Caro and Charles come to visit

Goethe Institute fashion show

Went to a fashion show at the Townside Gallery downtown last week with a couple of friends. Students from the German University of Cairo were displaying their semester projects. The night was hosted by the Goethe Institute, the German Embassy in Cairo's cultural center. It was a fun evening—and especially fun to see the Egyptians going absolutely bonkers over the models and their outfits. Some of the outfits were really cool, others were pretty bad. The theme was apparently Africa chic, sort of like that recent ad campaign by a major fashion designer to appropriate the "fashion" of the untouchable caste in India for global retail sale.

Jazz Factory kicks off

By Elliott D. Woods
First Published: November 7, 2008

An array of jazz traditions is on display at the international festival.

If you had gone to Manial Palace late Wednesday evening, you would have passed through a long tunnel of tangled banyan trees, glowing white under soft light, adorned with the flags of 18 European and Arab nations.

You would have heard lighthearted chatter in as many tongues. You might have thought you’d stumbled on a secret meeting of the United Nations’ social hour. However, the summit at Manial wasn’t for diplomats, but for a colloquium of the world’s hottest jazz ambassadors.

German percussionist Wolfgang Haffner, Cuban saxophonist Nardy Castellini, Norwegian trumpet player Nils Petter Molvaer, and Cairo’s native son, keyboardist/composer Fathy Salama, each played a set with their respective band to kick off Jazz Factory, a series of concerts and workshops sponsored by the European Commission in Cairo.

In front of a backdrop of skyscraping palms, dignitaries took the stage to welcome the musicians and the crowd to Jazz Factory: “Music is a language without borders, and that’s why we’re here,” said the Norwegian ambassador. His Spanish counterpart proclaimed, “Jazz Factory is a factory for peace, a factory for knowledge, a factory for better relations between our countries.”

Musicians gathered at the pre-concert reception shared the ambassadors’ enthusiasm, looking forward to 10 days of global give-and-take with contemporaries whose styles range from Sharkiat’s Arabic-inspired fusion to Nils Petter Molvaer’s techno-blend of digital beats and trancelike trumpet loops.

In the words of artistic director and celebrated Slovakian jazz vocalist Peter Lipa: “[Jazz] music’s ability to survive is so strong, that it has overcome all boundaries, oceans, and is now being played all over the world. I do not think I am off the mark when I say that in the past two decades there has been a noticeably strong rise of ethnic elements in this music. A firm place for these influences is held by European and Arab folk. I believe that the Jazz Factory will become a true factory for new music, which will take into account these influences.”

Nardy Castellini, originally from Matanzas, Cuba, thinks of Jazz Factory as a “workshop for history.” Nardy’s Jazz Quintet, based out of Granada, Spain, will play several sets this week with Nubians, a group of young traditional percussionists from Aswan, in Upper Egypt. The quintet mixes Afro-Cuban rhythms with contemporary piano and saxophone improvisation, creating an explosive blend of rumba and salsa. Castellini plans to record an album with Nubians while in Cairo, and he also expects to collaborate with British pianist Alex Wilson, a longtime friend and stylistic inspiration.

Fathy Salama, the Grammy Award-winning leader of Sharkiat, serves as the artistic advisor for Jazz Factory. A long time teacher and the inventor of “jeel music,” which has come to dominate Arab pop, Salama continued, “I believe that the ‘Jazz Factory’ could be the answer for a rising Egyptian and Arab interest in jazz both by musicians and the public.”

Nothing could be more culturally diversifying or musically progressive than the mélange of heavy, somber Norwegian melodies and microtonal oriental harmonies produced when Sharkiat took the stage with Nils Petter Molvaer’s trio and the duo of saxophonist Trygve Seim and accordionist Frode Haltli. Seim and Haltli have been studying with Fathy Salama since 2005, and the fruit of their cross-cultural labor is abundant, not to mention abundantly cool.

“In Europe, we are not as responsible to the American jazz tradition as the Americans are,” Seim said. “We have our own musical traditions, and we can turn to those traditions when we want to create something new.”

