Islam Chipsy backstage at Markez (photo: Thomas Burkhalter)

The Yamaha PSR OR-700 à la Islam Chipsy

Round-Up

A short story of a keyboard virtuoso from Cairo: Islam Chipsy just released his first vinyl and is working on his first studio album. Plus there are other great tracks, performed on synthesizers and keyboards in Cairo, Beirut and elsewhere.

The Arab World is packed with new and upcoming music styles – check out the Norient «Arab World Dossier». A new and great keyboard sensation comes from Cairo: Islam Chipsy. He uses (and missuses) the Yamaha PSR OR-700 keyboard. – Enjoy how the instrument is marketed to Türkiye and the Arab World with its pre-set «Oriental styles» and «oriental scales» by the Yamaha company. And compare how Islam Chipsy plays the instrument.

Islam Chipsy just released his first international vinyl with the Egyptian underground label Nashazphone: «Islam Chipsy 'Live at the Cairo High Cinema Institute'». And the first studio release of Islam Chipsy was recently recorded at the 100Copies studio – I can’t wait! Plus: Nashazphone recently released an EP with Mahragan artist DJ Sardena – read about the new Mahragan/Electro-Sha’abi trend on Norient).

Interview at Night Club Markez in Cairo

On March 10, 2013 I visited Islam Chipsy at the nightclub Markez. Here he earns his money night after night – and here he learned his skills by playing long hours.

Its 6.15, we are late. Hussein El Sherbini from the Wetrobots and photographer Nadia Mounier joined me – it is not safe to come here also, Hussein kept telling me. The cabaret like club is still half empty. The belly dancers do not dance for their customers and drink champagne yet. Some sit tired on one of the many sofas and drink coffee. Others run around, talking on their mobile phones. Islam Chipsy arrives at 6.40 – a very calm and nice person. For our interview we go backstage – twenty minutes before he starts his night shift. It is quite chaotic: people come in and out, dancers put make up, the manager comes to see what we are doing here, plus the phone of Islam Chipsy keeps ringing constantly.

[Thomas Burkhalter]: How did you develop your special technique on the keyboard?

[Islam Chipsy]: I play the keyboard for fifteen years now. With this technique I started eight years ago at a party of a very good friend. I started hitting the notes as fast as possible, and people just loved it. Since then they keep asking me to play like this. I try to become better every day, and every month I try to introduce a new technique.

[TB]: Through videos on YouTube and through a documentary on ArteTracks you receive more and more attention internationally. How do you feel about it.

[IC]: Yes, there are two documentary films that are being shot at the moment. And I received invitations to perform in Japan and the US. They even wanted to give me a working contract in Japan and invited my wife and me to live there. But I don’t have a passport, that is my biggest problem. I cannot leave the country and travel.

[TB]: Could you imagine living outside of Egypt?

[IC]: I follow my passion for music. I would go everywhere where I can play music. Music is my language. It comes from my heart. For the moment I’m happy that at least my music travels around the world.

[TB]: How do you earn your living in Egypt today?

[IC]: I play a lot of different music and work on different careers. I’m invited to many weddings where they want me to show my special technique. I play with famous Egyptian singers. I have my own studio where I produce and compose music for others. And I play here at the Markez. It is very important. Thanks to Markez I have a stable income.

[TB]: What is the repertoire?

[IC]: I play loads of styles, high quality Arabic music, and a lot of Chaabi music. I play also some of the new, electronic Chaabi tracks, Mahragan, but I’m not a big fan of it.

[TB]: What is your biggest dream

[IC]: To have my own office, to have a passport, to travel abroad, and to develop my music.

We have to stop. Islam Chipsy has to go on stage. He is going to play his piano for six hours at least. First however, I shoot this photo

Islam Chipsy in Markez Nightclub, Cairo (photo: Thomas Burkhalter)

The Different «Lives» of Islam Chipsy

Other Keyboard Sounds from the Arab World

Other artists and musicians in the Arab World too mix and manipulate popular media sounds and images from their daily life, using conventional synthesizers and sequencer-software. They do so from different backgrounds: The Lebanese-Swiss duo Praed is part of a transnational scene of free improvised and experimental music. They lure curious listeners into a mazy media-carousel (see article and interview here). «8 Giga» is their homage to the popular TV-series «El Lembi 8 Giga». Using an endless loop played on a Micro-Korg synthesizer, the popular maqsum rhythm and ecstatic multiphonics clarinet playing, the two musicians – Raed Yassin and Paed Conca - mix references from many backgrounds.

