Famous Egyptian Islamic chanter Mahmoud El-Tohamy has participated in the Abu Dhabi Festival's Ramadan Series with a concert titled 'A Call for Love', which premiered on Sunday evening. The performance included 16 enchanting songs that "infuse traditional Arabic Fusha music with cross-cultural aesthetics that tie the past, present, and future" as explained. El-Tohamy also featured acclaimed Egyptian chanters Mohamed Tarek and Wael El-Fashny. A pioneer in reviving Islamic chanting heritage in modern arrangements and western harmony, Mahmoud El-Tohamy, who in recent years released an album of Islamic folk poetry in contemporary commercial pop arrangements, is the son of the pioneer Sufi chanter Sheikh Yassin El-Tohamy. Born in 1979, El-Tohamy started his career in his boyhood by following in the footsteps of his father. He performed Sufi poetry chants in traditional Islamic Sunni events across the country for crowds that sometimes numbered in the hundreds of thousands at big moulid events in Cairo's Al-Hussein and Al-Saida Zeinab districts. He was featured in various concerts in Egypt and abroad with Egypt's Grammy Award winner Fathy Salama and his band Sharkiat in a project launched in 2018 titled 'Sufism vs Modernism'. The Abu Dhabi Festival hosted other events during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, including performances by Grammy-nominated Lebanese American singer and songwriter Mayssa Karaa, Saudi singer and songwriter Tamtam, and Saudi countertenor Mohammed Khayran Al-Zahrani's Ethereal, among others.
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