- El Tanbura celebrates 30 years
- Zakaria Ibrahim, music revolutionary, dies
- Preserved Egypt’s folk music heritage
The aging-appearing PA system was not designed to handle the enormous volumes of sound produced by the renowned Nile Delta folk music ensemble El Tanbura as they warmed up for a 2019 summer evening performance in the streets of Ismailia. This performance was one of several in the major towns along the Suez Canal that commemorated the group’s 30th anniversary.
The amalgamation of traditional Delta music and mahraganat, a contemporary urban youth music that originated from working-class neighborhood outdoor weddings and has since swept Egypt and much of the Middle East, was achieved through the utilization of distortion and increased volume.
Remaining in Cairo on February 12 at the age of 72, legendary musician Zakaria Ibrahim, also known as El Rayes (a ship captain or supervisor in general), the “godfather of popular art,” and the “Pyramid of popular culture,” presided over the warmup with his signature grin.
Having struggled for nearly a decade to locate players of the simsimiyya, one of the oldest instruments in the world, Zakaria established El Tanbura in 1988. The simsimiyya, also known as a box lyre, is the diminutive sibling of the tambura, a lap harp with five strings that has its origins in India and ancient Egypt (artifacts dating back to the Middle Kingdom around 2000 BCE indicate this).
As a result of his efforts to rekindle interest in ancient instruments, Rayes Zakaria rose to prominence in world, Egyptian, and African music.
Additionally, he was a revolutionary musician who devoted his life and work to the use of music to inspire, if not facilitate, societal transformation in Egypt and to provide support to the populace once the revolutionary era inevitably came to an end.
He was renowned for becoming so preoccupied with the historical and cultural significance of his compositions that he occasionally lost track of time and space.
However, that was precisely the gist of the majority of the music he contributed to its creation as the founder and sole proprietor of the El Mastaba Centre for the Preservation of Egyptian Folk Music, the preeminent institution in Egypt and presumably the Arab world devoted to traditional music.
Origins of Zakaria Ibrahim’s music
Born in Port Said in 1952, the year that coincided with the Egyptian revolution, Zakaria reached adulthood amidst a climate of resistance and patriotism during the years between the 1967 war and the 1956 war against Israel, the United Kingdom, and France.
Amid the British and Israeli invasions and colonialism, the shaabi music of Port Said and the Canal, which was popular among the working class, rose to prominence as the music of resistance throughout Egypt and the Arab World during this period. The music’s lyrics and propelling rhythms reflected the spirit of resistance.
During this period, Port Said was enthralled by dama, a fusion of transcendental experience and party music that utilized the simsimiyya to create a sound that captivated the city by incorporating Sufi music from various traditions in the Nile Delta and Canal zone alongside popular love songs.
During the three years that followed 1967, Egypt and Israel engaged in the War of Attrition. During this time, the melodies of the simsimiyya, which were carried by those displaced from the Canal zone as a memento of their hometowns, spread throughout Egypt.
Zakaria attended university in Cairo during the transition from President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Arab nationalist politics to Anwar Sadat’s neoliberal and pro-Western policies in Egypt during the early 1970s.
Due to his intense participation in the left-wing student movement, he ultimately was sentenced to a brief prison term.
Simultaneously, the simsimiyya music, which had become so profoundly entrenched in the culture of Port Said and the more incredible Delta, began to be commercialized to an increasing degree.
Criticizing what he perceived as the commercialization of the people’s music, Zakaria once lamented, “Instead of being the way we were before, singing and gathering in the streets altogether and leaving together, there is now a situation in which the one coming to attend must pay the one who sings.”
In contrast, zar music, and the range in particular, had virtually vanished, existing only as an attraction for tourists.
Upon his return to his native country at the beginning of the 1980s, Zakaria discovered his mission: not only to preserve the music he cherished but also to unite as many of the old practitioners as possible in an effort to revitalize it and, in doing so, infuse resistance and the spirit of the community.
“Zakaria was an African Alan Lomax,” said Reda Zine, a filmmaker and musician of Moroccan-Italian descent. Zine was alluding to the renowned ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, who did so much to preserve traditional music.
“He attempted to redraw the ancient caravan routes in order to emphasize healing, just as the Gnawa in Morocco did,” Zine explained, alluding to the Sufi music of the North African nation.
Indeed, the instant Zakaria listened to Gnawa at El Mastaba, he detected the musical and tonal similarities that extended from one end of North Africa to the other, including the strings and the songs.
Zine elaborated, “Zakaria recognized the parallels between the therapeutic potential of Sufi music and the manner in which others perceived arab [virtuosic art music].”
“Upon observing the Moroccan government’s eventual embrace of Gnawa and its culture, he resolved to do the same for Egypt’s folk music, which was deeply rooted in spirituality.”
The spiritual history of the simsimiyya, the tambura, and the “rango” (a diminutive wooden marimba that, along with the tambura, has historically served as the principal instrument in zar ceremonies) is subject to variation in the account, according to the narrator.
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Their contemporary origins revolve around the Egyptian conquest of modern-day Sudan in 1820 by Muhammad Ali and the increasing numbers of Sudanese, Nubian, Ethiopian, and other East Africans who served in the expanding “Egyptian” army, cotton cultivation, and trade, both as enslaved people and free individuals.
Following the abolition of the slave trade at the end of the 19th century and the establishment of Port Said in 1859, sub-Saharan communities increased significantly in major Egyptian cities up to the Mediterranean, eventually transforming into neighborhoods and quarters.
The convergence and assimilation of local customs and cultural, religious, and musical practices resulted in the emergence of diverse manifestations of contemporary Egyptian folk music, the majority of which have their origins, at least in part, in the Sufi and East African traditions that characterize ensembles such as El Tanbura, Rango, and others that were formed or supported by El Mastaba.
