The team performed their first concert in Egypt on Thursday 26 May at the Lake View area of Al Azhar park. A unique partnership, blending four Tunisian singers and several musicians with Egyptian bands like Massar Egbary, it was hard to tell who was Egyptian and who was Tunisian.

The team performed a new Egyptian-Tunisian version of their famous song Khalina Nehlam (Lets Dream) and a new song called Mahma Ekhtalfna (No matter how much we disagree) about sectarian strife. This was an exciting mix of Christian hymns, Islamic duas (prayers of supplication) and rap music.

A striking part of the show was the singers’ entrance and exit.  Near the end of each performance another singer would enter the stage and take over from the other, merging together for a short time.  

The audience was greatly impressed with the simplicity of the lyrics and music, coupled with the great quality of the performance.

“The Dreams Recorder project works to create healthy and positive competition among its artists, getting the best out of them and achieving one of our most important goals - uniting artists and countries,” Sherif Eissa, the founder and director of Dreams Recorder, told Ahram Online.

He said there are not just an art group, but a profit-oriented project with the goal of developing youth and international relations by using independent art talents positively and making music that connects people.

The initiative started at the beginning of 2010, just after the notorious conflict between Egypt and Algeria, following a football match in late 2009. This was followed by negative and damaging information from the sports media and derisive music productions by independent bands from both countries.

Eissa was stirred by this destructive behaviour into getting in touch with these bands to create a new form of their music, and produce a TV show that would instead convey messages of hope and harmony.

Eissa, in partnership with Slim Ben Chiekh, a founder of the similar project “El Lama”, launched Dreams Recorder to give young people the opportunity of voicing their dreams by translating them into music.

Since the majority of youth do not have enough life experiences to know how to communicate their dreams, Eissa and Ben Chiekh believe that music and the arts is an excellent tool to interpret dreams into a language that people can understand and relate to easily.

“Our project is a movement that we want to spread, giving hope to youth everywhere by showing them that their dreams are relevant and they are not alone,” explains Eissa.

The team have given several concerts in Tunis and produced an album about illegal immigration, in partnership with the United Nations, though the recording was banned by the Tunisian authorities.

After their success in Tunis, they decided to complete the first season of their TV show in Egypt, the first step in building the Egyptian-Tunisian fusion.

They faced problems when they tried marketing the idea of an Egyptian-Tunisian show, which was not well-received by Egyptian satellite channels, who blamed the Tunisian accent claiming it was not easily understood in Egypt.

But fate was on their side. The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions united the two countries and the TV channels began to show an interest and wanted to see how each had shared the same challenges to similar social and political conditions.

Ben Chiekh was really excited to work with Egyptian artists for the first time; “I was impressed with how Egyptians and Tunisians could work together and prepare for this show in just a few days. We put together new songs that were performed as if we had been singing together for a long time.”

The Dreams Recorder team hopes to hold more concerts in other Arab countries, uniting them with art and music; “I am optimistic that the Dream Recorder project can expand all over the Arab world and include artists from around the region, who knows, maybe it can go global,” said Ben Chiekh.

Dream Recorder are planning to distribute a document promoting their philosophy signed by all the artists at their concerts.

Photos: Maged Helal