Rebel Girl

Egyptian singer Maryam Saleh is bringing some raw power to the Cairo underground    Egyptian singer Maryam Saleh is a fiery figure in Cairo's underground music scene. Blending Egypt's musical heritage with sounds of the present, Saleh takes inspiration from two enigmatic figures of the city's past: Sheikh Iman and Ahmed Fouad Negm.    Composer and oudist Sheikh Imam was born to a poor family in Giza. He led the life of a dervish, singing muwashshah songs and surrounding himself with Egyptian folk music. After swapping his spiritual lifestyle for the resistance, Sheikh Imam turned to the words of popular poet Ahmed Fouad Negm and began to popularise them through his music. The pair met and formed a duo in 1962 and swiftly became underground folk icons across the Arab world. Their revolutionary songs spoke out against corruption, gave voice to the poor and mocked authority figures of the time, such as American President Richard Nixon. Almost half a century may have passed but for many, the poetry of Negm and the songs of Sheikh Imam still retain their pertinence today.   Sheikh Imam's fame soon stretched beyond Cairo. He toured France, the UK, Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya during the 1980s before passing away in 1995. However his legacy has, to some degree, faded away in Egypt. His songs were banned from TV and radio in the 1970s and 1980s, while both him and Negm spent an eventful career in and out of prison. Popular with the people, their lyrics proved too much for the local authority who feared the mobilising effect of their music.   Saleh grew up with Sheikh Imam’s songs. ‘He was my first connection to Arabic music,’ she says. But her relationship with the composer was more personal than most – Sheikh Imam was a family friend who would play music at gatherings for her birthday. Saleh's longstanding affinity for his music inspired her to revive it. 'I felt he didn't have an audience,' Saleh says. 'He was underestimated and didn't get the recognition he deserved because his music was forbidden.' His music remained relatively unknown to the Egyptian masses, maintaining its cult status only among the region's communist parties and leftist families. Unsatisfied with the commercial music her school friends were listening to, Saleh wanted to share her own passion. 'I decided to spread his music and help him reach the biggest crowd possible,' the singer says.   Saleh's childhood was one immersed in culture. Her father was the director and playwright Saleh Saad and she would perform across Egypt in his street theatre group. 'I'd always take the role of the clown,' she laughs. She went on to study theatre, but has since moved her focus to music, admitting that 'the sort of theatre I like is kind of going downhill.' There's certainly something dramatic about Saleh's musical performances today – she stands with a confident stride on stage, emitting an intensity as she enigmatically bellows out her lyrics. She carries the same boldness whether on the stage of the grand Library of Alexandria or in Walimat Warde, a small, faded venue in Beirut.   Sheikh Imam's music left a firm imprint on Saleh's early musical identity. She formed the band Gawaz Safar (passport) at 15, who would play tributes to his songs with a simple oud and tabla accompaniment, and later went on to fuse her differing musical tastes as part of the oriental rock ensemble Baraka Band. 'The songs of Sheikh Imam taught me how to understand the big problems of my country and how to achieve reconciliation within society,' she says. 'His songs, along with the sarcastic political lyrics of Negm, were so simple that they could be accessible to a large number of ordinary people, that's why the regime was so scared.' Saleh's reinterpretation of Imam's songs such as Nixon Baba (about President Nixon's visit to Cairo in 1974), Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (insulting the former French president) and El-Bahr Byidhak Leh (Why Does the Sea Laugh?) have introduced his music to an entirely new audience formerly unfamiliar with his songs.   Released in May 2012, Ana Mesh Baghani (I Don't Sing) is Saleh's debut album, which eloquently fuses together traditional melodies with psychedelic rock, funk and trip-hop, from the soaring piano scales and simple percussion of Hasr Masr, to the dramatic melancholy of W Leh Tenrebet (Why Do You Want to Commit?) and the hip-hop-esque spoken word of the album's title track. Her rich, dominating vocals pull the melting pot of genres together, channeling the voice of the past as she warbles with overpowering emotion. Tamer Abu Ghazaleh, musician and founder of eka3 – a regional organisation dedicated to the growth of modern Arabic music – saw Saleh's potential and contributed his touch to her album. 'He directed my music and generated a different combination of songs,' Saleh says. 'It was a beautiful collaboration, I started to see a different soul in my music.'   Saleh has also begun a recent collaboration with Zeid Hamdan, the Lebanese musician and producer largely credited with laying the groundwork for the alternative music scene in Beirut with the band Soapkills in the 1990s. 'It's like cooking. We come from two different cultures and musical backgrounds, he adds his own musical perspective to my recordings,' Saleh says.   It's the perfect pairing – Hamdan provides Saleh's vocals with an underbelly of electronic trip-hop, creating a contemporary alt-pop version of Sheikh Imam covers and Saleh's own compositions. Their version of Nixon Baba is one of the most memorable – a sunny pop song with gutsy vocals, sarcastic lyrics and almost tropical-sounding instrumentals. Egypt boasts a rich musical heritage. The music of singers and composers such as Oum Kalthoum, Asmahan and Mohammed Abdel Wahab is still played across the Arab world. During the country's golden era, singers from the Arab world flocked to Cairo. However, that musical heritage has, in some sense, been forgotten in recent years – replaced by bubblegum pop and big budget music videos. Saleh is one of the leading voices of Egypt’s alternative music scene, bringing some much-needed nutrition to the musical landscape.   'I was bored with the musical options that were available. People were not choosing anything, not even the kind of art they wanted to listen to,’ says Saleh, explaining how Cairo’s underground music scene is now starting to grow again. ‘Now people are free to choose. It's a big chance for the underground scene to be discovered on a bigger scale and for it to develop a larger fan base.'   With a number of new projects in the making – a monodrama that Saleh is writing and directing, a musical collaboration with Tamer Abu Ghazaleh and experimental electronic musician Maurice Louca and an album with Zeid Hamdan planned for release this May – the singer is helping to push the Egyptian music scene forward, while not forgetting what came before.   Photographer: Marwa Morgan