Description
*This is a Vinyl LP*
Release Date: 2021
Label: Strut
Track List
Side A
1. RAMADAN IN SPACE TIME
2. DAWN
3. NEVEEN
Side B
1. ORIENTAL MOOD
2. KLEOPATRA
3. MERVAT
Personnel
Alto Saxophone – El Saied El Aydy, Farouk El Sayed
Baritone Saxophone – Abdel Hakim El Zamel
Bass – Moohy El Din Osman
Bass Trombone – Abdel Atey Farag
Bass Tuba – Mohammad Abdel Rahman
Bongos, Drum [Baza] – Sayed Ramadan
Congas – Salah Ragab
Drums – Salah Ragab (tracks: B1), Sayed Sharkawy
Ney – Toto Abdel Hamid Abdel Ghaffar
Oboe – Senosi Mohamed
Percussion – Bib Henein
Piano – Khmis El Khouly, Salah Ragab (tracks: A3, B3)
Tenor Saxophone – Fathy Abdel Salam
Tenor Saxophone, Baritone Saxophone – Sayed Salama
Trombone – El Sayeed Dahroug, Mahmoud Ayoub, Sadeek Basyouny
Trumpet – Ibrahim Wagdy, Khalifa El Samman, Mohammed Abdou
Trumpet, Flute, Flugelhorn – Zaky Osman
Notes
“One of the most unique and dramatic albums in all of global jazz music.” — Francis Gooding, The Wire
Inspired by a concert in Cairo by Randy Weston in 1967 encouraging Pan-African unity, drummer Ragab, Eduard “Edu” Vizvari, a Czech jazz musician, and Hartmut Geerken of Goethe Institut vowed to create Egypt’s first jazz big band. Following the Arab-Israeli war, Ragab became a Major in the Egyptian army and had unparalleled access to the military’s 3,000 musicians spanning Upper and Lower Egypt, along with a wide range of instruments.
Part of the barracks were christened the Jazz House and, following a crash course in jazz history by Geerken, the Cairo Jazz Band was born, playing their first concert at Ewart Memorial Hall at the American University in 1969. Further inspired by Sun Ra & His Arkestra’s first visit to Egypt in 1971, Ragab recorded an album for the Egyptian Ministry Of Culture a year later, titled Egyptian Jazz, later released as Egypt Strut, a perfect fusion of jazz with Arabic modes with tracks referencing Islamic festivals, Egyptian landmarks and friends and family dear to Ragab. The Wire‘s Francis Gooding summarises the album as “esoteric African American Egyptianism and radically spiritualised modal jazz taken up by Ragab as the tool for a form of mystical Egyptian nationalism — a triumphalist military jazz, angled in Ra-like fashion towards the Gods of the New Kingdom.”
