Osama Kamal finds there is a comeback for a quirky instrument once drummed out of use Not far from the grandiose Abidin Palace, in the eastern part of the grid pattern that leads to modern Downtown Cairo, there is a narrow alley called Haret Al-Balaqesa. Around it are car repair workshops, bakeries and an incongruous concentration of opticians. On Thursdays, the Rango Band comes to perform in Haret Al-Balaqesa. The theatre in which the show is held is tiny, but it has great expectations. The Tanboura Hall may be a hole in the wall, but it has already become a centre for cultural attraction in this long-neglected part of town. Carved off a nearby coffeehouse, the theatre has only six rows of benches, enough to accommodate 40 or 50 spectators at most. The tickets, set at LE 20, are set at cost, if not below-cost price. But the music is heavenly. The band uses a variety of Sudanese folk instruments: bongos, tambourine, and drums. One particularly interesting instrument is a wide belt to which dozens of sheep hooves are attached. When the dancer-singer moves with the music, the hooves emit a rustling sound. Think of a dozen people crumbling newspapers simultaneously and that would be the lowest rustle of this instrument, called the mongor. It looks as exotic as it sounds. A couple of the songs are of North African origin, with the usual seven-tone scale. Most, however, are popular Sudanese songs performed in the five-tone scale of Nubian and Sudanese folk songs. The band is a mix of young and old, the age of the ten or so performers ranging between 25 and 75. They are all singers, but their songs involve a dancing act, simple at times and elaborate at others. Often they invite the audience onto the floor to dance as they perform. The members of the audience are foreigners and locals, and they often sing along with the band, mouthing the words, clapping and generally having a ball. Hassan Bergamon, leader of the band, and Sheikhah Zeinab, the only female member, are both veteran singers versed in folk music in both Egypt and Sudan. Among the songs they performed were: Ya Sitt Ya Sudaniya (O Sudanese Lady), Al-Leila al-Henna (Henna Hight) and "Liwa Ya Liwa (O Army General). Some of the songs date back to the early 19th century. The rango is made of wood and looks like a xylophone. It was brought to Egypt with the Sudanese recruits into Mohamed Ali�s army in the 1820s and 1830s. Later on some of these recruits obtained agricultural land and settled in several areas in Egypt, including Arishiyet Al-Abid in Ismailia, Karmouz in Alexandria, Al-Arbi�in in Suez and Imam Shafei in Cairo. The founder of Rango is Zakaria Ibrahim, 58, a political activist who in the 1970s was a member of the student protest movement. This is not the first band Ibrahim has formed. In 1989 he successfully put together the now-famous Port Said- based-band Tanboura. Ibrahim has plans to set up 12 more folk bands, including the Bedouin Jerken Band from North Sinai, the Henna Band from Suez, the Waziri Band from Ismailia, the Mazamir Band from Upper Egypt, the Adwaa Al-Nuba Band from Nubia and the Arab Al-Okeilat Band from Okeilat. Ibrahim's interest in the rango started in 1996when he read Zar and the Ritual Theatre by Adel El-Oleimi. In this book, Oleimi lamented the fact that the rango had totally disappeared from the scene. Ibrahim was intrigued, and he began to enquire among his friends. One, Hassan El-Waziri, a musician from Ismailia, told him that there was one rango player who was still alive. This musician, Hassan Bergamon, was born and raised in Arishiyet Al-Abid in Ismailia. He was taught to play the rango as a child by one of his uncles. His mother is a well-known zar singer. Bergamon used to play the rango at Sudanese weddings in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, and Ismailia, but he later abandoned the rango and turned to the tanboura for zar gatherings. He also played the simsmia in the band led by Ismailia�s renowned simsimia player Roka. In their search for the rango, Ibrahim and Bergamon found three old instruments in the homes of friends. They recruited Sudanese musicians and managed, in the nick of time, to revive the art, which had dropped out of favour owing to its connection with voodoo. So far, Rango has performed at Beit Al-Harrawi, the Cairo Book Fair, the Hanager Theatre, the Port Said Music Theatre, the Rawabet Theatre, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the French cultural centres in Cairo and Alexandria. In 2009 the band toured France, Morocco, and the United Kingdom. In April 2010 it performed at the WOMAD Festival in Abu Dhabi, and in July 2010 it was at the Way Out West Festival in Gotehenburg, Sweden. Ibrahim, who was born in Port Said, started documenting and playing the simsimia in 1980. It took him nine years to form his first band, Tanboura. In 2000, he founded the Mastaba Centre for Egyptian Folk Music, which documents folk music and dance. In 2009 Ibrahim created the Tanboura Hall to make folk art accessible to Cairo residents. This is where the Rango Band now performs on Thursdays, and Tanboura on Fridays. Since 1994 Ibrahim has been organising folk music concerts around the country. Tanboura currently performs at the Casino Al-Negma in Port Said on Wednesdays; the Waziri Band performs in Ismailia on Tuesdays, and the Barameka Band in Mataria, Dakahlia, on Mondays. To support these activities, the Mastaba Centre receives funding from foreign donors, mainly the Ford Foundation. Ibrahim has been criticised because of his acceptance of foreign funding, but he says that he has no problem with aid agencies helping his efforts as long as he can revive art in its original form, and as long as the donors do not interfere in his operations. Ibrahim is critical of Egyptian cultural organisations. He says that most local agencies are steeped in bureaucracy and regard folk art as museum exhibits; ornamental and irrelevant. For him, folk art is not only a way of life but is the sole way to defend local identity in the face of the homogenisation and globalisation of the modern world. Ibrahim is training a new generation of artists to perform folk music. In an attempt to turn a profit and thus reduce his reliance on foreign grants he has established connections with agencies in Europe to arrange tours for the bands and promote their albums abroad. He has also become a partner in the music production company 30ips, to promote Egyptian folk music abroad. Thanks to 30ips, which is run by Michael Whitewood, Tanboura and Rango are now becoming well-known worldwide. In January 2012 Ibrahim hopes to hold a concert at which all 12 of the folk bands he has founded will perform. He sees this forthcoming event as his lifetime reward for an endeavour that few expected would succeed when it started 30 years ago.
