Pay It Forward: Nadah El Shazly on Kamilya Jubran

Egyptian-born, Montréal-based electronic composer Nadah El Shazly on how the Palestinian trailblazer Kamilya Jubran stretched her imagination

Kamilya Jubran came to Cairo in 2013 to run a workshop, and ever since, we’ve stayed in touch. The main thing for me is how much she’s a bearer of what Arabic music is and can be – all that knowledge, experience and musicianship. Writing music today doesn’t necessarily mean you fully grasp the tools you have at hand in Arabic. She’s been someone that played a key role for me in understanding this, because I didn’t study music – it’s all coming from listening. She’s someone that raises the bar for what we can do with Arabic music.

There’s a common misconception that traditional, in Arabic music, means something from an old time, stuck in a museum somewhere. But if you listen to pop music from Egypt today, you will hear things someone might call traditional, but it’s really just the scales and rhythms we’re using. It’s not frozen in time.

One song I keep coming back to of Kamilya’s, is Ankamishu. It’s just mind-blowing, because of the way she uses old rhythms – a kind of 14/4 time signature. She uses it in a way you don’t hear or understand at first, but it’s coming – because in poetry, you have these long phrases that fit over a longer time signature, such as a 14/4. The way she uses that rhythm with Werner Hasler, the electronic musician she collaborates with, is so delicate, so easy on the ear, that it’s genius. There is another song she’s famous for, called Ghareebah. Her voice is like water – so beautiful and colourful. It made me feel that there’s space for imagination and writing in Arabic music, that it can be expressive and open. 

It’s interesting for me to learn from this and to understand that every decision – language, instrumentation, how you’re putting it out – is all intentional.

I was in a punk band when I was 17, at an age where you want to be loud and energetic. Also, there used to be a huge metal scene in Cairo, so we were listening to metal and punk a lot. But I never felt that it was either, or. The underground scene in Cairo isn’t that big, so we were all swimming together, listening to everything. But coming across Kamilya’s music – at a time when I was starting to write music – stretched my imagination.