Raqs Nerd: Ahmed Adaweya - notes from a six-month obsession 🎶

One of the ongoing themes since I started Raqs Nerd back in January has been my project, veering into obsession (or, Autistic special interest) of listening to all the music recorded by Egyptian sha'abi legend Ahmed Adaweya (see e.g. "Raqs Nerd: But is this ART?")

And now that I'm six months in, and have listened to I think most of Adaweya's available recordings (and indeed got to a point where I can sing along to a fair number of them in mangled Arabic), I'm ready to start sharing what I've learned in the process so far ☺️

1 - Most of us bellydancers are barely scratching the surface with Adawaya's music - and we're missing out

I think most bellydancers could probably only name a handful of Ahmed Adaweya's songs, if that - and whilst Bent el Soltan and Salamatha Om Hassan are undeniably top-tier, there's just so much more out there - songs that are a joy both to listen and to dance to, yet that I've in many cases never heard at a dance event or hafla... (e.g. Sitt el Hawanem, Bent el Amir, Fozdoq Ya Memalah)

And I also would personally make the case that we should be considering him as one of the defining voices of Egypt in the last century, up there with Oum Kalthoum (yes, I said it) - as an artist who created groundbreaking music, had tremendous cultural impact, and was undeniably a brilliant musician and performer with a lasting legacy.

Why isn't this an especially mainstream view? Classism, basically. Across cultures, many people seem to struggle with the idea that art can be openly and proudly lower-class, appeal to a lower-class audience, not even try to pander to upper/middle class cultural sensibilities, and still be real art with real meaning, skill, and merit. But that's what Adaweya did - magnificently.

2 - This music is very deeply embedded in Egyptian culture and traditions, on many levels - you need context to fully get it

I've been listening to, and enjoying, Adaweya's music for many years - but I have often felt in the past that I was lacking the context to fully 'get' it.

But after learning a lot in the last few years about Egyptian traditional entertainment, and baladi wedding traditions, it now makes a lot more sense to me - as music produced by traditional artists (Adaweya himself, his musicians, and many of his songwriters and composers), who learned their skills by on-the-job immersion not formal training, and lived and worked on Cairo's Mohammed Ali Street, starting their careers playing at street weddings and festivals.

Ahmed Adaweya's earlier recordings, especially, are very much expressions of that world - filled with lyrical references to weddings, to brides and grooms, to wedding parties and baladi wedding traditions, bridal veils and wedding rings... (see e.g. "El Farha Di" - "This Wedding", or "Ekteblena ya Qady" - "sign the marriage contract for us, oh judge")

Speaking of lyrics - as I've gone down the rabbit hole of trying to at least loosely translate more songs, it has also become clear that the language of Adaweya's songs is very very Egyptian. As in, they aren't just in Egyptian Arabic. They are written the way people actually spoke in daily life, in working-class neighbourhoods of Cairo, in the 1970s-1980s... And on top of that, there's playful use of colloquial expressions - which are hard to translate at the best of times, but as I've learned when I've gone through some songs with my Arabic teacher (shout out to Eva!), it's not just colloquial expressions themselves, but puns and plays on words based on popular sayings 🤯

Which makes the process of translation rather tricky to say the least (and needless to say, Google Translate is useless here)... But also, very interesting!

All of which is to say - I will argue that this is still fabulous music in its own right even if you don't understand a word of what's going on.

But, it's also music that very powerfully expresses a specific place and time and identity in modern Egyptian history, and when you begin to get a feel for that, you can appreciate it on a whole other level.

3 - The mawawil (vocal improvisations) are where it's really at

Anything you read about Ahmed Adaweya is likely to tell you he was a master of the art of the mawal - a form of vocal improvisation based on short colloquial poems, and a really important element of Egyptian sha'abi music. But as dancers, we tend to gravitate to listening mainly to the songs that are "danceable" - the ones we could conceivably perform to at a show or a hafla. The rhythmic, the catchy, the upbeat; the conveniently short (or easy to edit).

But I am here to tell you, only doing that and skipping everything else is a terrible mistake. Because Adaweya's mawawil (the plural of mawal) truly are on another level.

Yes, they're often long and sometimes slow. No, you almost certainly won't be putting them into your next restaurant set, and probably not on your hafla playlist. But oh my god they are SO worth listening to.

You've probably heard the icoinic mawal at the beginning of Bent el Soltan... But most of them come in the middle of a long song, or else right at the end of an album - and I'm pretty sure this reflects where they'd have been played in a live performance too: the upbeat, catchy songs are the warmup act (for both listener and musicians); the mawawil are the main event.

