silez + ukuk

Salah Ragab and The Cairo Jazz Band - Egypt Strut (via djmaheem)

[…] the western jazz connection. “Egypt Strut” is roughly based on Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man”[…]

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The story of Salah Ragab’s Cairo Jazz Band is one [of] unexpected meetings. In December 1966, enthusiastic jazz drummer and Major in the Egyptian army Salah Ragab spent an evening at the American University in Cairo to hear Randy Weston Sextet’s “History of Jazz” concert. In the reception afterwards, Ragab found himself at a table with two unfamiliar faces, czechoslovakian bassist Edu Vizvari and german musician and author Hartmut Geerken. It was within a few hours of their meeting however that Salah Ragab had found collaborators for his groundbreaking project: the creation of the first ever egyptian jazz band.

It was Ragab’s promotion to Chief of the Egyptian Military Music Department in 1968 that turned the project into reality. The department not only gave Ragab access to every instrument he could desire, but also left around 3,000 military musicians at his disposal. Commandeering a military building for the project, Ragab hand picked the twenty-five finest musicians, as he, Vizvari and Geerken set about moulding military marching band professionals into improvisatory jazz musicians. Geerken remembers […] that while all were accomplished musicians, many could really only play marches and national anthems. It is this rigorous training which underpins the band’s unique sound, giving the whole record a percussive, majestic urgency. A meeting of strident improvisation and the strictest discipline.

“Ramadan in Space Time”: Salah Ragab and the Cairo Jazz Band present Egyptian Jazz