As the concert showed, jazz musicians are like musical sponges with attitude — they absorb drops of style from all over the world, from all points along the chronology of man’s musical history, from Nubian percussion to electronica, a microtonal scale from Egypt here, an accordion riff from rural Norway there. Jazz musicians are quintessential rolling stones, and while they may not gather moss, they certainly gather impressive repertoires.

Jazz Factory performers will barely have time to catch their breath, let alone sit, with regular concerts held every day until Nov. 15. The performers are here to learn and to teach, but they are also here to have fun, and there’s nothing better than watching a musician who’s having a good time, perhaps even an epiphany, right there on stage.

If that’s not enough to get you out to the Manesterly Palace in Manial, the Geneina Theater in Al-Azhar Park, the Culture Wheel in Zamalek or the “After Hours” performances on the Nile Dragon Boat, take these words from Peter Lipa about the importance of Jazz Factory:

“In 2008 we will lay down the building block of our joint Euro-Arabian musical future”

Full details about location, show times, and a list of performers are available at www.mawred.org/jazzfactory.htm or by calling (02) 2362 5057. For information about After Hours at the Trianon Nile Dragon Boat, call 010 601 7928.

Jazz Factory

This week was the start of Jazz Factory, an international jazz festival and concert series sponsored by the European Commission. I've been going to see some of the groups, and I took these photos on Wednesday night at Manial Palace, during the opening night festivities. It's so much fun to take pictures of people who are clearly enjoying what they're doing, especially when they're surrounded by nebulous clouds in every color of the cosmic rainbow—practically looks like they're standing in the Milky Way. Smoke machine is a pain, but what can you do.

Nils Petter Molvaer (trumpet) and Eivind Aarseth (guitar), Norway

Nardy Castellini, Cuba

Nardy Castellini and Nubians, Cuba and Aswan, Egypt

Nils Petter Molvaer, Norway

Sebastian Studnitzky, Germany

Frode Haltli, Tora Augestad, and Trygve Seim

I've been covering a lot of jazz recently, all over town. Last week we had the Nights of Eastern-Western Fusion concert series, hosted by the Norwegian Embassy. I got to see saxophonist Trygve Seim, cabaret vocalist Tora Augestad, and accordionist Frode Haltli at a place called El Sawy Culture Wheel just around the corner from my house. You can read my writeup below. I spoke with the three of them after the show—which was wonderful, by the way—and found out that Trygve Seim's wife is Asne Sierestad, the author of The Bookseller of Kabul. She's exactly where I want to be in ten years, having written several booklength documentary works and a slew of magazine pieces and news stories. Maybe I won't be content with success though, because I don't think I'll settle until I get to be Barack Obama's press secretary during his second term.

Aim high.

A melancholic northern breeze

By Elliott D. Woods
First Published: November 5, 2008

Norwegian saxophonist Trygve Seim and vocalist Tora Augestad at the Culture Wheel on Sunday, Nov. 2. Norwegian accordionist Frote Haltli.

Nights of Eastern-Western Fusion, a concert series organized by the Norwegian Embassy in Egypt, brought saxophonist Trygve Seim, accordionist Frode Haltli, and vocalist Tora Augestad together at El Sawy Culture Wheel on Sunday night, where they opened with a traditional Norwegian “welcome song.”

It was a welcome to a melancholic tonal landscape where foghorns hung in the damp air above the fjords with the weight of memory, calling the lonely and longing out into the mist.

In the Norwegian folk tradition, “Even songs that describe summer and spring are melancholic,” explained Augestad. Raspy, drunken notes from Seim’s battered Conn saxophones suffused Wisdom Hall with a palpable sense of nostalgia, deepened by the accordion’s atonal chorus and Augestad’s siren song. Dwelling on the aching solitude, the trio brought dreamlike continuity to a repertoire of traditional and modern arrangements stretching as far away in time and place as medieval Iran, where Ibsen-inspired ennui comes into perfect harmony with the poet Jalaluddin Rumi’s lyrical meditations.

