EVERYONE knows that Cairo has preserved ancient secrets and cultures for thousands of years, while Cairo's el-Mastaba Centre for Egyptian Popular Music has preserved three of the known remaining rango instruments. A rango is a mysterious xylophone-like instrument with wooden keys and twisted gourds hanging beneath the keys for reverberation and amplification. The rango has all but disappeared in this region of the world due to its affiliation with mysticism and the occult. More specifically, it is a musical instrument used in the performance of the zar and Sudanese tanbura rituals, which are tranceinducing religious ceremonies intended to cure mental illnesses, exorcise jinn and resolve sundry other maladies of the soul. These mystical healing rituals and musical performances, though mostly of Nubian, Saeedi and baladi extraction (in Upper Egypt, extending into Sudan), can today be enjoyed in Egypt's capital. 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 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 for the celebrations. These celebrations and mystical ceremonies, though much part of contemporary rural Egyptian culture, are considered haram (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 Sudanese voodoo music, is perhaps why the instrument faded from popular use, and ultimately disappeared in the 1970s. Hassan Bergamon, who grew up in the Arayshiyyit el-Abid (Slave Stockades) in Ismailia, has helped save the rango from near extinction. He used to play as a boy ��" his mother was 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 this forbidden instrument from the brink of extinction. Finding the last remaining instruments required as much patience as it did to convince the owners to part with the mystical instruments ��" the owners believing the rangos contain the souls and spirits of those relatives who once played the mystical instruments. Hassan Bergamon still performs on an original rango a few times per month. There is even a recording available, entitled: ‘Rango Sudani Voodoo'. Check the Mastaba Centre's website for details of forthcoming trance and healing performances. Willows is a contributing writer to The Egyptian Gazette. He studied at the American University in Cairo and now lives in Toronto.
