Fathy Salama

This is Not the Note
Fathy Salama overlooked locally despite Grammy
By Manal el-Jesri



YOU MAY HAVE heard about Fathy Salama whose album Egypt, which won the Recording Academy’s Best World Music Album for 2004 at the 47th annual Grammy awards. The disc features the vocal talents of the famous Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour and the musical talents of Salama in a massive collaboration between 60 Egyptian and 30 Senegalese musicians.




But have you heard the album itself? Probably not: It’s not only unavailable on the local market, but it hasn’t been released anywhere else in the Arab world, either.

Try going into a record shop anywhere in Egypt and asking for any album by Fathy Salama; you’ll most likely come out empty-handed.

“I think the big companies are more interested in the jumping girls [you see in videos]. Nobody approached me after the award. They tell you ‘Great, great, but I cannot sell this here.’ Everyone I know, even my bawab, comes and listens when I play this album. They really like it. Yes, they do not understand the language [wuluf, an ancient Senegalese language] of the lyrics, but they still love it,” says Salama.

It’s simply that no one seems willing to sell it.

What’s more, N’Dour and Salama’s work has received scant attention in the domestic press, even after the Grammy. But the artist, founder of the Sharqiat group and workshop, takes it all in stride after all, he works for the fun of it. And fun is the first impression one gets when listening to the album (we received our copy from Salama): You can sense the delight of people thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Although the lyrics contain references to Islam Sufi chantings that may have come from the distant past they are not composed to be didactic or controversial. It remains celebratory and at times ventures into the spiritual.

The collaboration between the two artists is relatively young, dating back only to 1999.

“[N’Dour] invited me to work with him,” Salama says, explaining that the idea was to represent the true message of Islam to the West, to paint a picture of faith that is rooted in peace and tolerance. “Back then, I would record Youssou’s voice [in Dakar] and come back here with just that recording and a click track, which goes pum pum pum. Here in Egypt, I worked with musicians to arrange the music and allot instruments. Then I would go back to Dakar for more work and to record African music,” he says.

A fan of West African music, Salama likes to point out that Egyptians often forget that Egypt is in Africa.

“They know very little about African culture. There is no connection somehow. They also forget that many African countries are Islamic countries. Senegal is predominantly Muslim over 90 percent of their population. Islam reached them through us. So there is a connection between the two peoples. In their language, you discover a lot of Arabic words, which must have come from the Qur’an,” he says.

Salama also discovered N’Dour is a fan of Omm Kulthoum. “Our musical forms are not alien to them. In two of the tracks, N’Dour sang in Bayati and Rast maqamat [Arabic musical forms]. The Egyptian musicians here were amazed. They told me, ‘You must have taught him this.’ I said, ‘No, I taught him nothing. They have this in their culture as well’,” Salama explains.

Although they finished Egypt in 2001, the September 11 terror attacks prompted the two artists to delay the album’s release.

“It was not the right moment,” Salama says. “Nobody would have believed us at the time. Now, I guess, is a good time. I think people are ready to listen, and I think the album helps the situation. It is currently the only spoken word of peace that the West knows of,” he says.

What about Mohamed Mounir’s attempt, a song entitled “Madad” (Supplication), which was released after Sept 11. Salama says the primary difference is in the size of the production. “Youssou N’Dour is a big man. He is a producer and has worked with big groups like the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He is well-known around the world,” he points out.

Egypt is an amazing mix of African and Egyptian musical traditions, a fact Salama believes is why the album won the Grammy. “It signals a meeting between two cultures. None of this has been done musically at least. Many may attempt to merge a mix between two musical traditions, cooking them together in the safety of a studio. But that’s not it. Just because two pieces are in the G or C keys doesn’t mean that they mix. The taste and the flavor may not fit. When the two forms fit, they lead, in the end, to a third thing. It’s like they say: the whole is larger than the sum of all parts,” he says.

This, he explains, is what Sharqiat, his musical group and workshop, has been about since its inception in 1989.

“What we aim for is a kind of ongoing education, an open workshop. It is intended for musicians from all over the world to learn from each other and to work together. This is how you sometimes find rural Egyptian musicians working with musicians from France, India or America. They teach each other, which is the whole idea. This is how people worked in the past, it’s how it should be. They had more time, and gave their work more time, not just presented the public with work from a fridge,” he says.

Sharqiat, popular with younger music fans, held its first concert in Berlin. It was years later that the group was invited to perform at the Opera House, where it has been amassing a steadily growing following since.

“We should not wait for youth to start accepting new forms of music [a notion with which production companies disagree]. What about creativity? I prefer to do something I like, and which people I work with like. If we’re passionate enough about it, then maybe others will like it too. If we think about [the market] first, we present a fake product,” Salama says.

Although he admits he was one of those behind the birth of modern pop music in Egypt with hits like Mohamed Mounir’s Shababik (Your Youth), Amr Diab’s Mayyal (Impressionable), Anoushka’s Habbeitak (I Loved You), and Ali El-Haggar’s Saleina El-Fagr Fein (Dawn Prayers) to his credit Salama explains that he bailed out when the scene had nothing new to offer.

“I refuse to make clones, even clones of my own work. Nowadays, all they want is to exactly emulate MTV. I have nothing against that, but if you like Britney so much, for example, learn from her and then do your own thing,” he says.

None of his pop-star acquaintances supported Salama when he decided to look for something new, he claims. Not that it bothers him he’ll keep working on what he started. And he won’t mind it when Egyptian TV uses his music in its programs, without any form of recognition or even permission.

“I don’t mind. Even though you cannot buy my records here, they are available everywhere else in the world. And in the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt for people to listen to the music on television, even without the credit. It’s a good way to reach listeners,” he smiles.