El Mastaba Center for Egyptian Folk Music

Within the seeking of the center to achieve its goals in reviving, documenting and marketing the Egyptian folk music: •Reviving: Mastaba Centre developed both the level of musicianship within the groups which the Center Founded in marginalized areas and the local audience for their traditional music through weekly performance in the local environment for each group and they have had some success in transforming the weekly performance into social events for the community rather than the detached musical performances and this has had the effect of attracting and maintaining the interest of both the artists and audience in the local community, and beside those three groups El Mastaba founded the Bedouin Jerrycan band in Sinai which keep the traditional way of playing the percussion with what they found from the left behind of wars, ammunition boxes and Jerry-cans. We also work with immigrant Sudanese musicians, encouraging them to keep their culture through the Rango group with the last player alive of Rango instrument. They also participated in many social events in local environment like weddings. El Mastaba center founded two children schools for teaching the folk music in Port-said and in Suez under the name of "Young Tanbura" and "young Hinna" from the age 6-16 years old for teaching the next generation how to maintain their cultural legacy. We plan to continue our effort in reviving through accumulate other forms of traditional folk groups in hall Egypt and to found a traditional instrumental school in Cairo. •Documenting: The center documented more than 400 hours of video material (DV and HDV) for Egyptian folk music which helped us in making documentary films about marginalized forms of traditional music, instrument and songs to present them to the researchers or the ones interested in folk music in general, and more than 300 hours of audio records from interviews with the old folk musicians (some of them passed away) and from the concerts themselves to prevent this folk from being extinct. We plan to continue our archive and document the other forms. •Organizing shows and festivals: El Mastaba center had success in organizing El Mesilla festival in Port-said city in 2004 and in 2005. in 2004 the festival represented 7 different folk groups and in 2005 represented 6 different folk groups, also El Mastaba organized in the same city Port-said in 2006 a festival for "50th celebration of nationalizing the canal" with participation of 6 folk groups. Also the center managed to organize "music festival for independent folk groups" in Rawabeet Theater in down town in 2007 for 7 days, each day a new folk group. And two important festivals that we do every year in Port-said city one in "Sham El Neseem" fest and one in "Victory fest". El Mastaba had a lot of shows inside and outside Egypt to represent our folk groups to global audience, in Egypt in Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Jesuit El Menia and Alexandria and Cairo, foreigner's cultural centers and many other places. And outside Egypt in Union chapel-UK, Manchester fest festival-UK, south bank-UK, Barbican’s Ramadan Nights Festival and others, and also the three biggest festivals for the world music: Womex in Spain, Womad in UK and Glastonbury in UK and many other countries around the globe. The next year plane is to open a space in Cairo to represent the Egyptian folk groups, which will help in making regular performances in Cairo to translate this success in generating an income to continue our work in developing and marketing the Egyptian folk music locally. •Increasing the interest of media: El Mastaba succeeded in making promo videos to promote the groups, especially El Tanbura, Bedouin Jerry-can Band, Rango, along with photo sessions, sample audio for each group and constructing two websites (www.eltanbura.com , www.jerrycanband.com ) activities which helped the Bedouin Jerry-can Band’s tour in UK and to facilitate the next tours for Rango group and El Tanbura group. Also the center achieved some kind of propaganda through many interviews with TV channels and Radio stations inside and outside Egypt (OTV channel, Dream channel, ONTV channel, Nile cultural channel, TV link, ARTE, 3rd Germany's local channel, BBC Radio Arabic and English, BBC Radio Bristol, BBC Radio Liverpool, BBC 3 and others) and also through different newspapers and Magazines( El Wafd newspaper, El Messa newspaper, El Gomhoriya newspaper, El Ahram weekly newspaper, El Badel newspaper, El Akhbar newspaper, The Guardian newspaper, Songlines Magazine, fRoots magazine, Mondo Mix Magazine, The daily Telegraph, The Times, Evening standard and The Independent newspaper). We plan to construct a new website for Rango group to facilitate the communication with the audience and the interested journalist. •Producing Audio and Video: El Mastaba center produced the documentary film "The Siren" directed by Zakaria Ibrahim. The film was speaking about the legend of Simsimiya instrument which instrument is like the siren and the players have to die holding their instrument until the end; also co-produced the documentary film "El Tanbura – capturing the vanishing spirit" directed by Philippe L. Dib about our main group El Tanbura and with a research on the Rango instrument by Zakaria Ibrahim - president of El Mastaba center – who wrote a script for the documentary film "Rango" directed by Arab Lofty and produced by Nile sector for specialized channels – Egyptian television – and the newest, El Mastaba center coordinated with the Egyptian Television through El Mastaba’s researches, archive and in writing the script for a short documentary film with title “El Mandouh” (the one whom the siren called upon him) about the legend of Simsimiya “Mohamed El Waziry”. From our main goal of trying to breakthrough the Egyptian market to introduce the folk music and create a market for it, El Mastaba center produced a number of cassette and CDs for some of our folk groups (El Tanbura group: Noh El Hamam cassette – Ahwa Qamar CD & cassette, El Wazery group: Walla Zaman CD, Hinna group: Ya Rayes El Bahariya CD, Arwah CD and children schools: Ya Aroust El Bahr (Mermaid) cassette) and also to invade the international market by a co-production with 30IPS LTD (English company based in London) to produce 3 CDs in the international market ( El Tanbura: Between the desert and the sea CD, Friends Of Bamboute CD and Bedouin Jerrycan Band: Coffee Time CD). We plan to produce a CD every year for one of our groups. •Organizing workshops for teaching folk music: Besides the role of the adult in the revival of our music, the center had already built two children schools for teaching the next generation how to maintain their cultural legacy (one in Port Said 2003 and the other in Suez 2004) with the support of DI/Sida (Dramatiska institutet / Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) under a TAMASI network. The children involved in the process are between 6 to 16 years old. They are being taught to play the popular instruments and rhythms, and also to learn, keep and perform the popular songs and dances. From another perspective, the center looks after their educational state through making sure that they focus in school as a tool for developing themselves. This led to their balanced growth by combining art and knowledge. We plan to continue our efforts with the two children folk music schools and to found another school in Sinai to keep there traditional legacy alive.