The Expression of Zaar

[split] Interested in the deities of the Nile, in 1944 Halim el-Dabh used a wire recorder to capture the sound of an all-female zaar ceremony in Egypt, before fiddling around with the recording’s reverberation, voltage and echo. This excerpt from the resulting piece, ‘The Expression of Zaar’, is mystically devoid of time and place; the women’s zaar chants are manipulated into an unidentifiable, otherworldly wave of sound.'I didn’t know you could call it anything,' el-Dabh recalls. 'I just did it, and then suddenly it’s an electronic music creation.’ This post is part of the biweekly Brownbook Music Series. You can read Brownbook’s full interview with Halim el-Dabh here.