The new generation of artists shaping Egypt’s electronic underground

Juan Valero, a sound researcher, Radio alHara host and artist better known as Sono Mayrit, and Diego Hernández, a DJ and head of Berlin’s Eck Echo platform, explore the innovative sounds defining Egypt’s contemporary music scene.

As the afternoon heat subsides around Talaat Harb Square, Cairo resumes its frantic pace. Vehicles navigate wide streets teeming with young people skipping the line at crowded cinema houses, while older people look on, their memories of the past colliding with the modernist buildings and the city’s rapidly changing demographics.

These extremes not only affect the pace and mood of those living here, they also shape an urban expression that continues to influence the entire Middle East, with Egypt retaining its undisputed title as the region’s cultural powerhouse. The country’s contemporary music scene not only defines this character but also helps us understand the minutiae of life here, as perceived by those who create these scenes. 

“For me, it all started around 2013, when I was introduced to a club called VENT, the first venue for underground music and a starting point for left-field scenes,” Azzouni tells us in his home studio. The 28-year-old producer, who makes grime, bass and hip-hop-leaning tunes, gives us a scene crash course: “The venue was run by ZULI, $$$TAG$$$ and Bosaina, among others. Under their curatorial direction, it allowed a subgenre to split from it. It started the current wave of Egyptian electronic music.”

Azzouni’s track Roll Offa Me (asap) appears on the 2025 compilation Place: Egypt curated by the influential DJ and producer ZULI, alongside productions from Hassan Abou Alam, Jana and El Kontessa. His menacing bass track shows just how far the scene has come, carving out a unique sound that defies external expectations of music from the region.

Mapping out the connections between the rise of shaabi and today’s contemporary electronic scenes, Azzouni explains: “Throughout the 2000s, Egyptian pop music went through a period of stagnation, operating within an established industry model. It was very habibi-centric. Then, after 2011, in the post-revolution period, we witnessed a new generation of rap that peaked around 2018 as the biggest commercial force in the country. By then, it became clear what these authentic sounds out of Cairo are about.” This, however, did not mean that venues were ready to fling open their doors to the new sound.

Instead, Azzouni’s account of using small, non-traditional spaces reflects how many of Egypt’s new collectives operate. “There’s not many venues for non-commercial genres. There’s a few smaller venues, like Cairo Jazz Club, which offer a space for underground or alternative genres, but the rest of the scene is surviving off improvised spaces. You find a rooftop or a garden or a two-star hotel or a wedding hall. You find these improvised spaces, rent the sound system, get some friends to work the bar, some friends to do the door… Eventually, the location gets spotted and you have to move on to another place.”

“The community is growing,” Nazli Reda says. “There are always references, like ZULI, Rama and Rami Abadir, but from there, it’s been growing, because now more people want to be DJs.” Reda is one of Cairo’s top sound engineers and the driving force behind the sound system at Cairo Jazz Club. “My introduction to this whole scene was Donia Shohdy’s JellyZone parties. It began as a small house party, then they started doing it in small venues or spaces, like a basement or a rooftop.” 

“There are a lot of different collectives across different sounds,” Azzouni adds. “The longest-running project in Cairo is JellyZone. Then you’ve got Irsh, run by ZULI and Rama; you have Sound of Noize, run by Essperx; Dhamma, of which Yas Meen Selectress is a part; and C0D3X, run by Jana. And my own crew, MOSHTRQ. There needs to be more spaces, but overall, these are hopeful times.”

Within walking distance of Tahrir Square, gathering place for revolutions and uprisings through the years, lies the popular El Horreya Cafe, where we meet Jana. “My background is in alternative rock, pretty much until I discovered hip-hop,” she explains. Egypt has been the centre of Arabic rap since the early 2000s, but for Jana, it was just a stopover. “When I shifted to electronic music, I got into drum ’n’ bass, breaks, stuff like that.” These sounds can be heard in Jana’s 2024 track Eb3ed 3ani, released by the Czech label YUKU. Its distorted interplay of calm and surge, punctuated by abrupt tempo changes, characterises a large portion of the scene’s output. Jana’s recent releases, including the MASROOF OXYGEN EP and TES3EEN, see her exploring vocal collaborations and warped rap sounds.

