Sayed Mahmoud reviews the history of the Tanboura musical band Being in Port Said in the cool of winter can be a bit of an adventure. At night, the streets are empty except for young men assembled in coffeehouses to play cards, watch television and smoke shisha, their banter mostly about football. Zakaria Ibrahim, manager of the Tanboura band, has invited me to a performance marking the band's 20th anniversary. For the first time I will see the band live in their home town, even though I have been a fan for more than 15 years. Here they will be among those who know them so well that they can sing along with most of the songs. Their Port Said fans do not see Tanboura as an exotic voice but as their own authentic ego, and several of the group's songs have been written by anonymous song writers from this city. Before leaving Cairo I go along with some friends to the Mastaba Centre for Folklore, which doubles as Tanboura's Cairo office. The centre catalogues Tanboura's work and keeps the musical instruments the band uses in performances. At the centre, I watch a 26-minute film, Naddaha ( The Siren ), a work put together by Zakaria and band administrator Mamdouh Al-Qadi. Earlier, I saw a French film about the band at the Al-Sawy Cultural Wheel. The film showed some ancient musical instruments from the Egyptian Museum, all with a striking resemblance to the harp-like simsimiya and tanboura. Later on, I searched the Internet and learnt that the tanboura appeared in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom, circa 2000 BC, and was one of the instruments used to resuscitate the dead in the afterworld. The tanboura has remained in use until modern times, and the Egyptian army took some of them along during their campaigns in Sudan in the 19th century. The tanboura also has associations with the unseen world, and is often used in zar ceremonies (a ritual exorcism originating in Africa). The journey of the tanboura is traced in the French film, which also features performers speaking about the naddaha, the mythical sea dweller who sings beautifully but may also take people's lives. Zakaria shows me the musical instruments in the Mastaba Centre. "There is something religious about the tanboura," he says. "You may notice that the songs often have Swahili words, because some come from the Horn of Africa. It is an oral tradition that has spanned centuries and many countries." I look around the centre and notice the odd collection of instruments, all with exotic names such as rango and gando. Some are made of "dry sheep hooves". Others must be tied around the waist of the performer with a rope full of small, dangling bells. The rango was supposed to have disappeared, at least according to a book written by Adel Al-Oleimi, a specialist in ritual theatre. "But I found it," Zakaria declares triumphantly, "I found the remaining instruments at the homes of descendants of rango performers, and I started making copies from the originals." Tanboura has given birth to similar bands in other cities, including Henna in Suez, Sohbagiya and Rango in Ismailia, and Baramka in Matariya in Daqahliya. Zakaria tells me that his band is starting up a school for children who are talented in music and dancing. "We want to create a musical climate allowing popular artists to thrive without being marginalised in the wider cultural context," he says. Before going to Port Said, I read a profile in Akhbar Al-Adab that gives an exhaustive overview of the band's effort to preserve a cultural legacy. Since 1989, Zakaria has been trying to make the band a guardian of tradition. "We don't want it to be just another band performing at weddings," he insists. Patriotism is part of the legacy of the band. After all, simsimiya songs were big along the Suez Canal in the era of resistance. Zakaria seeks out older folk and records the songs they have retained. Tanboura, he tells me, is an independent band with keen interest in improvisational theatre. The band aims to collect, preserve, and revive the folklore of the towns of the Suez Canal. In researching this folklore, however, Tanboura members have come up against the bureaucracy of the Ministry of Culture and are dissatisfied by their affiliation to the ministry. Zakaria believes the ministry takes over folkloric arts and pickles them as dead museum pieces. "Folklore should be kept alive, not left to stagnate," he says. We take the ferry to Port Fouad, where the band performs every Wednesday, free of charge, in the Cafeteria Al-Negma. The first thing one notices is the eclectic composition of the audience, who come from all ages and classes. There are families with children, women in veils who do not cease dancing, and older people who sing non-stop. Some songs recall the Damma tradition of Sufi singing, others delight in the Pharaonic-African tunes of the simsimiya, while still others resonate with the melodies sung by fishermen and sailors. A brilliant solo performance by simsimiya player Mohsen Al-Eshari gets everyone to their feet in a frenzy of dancing. Then a patriotic mood descends on the venue when the band starts up a pro-Palestinian song: O Zion, O Zion, Palestine is ours, you lowly ones. Palestine is Arab, not Hebrew, you cursed ones. They have no country, not a claim. What country are you talking about? You lowly ones of Zion. O Zion, O Zion The band dedicates the song to the souls of the martyrs in Gaza before moving on to Egyptian songs of resistance from the 1960s. The concert lasts through to the late hours. Next day, Abul-Hassan, or Zakaria, invites me to the Café Zaghloul on Al-Amin Street, where the 20 or so band members tend to congregate. The coffeehouse also doubles as Tanboura's office, and is where they set up their engagements for concerts in Egypt and abroad, or allow television crews in to interview them. Zakaria starts talking about the identity crisis caused by the tendency of globalisation to standardise, commercialise, and homogenise everything in its way. It is a topic he first broached at the Mastaba Centre, the place that he, cameraman Adel Wasili and sociologist Hassanein Kishk founded with the aim of preserving folklore and keeping it alive. "Globalisation fosters cultural standardisation," he says. Zakaria, who was active in left-wing student politics, recognises the advantages of globalisation. Tanboura, he says, has had many donors over the years. The band was even frequently criticised for accepting money from foreigners. Among the critics are members of the rival Sohbat Ewlad Al-Bahr (the Fraternity of the Sons of the Sea). On their Facebook site, Morsi Sultan and Mohamed Shennawi accuse Tanboura of accepting "conditional funding from suspect institutions" and of packing folklore in "consumerist forms" of the type the Americans want to promote. Also on Facebook, Tanboura is charged of using "professional agents in Europe so as to market its concerts in well-known European theatres and make albums." In reality, foreign funding is drying up, mostly because of the financial crisis, the only exception being the production of a new album entitled Arwah (Spirits), now funded by the Arab Culture and Art Fund. Tanboura has released several albums including the popular Nuh Al-Hamam (The Pigeon Song). Another album, Bein Al-Sahra wal Bahr (Between Desert and Sea), was produced by a UK-based company, IBS, in 2007.