And they are an absolute tour-de-force of improvisational musicianship: the percussion fades into the background, a fast-but-soft heartbeat. Instrumental taqasim draw you in, weaving deftly around the rhythm. And then, Adaweya's voice is there - one moment like an electric current, powerful and raw; the next, softly spoken; his musicians expertly carrying the energy through the pauses - building melodic shades of emotion, light and dark, tension and resolution, with the unhurried skill of a master craftsman, seemingly simple and yet dizzyingly complex when you pay attention.

Two of my current favourites are the mawawil shaabeya from the album "Adaweya Fi London", and "Mawal Betea el Tofah", both of which incorporate mawawil and folk songs into a longer slowly-building performance that take you on something of a journey... Absolutely 🔥🔥🔥 stuff in my opinion :)

4 - Adaweya's band were a proper supergroup - and we should appreciate their skills too

The more I listen, the more I notice how downright incredible pretty much all of the intstrumental performances on Adaweya's recordings are. Part of what makes his music extraordinary, is the lineup of musicians he brought together - acting as a kind of catalyst for their creativity. Listen to any one song, really seriously listen to literally any one of the instruments, and you'll hear what I mean. The accordion, the ney, the trumpet, the oud and qanun, the tabla, the riq, even the toura (musicians' finger cymbals) - everything is played to a virtuoso level.

You can find some more info on the full list of band members here, for the serious nerds, but of particular interest to dancers are Hassan Abou Seoud on accordion a lot of the time (yes, that is the same Hassan Abou Seoud who wrote Shik Shak Shok), and Khamis Henkesh on tabla (probably the most legendary tabla player ever, and I would guarantee you've danced to his drumming at some point, even if you didn't know his name).

Adaweya actually gave little shout-outs to his musicians a lot, you will often hear him calling their names and praising their playing on his recordings, if you listen out for it. It's clear that he very much appreciated that creating this music was a team effort - that each musician was important to the whole. And I really enjoy the sense on a lot of these recordings that they were made with all of the musicians together in the studio at the same time, having a good time playing together, appreciating each other's work. It gives the music good vibes, for me.

A nice listening example is the instumental from the album "Sahra Fe Beit Adaweya" ("An evening at Adaweya's house") - featuring solo taqasim from many band members, and an energetic drum solo!

5 - Yes it's sha'abi, yes it's grounded in tradition... But also, eclectic and experimental!

Yes, some of Adaweya's repertoire is pretty much pure traditional baladi/sha'abi music, flawlessly executed. But! He also did some really experimental, out-there, eclectic stuff... And most of the time, it really worked, because with musicians that good it's hard to go too far wrong.

Not all of his more boundary-pushing work lends itself well to raqs sharqi, but it's definitely fun to listen to, and I'd be very intrigued to see what fusion dancers or dancers with multidisciplinary training would make of some of it

Like... Some absolutely wild psychedelic organ in "Kolo Ala Kolo" (this is of course 100% danceable), funky disco in "Namima" (I really love this actually, sorry to the disco haters), latin vibes in "El Dor El Awalany", an intro that sounds like it could be the Pet Shop Boys in "Atareek" (OK, this is excessively 1980s but I can get into that), and I could go on... 😁

---

I have also, of course, discovered a whole load of songs that I love - including a lot that are very good indeed to dance to (and very many which were performed to by dancers at the time)

I'm still finding it difficult to narrow them down to a manageable list of favourites to share with you though (as my best friend, who keeps getting spammed by me with youtube links to yet more Adaweya songs, will attest 😅)...

But I am currently putting a lot of thought into organising my learning, my favourite songs, and my inspiration from dancing to this music & watching iconic dancers perform to it - in order to teach my next online course, starting at the beginning of June!

This will be a six-week exploration of Ahmed Adaweya's songs, plus classic sha'abi dance technique and styling inspired by dancers of the 70s and 80s, and including loads of musical and cultural info to help you get the most out of the songs too 😊

More info here - Classic sha'abi - the songs of Ahmed Adaweya (online) and yes, the online classes will be recorded too, with recording access until the end of August.

And of course, there's an in-person version too for my Manchester crew!​

With Love,

PS - every part of this newsletter is written by me, a flesh and blood human being, using my own thoughts, feelings, opinions, and writing style - now and always. This is a generative AI free zone 🚫🤖