Mraya

Last night I went to a concert at the Sahwy Culture Wheel, a community center down the street that hosts poetry readings, live music, and fine arts exhibitions. There is a large outdoor amphitheater, right on the bank of the Nile, and another indoor theater with maybe 200 seats. Last night’s concert, a young band called Mraya, was held indoors, and the ambiance was exceptional—we arrived just in the middle of a fantastic lute solo, the 20 yr. old lutist bathed in beautiful blue light. Photographing in such lighting conditions is difficult—it requires a slow shutter speed and a large aperture, which means that focus, already compromised by a limited depth of field, is even harder to attain because the slightest movement obscures the subject. And when the subject is rocking out on a lute, still moments are infrequent at best. Still—abusing the secret of photography, taking hundreds of pictures—I was able to get some good shots.

The music was great. The band was a lot like Wust al-Balad, not quite as good, but much younger, so still impressive. The oldest guy in the band, one of the two singers, named Tamim, was only 21, and the youngest was 19. There were eight people in the band: two singers, an acoustic and an electric guitarist, a bongo drummer and a regular drummer, a lutist, and a basist.

I talked to some of the musicians afterwards, got the band’s e-mail address, and told them that I’d like to come to some more of their concerts. I’m thinking about a piece on the Cairo music scene. I’ve now seen two bands that are very unique and very good, and both times the scene and the audience were warm and inviting. I’m also interested in hanging out with some of the young poets who are always reading and performing at the same places where these concerts are held. It’s rare to find a society where poetry still forms an important part of the young, urban culture—I’ve heard poetry still thrives in Ireland, so much so that the newspaper publishes the hottest poets on the front page—and here in Cairo, poetry is still very much alive. And the important distinction to make between poetry in Cairo and poetry in, say, any place in the U.S., is that here the performance is as important as the substance, whereas in the U.S., poetry has been mostly relegated to the ivory tower, where academes sit around in stuffy classrooms, sipping coffee from travel mugs and talking about hidden themes, structural motifs, overlooked gender subtexts, and the permanent tension of dueling binary oppositions. Yawn.

It’s too early to pass a favorable or dismissive judgment on Cairo’s young bards, but I suspect I’ll enjoy meeting them. Now I know where to find them.