Amal Choucri Catta looks forward to next month's Citadel Festival, and beyond The heat is on, and when I say heat I do not say it with a solitary wink at the weather but with a significant hint at the music being performed at the open-air theatre of Cairo's Opera House, and planned for this year's 14th Festival for Music and Song at the Citadel. Audiences will enjoy powerful decibels and stimulating rhythms, and the evening breeze and summer moon will be certain to make up for the scorching heat of the day. This year's festival, I am told, will differ from earlier ones: it has been scheduled for 12 days, instead of the usual 10, and will take place from 10-21 August; it will occupy four different venues on the Muqattam Hill, as well as at the opera's open-air theatre. When Mustafa Nagui, former head of the opera's artistic department and later chairman of the National Cultural Centre, decided to create an annual summer festival of music and song in 1988 it was with the aim of taking symphonic music out of the protective cradle of Cairo's Opera House, making it easily available to a larger audience by placing it on the doorstep of the densely populated Citadel area, "enabling all the inhabitants of the Muqattam to come and enjoy good music". And they came, first in small numbers, keeping mostly to themselves. Evidently they liked what they saw and what they heard and with each successive year, much to the joy of the organisers, the audiences grew in both number and diversity. Mustafa Nagui's project proved successful: in the beginning performances took place in the open- air Saha Theatre, starting at 8pm and continuing until midnight, with programmes and performers changing approximately every hour. In later years, Sherif Mohieddin, composer and former conductor of the Cairo Opera Orchestra and supervising cultural events at the Alexandria Library, took over. With him the number of venues increased, as well as the number of performances. Unfortunately, however, as quantity grew, so quality dropped. Symphonic and light music concerts were gradually replaced by folklore and pop, as well as by Arabic music of all sorts, mostly performed by beginners in urgent need of promotion. The original idea of making "good music" available to the masses was finally blown away by the winds at the top of the hill. The general wisdom appeared to be that people didn't really come for the music but for the breeze and for a good time. Following the appointment of Samir Farag as chair of the National Cultural Centre, though, performances on the hill have appeared better organised. The chaos seems to have subsided. "This year will be different", says tenor-actor Hassan Kami, in charge of the artistic programme at the Citadel festival's 14th round. "This year we are doing our best to attract the attention of the regular audience at the Cairo Opera House, with performances by well known singers and musicians, like Anoushka and her group, Sobhi Bedeir and Friends, Omar Khayrat and the Festival Orchestra, conducted this year by Ibrahim Nayer. We are also welcoming groups from other Arab countries, from Syria, Sudan and Palestine, and will be presenting celebrities like the soprano Nevine Allouba with her ensemble, Yehia Khalil and his jazz band, the Filarmonica de Montevideo, a famous tango and folklore group with an orchestra of about 50 musicians, together with dancers and singers from Montevideo, Uruguay. Scheduled for Wednesday, 21 August, at 11pm, their performance will hopefully bring the festival to a brilliant climax. Furthermore, 12 new groups will be given a chance to perform at one of the four venues on the hill and at the open-air theatre of Cairo's Opera House, where audiences will also be applauding the well- known oud player Nasir Shamma, as well as Fathi Salama and his oriental compositions, Yehia Ghannam and his pot-pourri of Western inspired tunes, and many more." "On the opening night", continues Hassan Kami, "the festival will honour choreographer Abdel-Moneim Kamel, mezzo-soprano Awatef El-Sharqawi, drummer Zein El-Ashqar, percussionist Nesma Abdel-Aziz and director Abdalla El-Ayouti. The Citadel venues have undergone a number of changes. The largest now has a 2000-seat capacity and is perfect for important folklore performances. We have also provided for a sufficient number of ushers and security personnel, to avoid any kind of chaos and to keep the performances going on smoothly. This time, you'll see, the festival will be perfect. We shall also be welcoming a number of personalities, both local and foreign, and I hope to see as many steady guests to the Opera House as possible up on the hill this year. It is such a beautiful spot." Nevertheless, it remains to be seen whether lovers of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn and Mahler will be ready to exchange their kind of music for compositions of unknown young musicians, or for pop and oriental jazz. Which reminds me of the famous Egyptian concert pianist, Mushira Issa, who once said: "There is really nothing called good music or bad music, there is also no music for the old, or music for the young. In the end, there is just music: a tuneful expression of our time." If pop and jazz festivals can attract millions of fans all over the world, there is no reason why similar performances should not attract large numbers in Egypt. Continuing with the attempts to release music from the inhibiting embrace of the Opera House Samir Farag has decided to take music not only to the venues on the hill, but also to high-school campuses and into public parks and gardens throughout the country. Concerts at different universities in and around Cairo have charmed teachers and students alike, and many young musicians, who had almost given up hope, have been overjoyed by the chance to perform. Among the different groups performing this summer, there are newcomers like Khaled Shams and his Friends of the Sea, Edward and the Gypsies, Mahmoud Soliman and his Musicians, as well as already established performers such as Ahmed Rabie, Raouf El-Ganainy, and Abdel-Moneim Sayed and his Yorka Band, performing a medley of Egyptian and Andalusian music. There are also celebrities like Manal Moheiddin, Egypt's leading harpist who eagerly participates in all musical events. She is an active member of Banat Al-Nil, a very successful group of women musicians and singers, performing all kinds of music. And finally there are the performers of traditional and folkloric music, who will be chanting their songs of love to the melancholic sounds of the nay and the drums. It is clear that audiences will be enjoying different kinds of music this summer, while sound-tracks will be carrying the tunes far beyond gardens and open-air theatres, and the moon will be shining in a cloudless sky.
