Musicians and fans paint the town as they celebrate the Cairo International Jazz Festival And all that jazz Ziad Rahbani has taken Cairo by storm. Salonaz Sami pays tribute to the son of two legendary Lebanese musicians who has come into his own The second Cairo International Jazz Festival took off last week at the River Hall of the Al-Sawy Cultural Wheel with every promise of outstripping last year's successful debut. It was, simply, nothing if not unforgettable. Appearing at the festival were some of Egypt's top-notch jazz artists including Al-Dor Al-Awal, Eftekasat and The Riff bands among others, in addition to some of the world's most talented jazz musicians. Top of these were the iconic Lebanese Ziad Rahbani and Spaniard Carles Benavent. Both Rahbani and Benavent, along with legendary Egyptian pianist Omar Khayrat were honoured by the festival for their lifetime achievements and their roles in enriching the international music scene. As with last year, alongside the amazing sets the festival featured interactive educational music activities, workshops and jam sessions. The Cairo International Jazz Festival is the brainchild of talented musician and Eftekasat band manager, Amro Salah, who launched the event with a performance by Rahbani, marking his first visit to Egypt. Upon Rahbani's arrival a press conference announcing the event was held, at the Semiramis InterContinental Cairo. During the conference, Rahbani said that, as a musician, he was influenced by some of the great Egyptian musical legends, and particularly by Sayed Darwish. "I grew up listening to his music," he said. And he went on to explain how connected Darwish's music was with his own. Rahbani, a composer, pianist, sound engineer, poet and journalist, is the son of two Lebanese music legends: the great singer Fairouz and Assi Rahbani, one of the famous Rahbani brothers who launched Fairouz's career. Music was thus inseparable from Ziad's life from early childhood. In 1973, at the age of 17, he wrote his first musical, Sehraia, and later released his first albums, Bel-Afrah and Abu Ali. Rahbani's belief is that the 1970s were music's golden era. "People are still adopting the tunes of that decade up to today," he said at the press conference, He also mentioned that despite the fact that he plays different kinds of music, people commonly mistake his genre for jazz -- as if you can't do without jazz these days. Rahbani's music is also sometimes mistaken for oriental jazz, a term which he denounces. "Two words that are two mistakes," he said. "Oriental, which gives the feeling of tabla, ' oriental drums', and jazz which simply means cross-border music," he insisted. And indeed, Rahbani's music has managed to cross all borders. Hours before the scheduled start of his set, thousands of fans from all over the Arab world were flowing to the Al-Sawy venue, anticipating their favourite musician's first concert in Egypt. "It's an unprecedented thing," a fan described it. The small venue was packed almost three hours before the concert, which started almost an hour late. And sadly, due to the overcrowding, some of the ticket holders just couldn't get in. "It's ridiculous," commented 38-year-old Amani Metwalli, a TV producer. "We have been waiting for Rahbani's visit for years, and now that he is finally here, we can't get to see him because of the terrible management of the event," she added angrily. "Why wasn't he invited to perform at the Cairo Opera House, for instance," she wondered. "And why, for example, would the venue management sell 1,000 tickets if they only had room for 500?" Her complaints, along with many others, apparently found to the Al-Sawy management, and in an attempt to save the day they refunded some of the ticket holders and added five giant plasma screens in the gardens, for viewing at LE40 per person. "We apologise for the overcrowding," Mohamed El-Sawy, manager of the venue, explained as he took the stage. He added that overselling tickets was not for financial gain by any means, but rather because they could not disappoint the fans. "We couldn't let down all the Rahbani fans who wanted to attend the concert," El-Sawy said. El-Sawy asked the audience to welcome one of the greatest Arab musicians, and joked: "I'm afraid you might elect him president of Egypt." Prior to Rahbani's arrival, some of the Egyptian intellectuals who had made their way to the venue, including poet Ahmed Fouad Negm, called for granting Rahbani Egyptian nationality, an initiative that Rahbani described as an "unnecessary procedure". "I already feel that I am a son of this land," he told the press conference. As soon as Rahbani appeared on stage and faced the piano, however, everyone forgot all about the overcrowding, the heat, and the fact that they had been waiting for hours for their rebellious musician, and started screaming their lungs away. Dozens of Palestinian and Lebanese flags were raised as the band struck up their chords. Also raised were dozens more banners that read: "We love you Ziad, bala wala shei [without a reason]", and still the applause went on. Until Rahbani took the microphone and said, "That's enough." Rahbani opened up with some of his familiar tracks, the first of which was, Hedou' Nesbi (Relative Tranquility), before the Syrian musician Manal Samaan and the Egyptian Wust Al-Balad band's lead singer Hani Adel, joined him on stage. And so for almost two hours they played some of Rahbani's most famous tracks, including Talfan Ayash, (Ayash Called); Maalomat Gheir Akeda, (Indefinite Information); Ehteshmi (Cover Up); and Baktoub Esmak (I Write Down Your Name). At the end of the concert, Rahbani took the microphone to thank his loyal fans for "Listening, focussing and memorising the words attentively." He finally gave in to the calls by fans for him to sing, and joined Adel and Samaan in the famous song, Bema Eno (Hence). After the song, Salah, the festival organiser and manager, along with El-Sawy, presented Rahbani, whom Salah described as a "source of pride for all Arabs", with the festival's award of honour for his continuos role in developing and enriching the Arabic music scene. "Thank you," said Rahbani. "I hope the band and I have lived up to your expectations." Those words, however, did not calm 4,000 screaming fans who wanted to hear Rahbani sing. So, to everyone's surprise, Rahbani sat to his piano once again for one last track. He called for Adel, who instantly took the stage once again and bala wala shei, started playing, as the fans went crazy. When it was over, Rahbani said "We really can't do everything, can we? Because every beginning has an end and it is time for us to go now." When the song was over, it was time for the fans to go home, tired and exhausted from standing in an overcrowded auditorium for two hours but also in a state of ecstasy unleashed by Rahbani's astonishing talent. He has taken music in general, and political songs in particular, to a whole new level of simple words with deep meanings combined with the most unusual and heart-felt tunes.