Jana expresses her admiration for another artist pushing the boundaries: Fajr Soliman, better known as El Kontessa. “For me, she’s like an older sister. She always helps me with this community, because it was very new to me. Also, she’s taken on a role where she gives me insights on music production.” A multidisciplinary artist and producer, El Kontessa’s 2023 debut album Nos Habet Caramel حبة كراميل نص – just like her 2025 track Sehet Badri for New York’s Rare Frequency Transmissions – is an uncompromising mash of influences, deconstructing club sounds with complete disregard for fixed tempos and a penchant for crashing styles together, including the local, percussive sound of mahraganat.

“You could make a parallel between mahraganat and the rise of techno in Detroit, where you have a sound that comes directly from the source, influenced by its environment and very pure in its essence, absorbed into the club sphere and reworked,” Azzouni says. “You’re now hearing fusions of baile funk and maghraganat. Both genres come from similar places, in terms of the underlying ethos of how it’s made.”

While Cairo inevitably dominates Egyptian life, there is, of course, life beyond the capital. “When you’re from Cairo,” Jana explains, “you don’t know there’s an Egypt beyond here. The environment I grew up in sheltered us from this country. I had to discover Egyptian music on my own, later on. Now, for example, there’s a collective from Mansoura called Who Wants to Party? They regularly visit Cairo, and we’re connecting.”

Mansoura (‘victorious’ in Arabic) lies north of the capital, in the Nile Delta. Named after a medieval standoff against the French crusades, the city’s skies were lit up during the October War in 1973. We arrive at the central bus station, not far from a memorial to that conflict, and are met by the musician El Mokh, who escorts us to El Magzar, the neighbourhood that provided the name for his 2023 debut album – a collection of lo-fi shaabi hip-hop with keys inspired by traditional local sounds.

El Mokh takes us to his mum’s apartment, where he has converted a bedroom into a home studio. Within ten minutes, he’s built a loop while improvising on an Akai keyboard with his free hand. “In the beginning, I was sampling Umm Kulthum, Fairuz, Abdel Hakim and Hamid El Shaeri from my grandfather’s tapes. My grandfather was a painter, and he had a big collection of tapes. He gave them all to me, and that’s how I started.” El Mokh’s 2025 LP Lsa b7b  لسه بحب reworks these same influences into more introspective compositions. What cities outside of Cairo lack in club infrastructure, they make up for in street-level creativity. The influence of grime and trap, in particular, can be felt here. 

We meet El Mokh again at Cairo Jazz Club for a night that brings together Cairo and Mansoura. He’s here with his regular collaborator Rozer, a Palestinian beatmaker based in the city of Arish, close to Gaza’s southern border. Curated by Mansoura promoter Kareem Elbaz, the event aims to showcase alternative sounds within the official club circuit.

Elbaz has been relentlessly connecting young artists from the two cities, building bridges to the capital. The line-up he’s curated here brings Rozer and El Mokh together with Jana, Azzouni and Hassan Abou Alam. Jana opens with Sareena, a collaboration between her and El Mokh, before putting her own unique spin on a set of footwork and baile funk. Outside, a crew of longtime friends from Mansoura shows up – noticeably more energetic than Cairo Jazz Club’s usual Tuesday night crowd. They fill the dancefloor with an intimate vibe as Rozer unleashes a barrage of slowed-down rhythmic weapons over heavy synth buildups – a sound you can hear on his recent EP Most Dangerous الأقـربـون أشـدُ خطــر  – while his crew begin to drop freestyle raps. Outside, El Mokh contrasts the two cities. “In Cairo, I feel like I’m running and running. In Mansoura, I can think and take a breath. In my hometown, my influences are family and friends. I sit a lot by myself, close my eyes and see things I want to pick up and turn into music.”

Back on the dancefloor, we find Rozer smiling as he’s mobbed by friends. It’s Azzouni’s turn on the decks, and he mixes Rozer’s سمسميه (Semsemiyah) into a set informed by the sounds of south London. These sorts of connections – from a border town in Gaza to Peckham – are happening in real time now, aided by algorithms and social media. Asked if there’s anything political about his music, Rozer says, “I don’t think so, because it’s within you. When you are ready to put it out on the internet, you put it as a feeling. Not as words.”