Raed Yassin is one important man behind the success of Syrian new-wave-dabké star Omar Souleyman, a local wedding singer that was signed to the US indie label Sublime Frequencies and later appeared on recordings with pop star Björk (see article on Norient). Rizan Sa’id plays fast melodies on a Korg PA-80 keyboard, and Souleyman sings about love and longing. The video to his new album «Wenu Wenu» (Ribbon Music) makes me wonder if he now already has become just yet another world music flavor: he appears surrounded by folkloristic dabké dancers in costumes, filmed in various locations around the world (in the US mostly) On the Syrian civil war he says to NPR: «I don't involve myself in the politics of the country, but I certainly hope that one day, we will sing and dance again as we have always done.» (See informative background articles on spin.com and NPR).

Biography

Dr. Thomas Burkhalter is an anthropologist/ethnomusicologist, AV-artist, and writer from Bern (Switzerland). He is the founder and director of Norient and the Norient Festival (NF), co-directed AV-performances and documentary films (e.g. «Contradict», Berner Filmpreis 2020 + Al-Jazeera Witness), and is the author and co-editor of several books (e.g., «Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut», Routledge, «The Arab Avant Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East», Wesleyan University Press). He teaches regularly at universities, and runs workshops for arts institutions. Since 2022 he produces the Norient Mixtape for Swiss National Radio SRF3. Currently, he is working on his new music duo «Melodies In My Head», and on the podcast series «Long Take: Life as an Artist». Follow him on Instagram, Research Gate, Academia.edu, Bandcamp, Spotify, or Meta.

Published on January 28, 2014

Last updated on June 27, 2023

Topics

Dance

Place

Remix

Tradition

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Daniel Kordík’s [Sy][ria]

Composition

by Lucia Udvardyová

An aural assemblage of field recordings from various locations across Syria, made in April and May 2011, when the army started to fight against the demonstrations in the course of arab spring. The composition is a great example of suspense and orchestration of ready-made sounds.

Field recordings have been used and abused in music and sonic art forever, but it’s the method of processing and juxtaposition, which causes the effect. Syria is by default a rewarding sonic source for any zealous field recorder, buzzing with sounds and boasting with an enviable musical history. Syrian dabke, has reached global underground stardom thanks to Omar Souleyman. Daniel Kordík, one half of the Slovak hardware electronics noodle duo Jamka, has delivered an aural assemblage of his recordings made in 2011.

[Sy][ria] consists of 5 compositions based mainly on sound from field recordings made between April and May 2011 on various locations across Syria. These include Damascus, Maaloula, «Road 90» to Palmyra, Deir ez-Zur, Aleppo and Hama and their surrounding areas. Due to security reasons when the government forces were trying to suppress the start of the uprising, I used only my Sony portable minidisc recorder with its internal microphone.

The album is a haunting memento to what eventually happened in Syria. A country ravaged by unrest and political upheaval. This sense of tension and disembodied anticipation and sounds, is translated onto Kordík’s record, some parts of the first track sounding as if they could be Pharmakon’s intro.

[Sy][ria] by Daniel Kordík

Based on the ongoing events in Syria that would eventually break the country down into pieces, I cut my initial field recordings into small fragments and re-arranged them into new compositions. At the end I decided to add two more tracks made on Vostok.

Francisco López, the doyen of field recording, championed «transcendental listening», and this record is, in-itself, a great example of suspense and orchestration of ready-made sounds, with or without knowing the context and origin of the sounds. Money collected from the downloads will be used to help people who had to flee Syria due to the ongoing civil war. There are currently over 1 million children who are refugees of Syria with no schools to go to. I hope that this recording can generate some money for these children, so they do not become «a lost generation».

All received money will be donated to AVAAZ.

This article was first published at Easterndaze.net.

Biography

Lucia Udvardyová is a music journalist, curator, and organizer. In 2010, she co-founded Easterndaze, a project that aims to document and interconnect the emerging underground scenes in Central and Eastern Europe. She has worked with Czech Radio, Resonance FM, Cashmere Radio, The Listening Biennial, The Quietus, and The Wire, Central European University (CEU), and the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), among others. Between 2016 and 2021, she curated and co-organized the Easterndaze x Berlin series that aims to bring together collectives from Berlin and the CEE region. She also gives lectures and talks and leads sound-related workshops. Udvardyová currently works for the SHAPE platform, a pan-European festival initiative that promotes innovative music and audiovisual art, CTM Festival’s discourse program and magazine, and she’s the film curator at WOMEX. Follow her on Instagram, and on her Website.

