Shenouda was born on 29 April 1943 in Tanta and graduated from the Faculty of Music Education in 1966. He then joined the Higher Institute for Music (Conservatoire). His exceptional talent and his contribution to revolutionising Arabic pop music through bold experimentation are universally recognised.
In 1977 Shenouda founded one of Egypt’s most successful and significant ensembles of all time, Al-Masryeen (The Egyptians), perhaps Egypt’s first fully modern band. Recounting the origin of the band, he attributed the idea to the late Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. On graduating, “I joined a group of young people, and we played a few Western pieces and songs. We toured many countries such as Lebanon and Syria, and we invited major singers to attend. One day, Mahfouz approached us—he was working as a journalist at the time—and he asked me about the music we played, which was a collection of Italian, Spanish, and French songs. He also asked why we weren’t performing the same kind of music in Arabic. And when we told him Arabic music wasn’t what we liked, he asked what it was about it that we disliked.” The band was formed with the express idea of avoiding those things—long introductions, repetition, and lack of harmonic structure—and it was a huge success.
Some of the most significant lyricists wrote songs for Al-Masryeen: Salah Jahin, Omar Batisha, and Abdel-Reheim Mansour. Some of their best-known songs were Mashya Al-Sanioura (The Beautiful Girl Is Walking, 1985), which practically every Egyptian knows by heart. The band combined Western pop techniques with traditional Egyptian tunes and provocative, socially engaged lyrics.
Shenouda composed a huge number of songs, perhaps 900 in total, working with superstars such as Abdel-Halim Hafez and Nagat and even the urban folk legend Ahmed Adaweya. Adaweya’s remarkable hit “Zahma” was composed by Shenouda despite the difference in style: Adaweya was hesitant until he heard the melody, which he couldn’t get out of his head. The incredibly catchy tune reportedly had everyone who could hear it crowd around the recording studio. “Zahma” was to become a landmark in the history of Egyptian music. “I worked with Adaweya because I was a big fan. He was the sad ney of Egypt, his voice was remarkable for its hoarseness.”
Shenouda was also the first senior artist to discover and present the great singer Mohamed Mounir, for whom he composed four songs in Mounir’s first album Allimouni Einiki (Your Eyes Taught Me), arranging the entire piece. He also composed eight songs in the second album, Bentweled (We Are Born), once again arranging the album in full. Shenouda also discovered Amr Diab at one of Al-Masryeen’s concert in Port Said and persuaded him to come to Cairo and study music. They collaborated on Diab’s first album Ya Tariq (Oh Road).
Shenouda composed musical scores for films starring Adel Imam like Al-Mashbouh (The Felon, 1981), directed by Samir Seif, Al-Hareef (The Street Player, 1983), directed by Mohamed Khan, Shams El-Zanaty, and Esabet Hamada wi Toto (Hamada and Toto’s Gang). He also made the music for the Samir Seif’s comedy Gharib fi Beity (A Stranger in My House, 1982), starring Nour Al-Sherif and Soad Hosni, about a twice-sold apartment where a provincial footballer and a single mother end up living together. Earlier, in 1979, he made the music for Henry Barakat’s Wa La Azzaa Lel Saydat (No Consolation for Women, 1979), starring Faten Hamama.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 23 July, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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