Rania Khallaf is amazed by a performance that brings a talented family to share a stage in more ways than one A musical and poetical night was held last week to commemorate the life of the legendary poet Fouad Haddad. The event, held in the River Hall of the Al-Sawy Cultural Wheel, attracted a huge audience. Inside the hall, it seemed as though it was a gathering of a family or small community, with members of the crowd greeting one another amidst a general hubbub of jollity. The concert began 35 minutes late after being held up by technical problems with the sound. The 75-minute performance of "It is one country" was presented by The Street band; a superb setting of the poems of Haddad to music chanted by his own son Amin and grandson Ahmed, along with other band members. The music was composed by the brilliant young musician Hazem Shahin. Although the band was established in 2005, similar performances started more than 20 years ago. The great poet wrote many of his popular colloquial poems while he was in prison, where he served several terms during the 1950s for political reasons. The longest stretch was in 1959 when he was sentenced to five years. Born in 1927 to intellectual Syrian parents who immigrated to Egypt Haddad published his first collection of poems, Free Men Behind Bars, in 1956, the first time he was out of prison. His poems marked a new stage in Arab poetry writing, as colloquial poetry was not considered of great significance at the time. Haddad published 17 collections of poems in his lifetime, and his son Amin published some 16 collections after his father's death in 1985. While in prison, Haddad would read his poems to his fellow prisoners, and it is said that they created their own stage inside the prison. The first real performances came later in 1985, just a few months before his death. The first of these performances was entitled Al-Haml Al-Falastini (The Palestinian Pregnancy), which is also the title of one of his most significant collections, and deals with Palestinian resistance. The performance took place at the Gomhuriya Theatre, with Haddad chanting his own poems along with his two sons and the Print House Chorus. "We carried out the performances after my father's death, but in a fairly smaller scale," Amin Haddad, who is also a poet and a computer engineer, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "A number of significant artists added a new taste and edge to our performances, including the great actors Mahmoud Hemeida, and Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz and director Rushdi El-Shami," Amin added. The performance of the group has hence developed in many ways concerning the way of delivering the poems. "We decided to give the group the name Al-Sharea [The Street] in 2005, the year when young musician Shahin become a member of the band," he added. Ahmed Haddad, Fouad Haddad's grandson, is also a poet and has published three collections so far, including Habet Turab (Some Dust) and Fi Dollab Al-Hodom (In the Wardrobe). Along with Shahin, who plays the lute, the pair have presented similar musical evenings in which Ahmed chanted his own poems. "I think the pair will surprise us with a musical play which will be a new artistic event in the world of music today," Amin said. Last week's performance was inspired with the sincere performance of each and every member of the band who memorise and believe in the meanings the poems bear. Haddad's poetry deals with many aspects in the lives of ordinary people. He writes about human feelings; with the meaning of being a citizen; of a homeland; and most significantly calls for rebellion against injustice and for a free and civilised entity for Egyptians and Arabs alike. Asked whether the band intended to develop the format of the performance, Amin Haddad, the director of the performance, said he did not believe that scenography would add much to the performance. "I do not believe that the audience would be more impressed if we added some scenery here or there. It is the poems and the way we deliver them that interest the audience." Samia Jahin, the main female member who perfectly enchants the poems with a peerless ability to imitate the spirit of the poems also echoed that: "We are keen on delivering the poems in the simplest and most effective way so that the poetry could reach all audiences." The brilliant musical contribution made by Hazem Shahin is another fascinating element of the performance. Shahin does not restrict himself to oriental moulds or maqamat. His music is rather a blend of different styles, and his strong and sensational voice echoes such legendary singers as Sayed Darwish, Mohamed Abdel-Mottaleb and Mohamed Abdel-Wahab. "I have learnt a lot from our great musicians including Sayed Darwish, Ziyad El-Rahbani, Fairouz, and even from Bach and other Western composers," Shahin told the Weekly. In a song entitled Doctor Saad which tells the story of an Egyptian immigrant to the United States who is so overwhelmed by American society that he is no longer willing to keep contact with members of his own family back home in an impoverished Egyptian village, Shahin inserted rhythms of guitar and piano into the melody, which along with his lute created a superb sound. This song and others such as Ala gabal Al-Shoua Al-Ramadany (At The Peak Of My Eagerness To Fasting For Ramadan), a gently mocking glimpse at the way Egyptians think of food during the fasting hours, there are funny dialogues between various characters, something that requires hilarious dialogue on stage between 53-year-old Amin Haddad and his 26-year-old son Ahmed, on one side and Samia Jahin, daughter of the great and very popular poet Salah Jahin, on the other. This yielded a sequence that was both hilarious and touching. "I was a great fan of Fouad Haddad even before I joined this band, and now I am more excited than ever before to compose music for his great and sensitive poems, which affect almost every Egyptian," Shahin said. "What distinguishes Haddad from other poets was that his poetry has its own music, and transfers you to different periods of history as well as in different places." Shahin graduated from the Higher Institute for Arab Music in 1999, and in 2005 founded another musical band called Masar (Track), in which he only plays on his lute along with other musicians. This production was presented in Lebanon last year, and will be performed again this week in Doha as part of the Egyptian cultural week. Doha is currently celebrating its year as the Arab cultural capital. "We would like to move to other Arab countries," Gahin says. "Although Fouad Haddad's poetry is written in colloquial Egyptian Arabic, it is popular among all Arabs for its human and political connotations,"