Frode Haltli and Tora Augestad tour regularly with Trygve Seim’s eponymous ensemble, but Sunday night’s performance was the first time the three have performed as a trio. Their backgrounds are diverse: Seim, 37, studied modern jazz and composition at the Trondheim Conservatory.

Seim has developed strong ties with Egyptian jazz great Fathy Salama since 2005, when the two met after Seim’s concert at Nile Hilton. Seim and Salama have hosted each other numerous times in their respective countries.

Seim’s Egypt connection also extends to Dr Alfred Gamil, leader of Qithara, with whom he is currently studying Arabic music.

There is a tension between the accordion’s antique sound and the improvisational technique at the core of Haltli’s style, a tension that mounts as Haltli weaves a complex lattice of foreboding, sustained bass notes and flitting high notes around Seim’s somber sax melodies. One doesn’t normally think of the accordion as a conduit to the blue and brazen world of jazz, but the exchange between Haltli and Seim is nothing short of profound — the reward of seven years of collaboration. Their first joint album “Yeraz” came out this year to high acclaim.

Sunday’s songs circled around themes of juxtaposition and irony: the child who “dreams of growing up,” only to realize as an adult that “all of the beauty was when he was a child;” the warmth and beauty of the sunrise quelled by the chill of its descent; peace finally attained just moments before death. Referring to a traditional welcome song, Augestad said, “It doesn’t sound like one, because it’s very dark, and I think that’s because it’s often very dark in Norway.”

Though a certain blue pall enshrouded the majority of songs, Augestad’s soaring voice offered brief glimpses of light through Seim’s and Haltli’s clouded, subdued phrases.

“I try to color the phrases,” she said, “because it’s important to be able to tell the audience what the music is about,” especially when the language barrier makes lyrics incomprehensible.

Augestad has a soft spot for traditional Norwegian music. “I don’t sing them as traditional folk tunes,” said Augestad; instead, she adapts them to whatever emotional and physical context she finds herself in. “There’s so much freedom when you play songs like these,” she added.

The trio profits from the work of legendary composer Johan Kvandal, who transcribed many songs from Norway’s folk tradition over the course of his prolific career. Before Kvandal, Norwegian folk songs were passed from generation to generation aurally, keeping them local and preventing them from entering the broader world of music theory and composition. Thanks to Kvandal’s generation, Norway’s folk tradition is gaining international attention.

Sunday’s concert demonstrated the ease with which Norwegian folk songs lend themselves to contemporary adaptation. Skevs — short improvised songs — blend perfectly with the improvisational technique prized by musicians like Seim, Haltli, and Augestad. The Norwegian folk tradition heavily relies on minor scales, or modal scales, which generate a haunting tonal aura, perfectly in-line with Seim’s style of jazz composition, based on improvisation, space and eerie transitions.

“We do traditional songs in a way that we normally play,” said Seim. “We don’t do it exactly the same every time,” he added. “We put some Arabic in it tonight.”

Under Seim’s leadership, the trio charts a course through a world of binary opposition. Light and airy melodies are always undermined by the slightly dissonant whine of the accordion, or the throaty rumble of the tenor sax.

“This music is very honest,” said Augestad, referring to the constant wrestling of competing themes — love and loss, hope and despair, happiness and sadness, youth and age, masculinity and femininity.

While melancholic, the trio’s music is never melodramatic. The only certainty on offer is the undeniable truth that life is predicated on paradox, and that we spend the majority of our time on Earth in a futile, sometimes laughable struggle to comprehend the incomprehensible.

In their final number, the trio turned back to Jalaluddin Rumi’s poem, “On the Day I Die,” with lyrics translated by Coleman Barks and music by Trygve Seim. A cool air of calm spread across the theater, tensions finally resolved with a promise: “Death has nothing to do with going away/ The sun sets and the moon sets but they are not gone/ Death is a coming together.” But we’ll never be content to believe it.

Catch Frode Haltli, Tora Augestad and Trygve Seim tonight, 7 pm, at El Geneina Theater. Tel: (02) 2362 5057.