Between Africa and Asia, the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, Egypt occupies an exceptional geographical position. Crossroads of cultures and cradle of millennial civilizations, leaving their traces forever in Egyptian society, it also has a history among the oldest and most beautiful of humanity.The ethnic diversity of its people, With more than 90 million inhabitants and a rich culture, this country has an invaluable musical treasure: desert and mountain melodies, Bedouin and city folk, learned and popular, sacred and profane… Egyptian classical music has its roots in Persian and Turkish repertoires, both melodically and rhythmically. It resumes, in condensed form, ancient so-called learned forms such as mouwachchah, qasîda and dawr, bachraf or samâî. The technological and media changes (birth of radio, TV, cinema, record and cassette, etc.) of the 20th century upset musical forms and durations. It is in this cultural context that powerful stars of the song become idols and leaders, such as the diva Oum Kalsoum, Asmahan, Abdel Halim Hafez or the famous musician and singer Mohamed Abdel Wahab. For nearly half a century, Cairo, the unavoidable centre of gravity of Arab music, had imposed its law on all Arab artistic markets, which cut all their compositions on the «patron» of the Egyptian capital. So there was the music of the Nile metropolis and the rest that struggled to emerge and grow under the shadow of the firmest tutelage. The disappearance of all the giants, between 1974 and 1991, had sounded the symbolic end of a reign without sharing and had resulted in the awakening of regional music and the explosion of jeel music, This did not mean that Oum and the others said their last refrain because, today, a whole new generation has reconnected with their repertoire as well as that of the precursors of the 1920s.
Text by Rabah Mezouane
*_- STAKEHOLDERS - *_
> Coline Houssais
Professor at Sciences Po, author of an anthology of Arabic music, to be published in 2020 by Le Mot et le Reste
> Rabah Mezouane
Journalist and music critic, former IMA music programmer and consultant for various national and international music festivals.
> Ysabel Saïah-Baudis
Director of Orients, author of “Oum Kalsoum, étoile de l'Orient” (2016, éd. du Rocher)