Everyone knows Cairo has preserved ancient secrets and cultures for thousands of years, and Cairo’s El Mastaba Center for Egyptian Folk Music has preserved three of the known remaining rango instruments—a mysterious xylophone-like instrument with wooden keys and twisted gourds hanging beneath the keys for reverberation and amplification. The rango had all but disappeared in this region of the world due to its affiliation with mysticism and the occult. More specifically, the rango is a musical instrument used in the performance of the zar and Sudani Al Tanbura rituals, which are trance religious ceremonies intended to cure mental illnesses, exorcise djinns and resolve sundry other maladies of the soul. These mystical healing rituals and musical performances, though mostly of Nubian, Sa’idii and Baladi extraction (Upper Egypt, extending into the Sudan), can today be enjoyed in Cairo. The performances are rich with rhythmic chanting, pounding percussion and feathered costuming, and unlike the seemingly patternless scale of Arabian music, rango music is familiar to the western ear—a musician would have to explain why that is. Audience participation enhances the trance-inducing performances, with infectious dancing spreading, passim. The rango is believed to have been brought north from the Black African Sudan into Nubian Upper Egypt and then further north—following the dark-skinned diasporas of the slave routes—the instrument settling with Sudanese communities in Cairo and Ismailia. And here the instrument remained a part of the local communities’ weddings—the hypnotic and entrancing music providing the soundtrack to celebrations. These celebrations and mystical ceremonies, though much part of contemporary rural Egyptian culture, are considered haraam (‘forbidden’) in the faith of Arabia, due to the pagan nature of this activity. This taboo, associated with the forbidden rango instrument and the mysterious Sudani voodoo music, is perhaps why the instrument faded from popular use, and ultimately disappeared in the 1970s. Hassan Bergamon, who grew up in Arayshiyyit el-Abid (the slave stockades) in Ismailia, has helped bring back the rango instrument from near extinction. He used to play as a boy—his mother a fourth generation zar singer. Bergamon is considered the last living player of the rango, and he learned from the old masters. But it was no easy task to revive the forbidden rango from the brink of extinction. Finding the last remaining instruments required as much patience for finding the rangos, as it did in convincing the owners to part with the mystical instruments—the owners believing the instruments contained the souls and spirits of those relatives whom, once played the mystical instruments. The El Mastaba Center for Egyptian Folk Music has preserved three of the known remaining rango instruments, and Hassan Bergamon still performs on an original rango a few times per month. There is even a recording available, titled, Rango Sudani Voodoo. Check the Mastaba Center’s website for details of upcoming trance and healing performances. El Mastaba Center for Egyptian Popular Music Sweqat El-Sabbaeen St. Dawaween Sayyida Zaynab Cairo, 11461 Tel: 3926768 – 0123226345 www.elmastaba.org e-mail: [email protected] *Willows is a contributing writer to BikyaMasr. He attended the American University in Cairo and now lives in Toronto. BM
