E: Why is that, it’s true!
Hakim: Because everybody thinks that their own thoughts are good.
B.E: Hmmm, it’s very true. But they think they want everybody else’s money! …So tell me about Cairo right now, what’s Cairo’s music scene like now. You probably play in big stadiums and stuff like that, but starting there and coming down, we really want to do research in Cairo.
Hakim: Yeah, you should definitely come to Cairo, to Egypt. What do you want to research?
B.E: Music, music, all music.
Hakim: It’s definitely necessary that you should come and look at our art, and our culture. We have human potential. We have professional and artistic potential. We have innovators. Just, we need the opportunities. We need your broadcast with us, again so that we can extend those bridges of love to all those peoples of the world, like I said right at the beginning, that the media with art are capable of doing great things in these situations that we find ourselves today.
B.E: You meet a lot of people in your travels – what do you think is the most important thing that people don’t understand about Egypt, especially?
Hakim: The only thing they understand is the desert and camels. But we have civilization, we have art, we have cinema, just like Universal Studios, literature, high culture, and we got the Nobel Prize winner in literature, we got a Nobel Prize winner in science, nuclear science, we’ve got the Nobel Peace Prize winner; every realm. Not merely stars, but big stars. And we have civilization, and learning. Everything. Not just camels and desert. And it’s a civilization of 7,000 years, only, we want to advance just like all other peoples.
B.E: Now, I know you were being modest when you said you are not a big star, but if you’re not a big start in Egypt, who is? In pop, in pop music.
Hakim: There’s many, many stars in Egypt, and I take examples from them.
B.E: Can you give me a few names? People you think are stars. Stars for you.
Hakim: Naquib Mahfouz, the Nobel Prize winning novelist.
B.E: All right, but in music, too.
Hakim: Umm Kulthum, Abdel Halim Hafez, Mohamed Abdel Wahab. Then there’s an old singer named Said… All of these stars, even if they happen to be my colleagues on the stage, I nevertheless regard them as models and exemplars to emulate.
B.E: Nice. I hope they feel the same about you.
Hakim: [Laughs] I hope so!
B.E: So what are your plans? Do you have any sort of, um, after you go home, any projects you’re working on or things for the future that you know of?
Hakim: I’m working on a new album. Two concerts coming up, one in Cairo, one in Alexandria, after that I’m gonna come back here to Central Park, Summer Stage! Then I have a gig coming up with Don Omar, a Puerto Rican singer, a project to do a duet together. After that I’m gonna do a tour of the Arab world in the summertime. Every summer I do it.
B.E: Good. Um, one more question, before I lose you. When you make a new album, how do you write songs? What’s your method?
Hakim: I do work spontaneously in the studio, but I come armed with material that I’ve developed in comfort and relaxation, just so that I have some idea first and then develop it. After that I go to the studio, I execute it, and we turn out something good, so that the experiences from before, and you develop plans and turn those plans into the real thing.
B.E: On the level of lyrics, do you respond to what’s happening in the world and in the country, or is it really coming more from inside you?
Hakim: No they come from inside. And from people.
B.E: From people that you know.
Hakim: No from everybody, from people as a whole.
B.E: So you always have your antenna, you’re always listening to people.
Hakim: Yeah. Always. Anything I can learn, I take it in.
Hakim, 2006
Interview by Banning Eyre
New York City,2006
B.E: Shukran.
Hakim: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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