Published on January 31, 2014

Last updated on May 01, 2024

Topics

Activism

Place

Soundscape

War

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Tamer Hosny – The Army, the Revolution and His Fans

Short Essay

by Carl Cappelle

Working as a musician during times of a revolution can be a hard thing to do. The Egyptian pop singer Tamer Hosny has to maintain a balance between those in power and his fan base. A thin line.

To the series of posts Daniel Gilman has written about Tamer Hosny and Egyptian pop music (see Martyr Pop – Made in Egypt), I would like to contribute a short analysis of one of Hosny’s latest songs. For the reader unfamiliar with 'Egyptian pop music', it is important to note that it is difficult to say how popular this music still remains. With its sweet lyrics about love and happiness, ideal worlds and references to luxury and wealth, this music has to defend itself against the down-to-earth, urban, working-class voices of the sha'bi music scene – and recently also against the mahraganat dj’s and mc’s (see Electro Sha'abi: Autotune Rebels from Cairo).

No Love Songs During a Revolution

Just as many other artists, Tamer Hosny got also involved politically. He went to Tahrir Square during the uprising against Hosni Mubarak but got badly beaten up when he tried to convince his fans to go home (see article here). As soon as Mubarak left power, he recorded a song to restore his reputation, honoring the people who died during the clashes, the Martyrs of 25th of January. In this song you can see how he, uncomfortably, tries to avoid any reference to the origin of the events. People got killed but nobody knows by whom – but anyway, he now is pro-revolution.

The Fantasy World of Egypt

In his new song «Masr ya Salaam» Tamer describes a new Egypt that has risen from the ashes. Published on YouTube one day after the popular protests against former president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood started (30/06/2013), the song proclaims that Egypt is back. «And you will like it, without any hesitation» he repeats in English – for the tourists who can come back now?

The most telling element of the song is the video clip that goes with it. With a group of young girls, a Nubian woman, a Bedouin woman, a farmer, police officers and the army amongst others, the fantasy world of Egypt is complete. In their happiness they all look the same, but the essential differences are left out. As an important part of Egyptian society, one may wonder why the Islamists aren't there. And nobody shouts slogans against the soldiers holding plastic guns, or discriminating speeches against Nubian people.

It's nice to believe in this fake harmony, but it's less innocent than it seems. Tamer Hosny, like many other pop artists, has to maintain a balance between the (former) regime and the elite connected with it, who control his main source of income, and his fans. After he tried to escape his military service by faking his military service papers, he couldn't hope for much credit with the regime. But going to Tahrir to defend the regime of Mubarak was clearly not the right choice either – to judge from the reaction of his fans.

Other moments, though, are perfectly blended to suit the two groups of interests. In the video of the Martyrs of 25th of January, you see a soldier on his tank praying with the protesters. A small and hesitant reference to 'the army as your friend' (see video above or here at 1'04) – Tahrir was still in the back of his mind - but within the limits of the possible, since the majority was convinced that the Egyptian army was on the side of the people and that they had made the revolution together, against Mubarak. The army’s reputation may have been damaged during the rule of the military council (SCAF) which followed Mubarak’s departure, but it took the opportunity to restore its image when people united against Mursi. Judging on the quantity of images of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, currently minister of defense and commander in chief of the army, one would think he was already president. For many Egyptians, Sisi saved Egypt from the terror of Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood.

This Is no Pop Music

Tamer Hosny understood this moment very well. In «Masr ya Salaam» he describes an Egypt that is back on its feet. With the pyramids, the flags and even a reference to the national anthem at the end, he taps into the nationalism of his fans, connecting it with a benign army, governing this peaceful and harmonious nation. Every element that disturbs this order, be he an Islamist or a protester, disturbs this bright future. With the army re-installing itself in power, you can ironically reach the same conclusion as Tamer: «Egypt will never change». And file the song not only under «pop music», but also under «counter revolutionary propaganda».

Biography

Carl Cappelle is a Belgian scholar and musician who lived the past three years in Cairo. Graduated in Arabic Studies he currently is writing a PhD proposal on music and identity in Egypt.

Published on January 21, 2014

Last updated on April 11, 2024

Topics

Counter-Culture

Protest

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The Yamaha PSR OR-700 à la Islam Chipsy

Biography

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Daniel Kordík’s [Sy][ria]

Biography

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Tamer Hosny – The Army, the Revolution and His Fans

Biography

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films

images

sounds

words