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Ahmed El Maghraby

IN EGYPT, STONES and bricks have become much more important than people,” begins Dr. Ahmed El-Maghraby, professor of Italian Literature at Ain Shams University. “This is why traditional artists, those who still wear galabeyas, are looked down upon. They are treated like servants or suspects by the police and on the streets, which is why they either give up on their art or they get rid of their traditional attire. But this is all part of a culture where citizens are considered servants to the government, the students servants working for their teachers, and the artists are servants working for employees at the Ministry of Culture, when the opposite is true,” he says.

Chagrined at this state of affairs, El-Maghraby has set out to re-acquaint the world with traditional Egyptian musicians. This month his new venue Makan opens (on Saad Zaghloul St.), offering music lovers a unique chance to listen to neglected musical traditions such as Zar music, Nubian music, Sufi and Coptic chanting and traditional peasant mawawil (improvised singing) and music.

Another fact that causes El-Maghraby some frustration is that one of his best-known contributions to music is Mozart the Egyptian, a hugely successful CD incorporating the talents of classical European musicians and traditional Egyptian musicians, including the now famous violinist Abdo Dagher. El-Maghraby, the dynamo behind the production of the CD (which was released in 1997 by Virgin Productions), is certainly gratified by the unexpected success of the work. However, he insists that some of the smaller experiments that have taken place between the Nubian group Ganoub and some European groups have been more academically gratifying but much less publicized. This is where Makan comes in, to help shed light on El-Maghraby’s protégés. Makan means ‘place,’ a very generic name to give to the area housing the Egyptian Center for Culture and Arts. Once you go in, it is difficult to think of a more appropriate name for it. The converted printing house was built by Abdel Qader Pasha Hamza at the turn of the last century. In the future, it will be a place where traditional music performers and lovers meet. No formal seating is provided cushions and baladi wooden chairs line the walls. “This is how performers traditionally worked. There was never a stage, but a wanasa or a sahra [companionable gathering] got together and everybody would interact,” El-Maghraby explains The director of Makan first became actively interested in music in 1990. “I was asked by the Ministry of Culture to head the music and singing center in Bashtac Palace. Unfortunately, and due to many bureaucratic reasons, the place never came to be, but a businessman friend suggested that I start something on my own,” he remembers. In 1992 he set up a place much like Makan, through which he was able to introduce France to Egyptian music a year later, during the festival Les Allumes. “It is an annual festival which takes place in the city of Nantes, where for six days the whole city turns into a visiting country. We did 47 performances, and even the people at the Ministry of Culture here were surprised to discover that people like Abdo Dagher and Fathy Salama even existed. The traditional singer Abdel Baset Hammouda, for example, had rarely stepped out of Mohamed Ali Street, but he went straight to France,” El-Maghraby says. Unfortunately, the civil company laws under which his cultural center existed at the time changed, and his activities were brought to a standstill. Soon afterwards, in 1998, he went to the Egyptian Embassy in Paris to become their cultural attaché. “This was one of the richest times in my life. I was lucky to work with a great ambassador and a great cultural councilor, and for three years the Egyptian Cultural Center in Paris was one of the most active in the city. We presented an average of 260 nights of performances per year. These three years helped me greatly in understanding what I really want to do.” His aims are simply to find traditional performers, present them to people, and find a way of helping them interact with other musicians be they Egyptians or foreigners to help nurture their art. Preservation is at the top of his agenda: “Take al-arghool (a long reed wind instrument), for example. This is the oldest musical instrument in history, played by the Egyptian peasant. It exists nowhere else in the world, although a similar instrument exists in Sardinia. You can see it on temple walls, and if you take it out of the Egyptian Museum it will look and sound just as it does today. Unfortunately, the last professional player of this instrument died three years ago, amm [uncle] Mostafa Abdel Aziz.” Through Ganoub group, which has since disbanded, El-Maghraby was able to bring back the ancient instrument. “The instrument had almost died, become nothing but a temple etching,” he notes. “Nowadays, I have convinced a young player of the kawala [another Egyptian wind instrument] to go back to arghool, and the most famous kawala player, Ibrahim kawala, is considering taking up arghool as well.” El-Maghraby frets that “there is no interest in preserving the living breathing history although, at the same time, we spend money on inflated forms such as classical Western orchestras to prove that Egypt is big. This makes the West laugh at us. We will never be able to compete [if we choose to play Western music],” he says. On the other hand, a group like Ganoub was able to rock the European cities it visited, he points out. Touring villages and governorates, El-Maghraby has brought many musicians out of retirement, such as the Nubian singer Sayed Gayer. “I found out that in churches, the chanters had stopped chanting the traditional Coptic music, but have opted for modern ones which, through the use of electronic organ, come out sounding like everything else, light and bad. We change our deep, profound cultural heritage into light songs, like video clips. It all goes back to the complex we have had since the turn of the last century. We want to be like the West, so we look down upon our heritage,” he says. Take the galabeya, for example. “We are probably the only nation in Africa that is ashamed of its national dress. We are also ashamed of our traditional instruments, which are not taught in academies. But long ago Sheikh Amin El-Kholi said ‘the beginning of the new starts when we take the old apart and understand it.’ How can I develop my music if I cannot listen to the old?” he asks. For four years now, El-Maghraby has been trying to get into the national center for traditional arts. “They are either renewing it, spraying it, cleaning it or something. The employees there are in a very bad state, and the music is stored on old tapes. A great treasure is strewn around without anyone caring, except for those who had enough dedication to go around the villages and record it in the past,” he laments. Seeking out authentic music and performers all over Egypt, El-Maghbraby was able to work with five groups: Aragide (Nubian), Mazaher (Zar), David Chanters (Coptic), Sheikh Mohamed El-Helbawi and his group (Sufis), in addition to the peasant mawwal performers. “We try to weed out any modern interference from their work, and to present them to people without much formal intervention. These performers are used to working in a wanasa or a hadra, and the audience sits around them, singing along or asking for particular works, barring Amr Diab of course,” he laughs. “What we want to do is take this music out of the museum and help the performers exist naturally. We do not dress them in archaic outfits, but encourage them to be themselves. Many of them have left their galabeyas behind because they think they must look modern since they are playing in Europe. We encourage them to wear them again. The women leave behind their peasant headscarf and opt for Filipino hijab. I asked the Zar Sheikha what happened to her beautiful scarf, and she said ‘we have become modern, khalas.’” Performances by various groups will start taking place next month at Makan. Tickets will probably be LE 10 or 15, although well-to-do visitors are encouraged to buy more than one ticket, as this is the only form of funding the center has to rely on so far. “I cannot set a high price for the ticket. I want real listeners to come in, and these may be either rich or poor, it doesn’t matter. But I want the average people to be able to come in, too. People are not to expect Burgers and Nescafé. We will be serving tea and tammeya,” he says. With time, El-Maghraby is hoping to create a following of young listeners and cultural administrators who appreciate traditional Egyptian performers.