The Dwarfs of East Agouza (Photo: Al Ahram)
The newly formed trio The Dwarfs of East Agouza, which includes Egypt's musician Maurice Louca, alongside internationally renowned Egyptian-Canadian Sam Shalabi and American Alan Bishop, have just completed their European tour.
Between 28 January and 14 February, the musicians performed on the stages of several cities in Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and France.
The trio now brace for the release of their first album Bes, an endeavour that they probably never expected to turn towards a professional recording. But don't they say that luck plays an important role in the way to discovery? Newton's discovery of universal gravitation wouldn't have happened if not as a result of pure chance as he sat under an apple tree.
Along the same lines, the music trio The Dwarfs of East Agouza was born as a stroke of luck.
The formation goes back to 2012, when the young musicians used to played together, just for fun, in an apartment in Cairo's Agouza district.
Yet, despite expectations, those music gatherings became a first seed of a concrete project that in April 2014 saw their first three-day recording at the 100 Copies Studio in Cairo and is now to be turned into an album titled Bes released via Nawa Recordings, on 29 April 2016.
The name Bes comes from the ancient Egyptian deity, a protector of humans and households. While his dance and grotesque features drove off all evil, they also brought a lot of joy, humour and introduced entertainment to the life of those protected by him, whether communities or individuals.
The music in the album is essentially like a cacophony of the instrument sounds and voice: it goes from drumbeats to jazzy frictions, topped with the notes played on keyboard. Yet, the final product becomes interesting or even a heterogeneous mixture of sounds.
The album features six tracks, Baka of the Future, Clean Shahin, Where's Turbo?, Hungry Bears Don't Dance, Resinance and Museum of Stranglers. The musicians' varied backgrounds allow the album to become a personal and subjective journey, as we visit the human souls and walk through the sandy desert of North Africa.
Baka of the Future is rather paradoxical, as if coming from someone who loves noise and people, but also likes to stay alone in his room. It is a stressful-kind of composition, in a way reflecting the tensions of today's world. The sounds are scattered, merciless and travel in all directions. The same atmosphere dominates the artwork of the album's cover designed by Iraqi-Palestinian artist, Sarrah El-Sokhn. The cover painting represents an ancient statue of Bes sculpted by the young Egyptian artist Raafat El-Kurdi.
In broad terms, the album is placed at the juncture of the classic and the contemporary. Some compositions lean toward retro, taking us towards the 1970s, while others, with their ultra-modernity and sophistication, are deeply soaked in music of today. In a way, the musicians tell us that the revolution begins on the individual level, before it spreads towards the world. This message is communicated particularly through song pieces such as Hungry Bears Don't Dance and the Museum of Stranglers.
The album will be available as a CD, vinyl record and digital copy starting 29 April 2016.
The trio
The name of Maurice Louca emerged following the 2011 revolution, and he was immediately hailed as an undisputed master of electronic music. His last album released in November 2014 and titled Benhayyi El-Baghbaghan (Salute the Parrot) was an instant success. Salute the Parrot revamped local sounds from the Mahraganat music scene, a genre that blends folkloric Egyptian music with psychedelic and electronic influences.
In turn, Egyptian-Canadian musician Sam Shalabi represents another generation, one whose debut marked the 1970s and is linked to the variety of punk rock bands. The prolific musician released five albums and cooperated with a number of Egyptian musicians.
The American musician Alan Bishop, of Lebanese ancestry, is a highly prolific and internationally renowned bassist and vocalist, known mainly for being a member of the experimental rock group Sun City Girls. Throughout his profuse career, Bishop often revives folkloric themes from the Middle East, fusing them with rhythms of rock or jazz and sounds of the streets.
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