"ESCALAY (THE WATER WHEEL)" HAMZA EL DIN SEALED LP NUBIAN OUD AFRICAN

$

20

For your listening pleasure:

"ESCALAY (THE WATER WHEEL)" HAMZA EL DIN

Nonesuch Records H-72041, released in 1971.

Sealed LP

Sudanese Nubian folk music with vocals and oud.

Nubia is a region of northeast Africa situated along the Nile in both southern Egypt (south of Aswan) and northern Sudan. Toshka, the village in which I was born and spent my early years, is in Egyptian Nubia, near the village of Abu Simbel, where the famous temples of Ramesses II were located prior to their being moved during the construction of the High Dam. As a boy I was sent to live with my father in Cairo, where I studied oud and began my musical career.

At a certain point I found the life and situation of the Nubian community in Cairo too restricted and burdened by the surrounding milieu and so I emigrated to Sudan to partake of the Nubian artistic scene that was happening then in Khartoum. This was during the 1950s, when Egypt was under the political authority of Nasser?s regime, which was very dry artistically (especially for Nubians and other minority groups). Sudan, on the other hand, offered a very free and relaxed environment, where Nubians had a real cultural presence. In 1959, when I went to Italy to further my musical studies and launch my career as an international artist, I traveled under the documents of the country to which I had emigrated, i.e. Sudan.

However, musically speaking, I am first and foremost a Nubian musician, heir to a culture that is common to both Egypt and Sudan, and exclusive to neither. My music has both Egyptian and Sudanese influences and elements, with each piece perhaps weighing more in one direction or the other, but I think that on the whole it is more Egyptian. My first two albums of Nubian music contain some songs (e.g. Nabra) where the scales are typically Nubian, in which two of the quarter tones of the seven-note scale are sparsely used so that the remaining five tones give the piece a distinctive pentatonic flavor, typical of Sudanese music. On this album, however, the Egyptian influence is more strongly felt: the piece Remind Me was originally composed for and sung by the great Egyptian diva, Um Kulthum; and The Water Wheel I composed using the scales typical of Egyptian music.

?Hamza El Din, 2002