155: Egypte: Les Musiciens du Nil, by Ensemble Mizmar Baladi

Ensemble Mizmar Baladi (Egypt)
Egypte: Les Musiciens du Nil (1977)
8 tracks, 70 minutes (1988 extended CD reissue)
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In the world of music, Egypt is most well-known for its classical music: it has been considered the most glorious seat of Arabic classical music for many centuries. This album shows a different side of the country’s musical culture. I guess you would call this folk music from Upper Egypt – that’s the south of the country, named for being upstream of the River Nile. This was the first recording of the legendary group known in Egypt as the Ensemble Mizmar Baladi, but who, due to the success of this album, are known abroad under the name The Musicians of the Nile.

Across this album, the ensemble play many different instruments, but the most prominent melodic accompaniments all have a special something about them: there is the mizmar (a high-pitched shawm) and the rabab (a fiddle with one or two strings). Both of these are played in threes, and they all have quite a whining, buzzy tone that could put some off, but I find entrancing. My favourite instrument showcased on this album, though, is the argoul, the long double-clarinet. It has such a great sound – one pipe provides a drone and the other the melody, and the musician (here Mustafa Abdel Aziz) uses circular breathing to keep a continuous sound, giving it the effect of a particularly reedy bagpipe. The argoul is only featured on a couple of tracks, an untitled taksim (improvised solo) and the track ‘Tayyara’, but I find them so captivating. I actually conducted one of my rare in-depth musicological analyses on the argoul taksim on this album – feel free to get in touch if you fancy a read!

While it is obvious by the melodies and rhythms that these pieces come from an Arabic culture, it really is a world away from the classical traditions of Cairo. The timbres at play are very far removed from the shimmering tones of the oud, qanun or ney, and the baladi rhythms used throughout are nothing if not invitations to dance. The classical styles of Egypt are certainly wonderful and captivating in their own way, but I know which music I’d rather be surrounded by during an incense-and-coffee fuelled evening in Luxor.

105: Diaspora, by Natacha Atlas

Natacha Atlas (United Kingdom/Egypt)
Diaspora (1995)
12 tracks, 72 minutes
Spotify • iTunes

By the mid-90s, British-Belgian-Egyptian-Israeli singer Natacha Atlas was already a star within the UK’s world dubtronica scene. She was the lead vocalist with several pioneers of the scene, most notably Transglobal Underground and Jah Wobble’s Invaders of the Heart, and had guested with everyone from Loop Guru, Nitin Sawhney, Not Drowning, Waving and Apache Indian. With Diaspora, she struck out on her own with her first debut album…sort of.

Thing is, a Transglobal Undergound album under any other name sounds as sweet, which is good, because that’s basically what Diaspora is. It features a classic TGU line-up, with contributions throughout from Alex Kasiek (also known as Tim Whelan), Hamid Mantu, Count Dubulah (now mostly known as Nick Page), Neil Sparkes and Satin Singh, and the production is literally credited to TGU. That’s not to take Natacha’s influence out of things, as this album has its own sound; that is, very much influenced by the Arabic classical styles of her ancestral homeland of Egypt. Together with the standard TGU instrumentation, there’s also those wonderful massed strings of the Egyptian orchestra as well as oud, accordion and even some klezmer clarinet for good measure.

There are a few tracks where they go more down the traditional Arabic route, but the album is at its best when that dubtronica really comes out. The stand out track is ‘Dub Yalil'. It’s a slow one and it smoulders. Over its eight minutes, it builds and builds, first with drones and overlapping clarinets, then with drum loops, tabla and Arabic percussion. The bass comes in, with an incredibly simple but absolutely perfect stomach-wobbling bassline, and then the accordion, sounding just like a South Asian harmonium. Natacha’s voice soars in, over, across and through. And it continues like that, the layers increasing in their depth and complexity, a spot-on balance of Arabic dub, the styles making a great marriage. The track is marred slightly by Natacha’s opening verses, taken directly from the adhan (the Islamic call to prayer). Musically, it works wonderfully, but the use of the text and the melody of the adhan in this context is quite ethically unsound. I think today, they may not have included that bit. That aside, ‘Dub Yalil’ is such an excellent track and a triumph of world dubtronica.

Natacha eventually left TGU and went on to have a really successful solo career, often focusing most closely on those Egyptian classical styles. Everything comes around though, and she has been playing with them again quite a bit recently together with a few other original members. They will be playing a gig together, along with Nick Page/Dubulah’s Dub Colossus at the Islington Assembly Hall on 18th May – I hope I’ll catch them, and you, there!