In it's 29th annual Fête de la Musique (Music Festival) promises Egypt two nights of enchanting tunes. Organized by The French Centre for Culture and Cooperation (CFCC), the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, and in partnership with the festival “Les Eurockéennes des Belfort”, this year's festival is expected to attract an audience of 10,000 people, double last year's attendance. The two-day festival starts off with the Egyptian Project, a great mix of Egyptian traditional music with French electronic music. The festival also hosts Sawah, a collaborative music project that blends authentic coastal tunes of Port Said, presented by El Tanboura and the French-Moroccan singer Hindi Zahra and her band. The Egyptian project was inspired by Jérôme Ettinger, musician and artistic director of Togezer Productions, who created a repertoire of traditional and modern music in collaboration with Egyptian musicians he met during his travels and concerts. El Tanbura is a group of veteran Egyptian master musicians, singers, and philosophers, custodians of Egypt's oldest folk melodies. Zakaria Ibrahim the band's founder explained that such music is characterized by the use of the simsimiyya, an ancient five-stringed lyre, which has currently been modernized by one of the members of the group through the adoption of the electric pick up and multi-string instruments, as Zakaria explained during the press conference, in order to play new and modern melodies. Hindi Zahra is a promising Moroccan singer of Berber origins who lives in France. Hanging between blues, reggae, jazz, African and Arab music, folk and soul, Zahra is all of them and none of them at the same time. In her own words, Zahra describes herself as coming from "the new generation that travels a lot and blends all the types of music together regardless of type.” The song "Beautiful Tango" revealed her as a soloist in 2009 and drew positive feedback from critics. With an explosion of colors and sounds in her videos, this Frida Kahlo of music delighted journalists during a rehearsal with one of her latest songs, “Stand Up”. Originally a reggae song, Zahra adapted it to match the style of El Tanbura, blending Egyptian traditional music with modern soul, folk and jazz melodies that expressed the harmony of this collaboration. The festival will be held on June 23 at the Cairo Citadel (free entrance), and on June 24 at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (tickets are LE10). Each evening begins at 9PM. For more information, visit the CFCC website at www.cfcc-eg.org.
