7.02 The Singing Sheikh - 2/2
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The Singing Sheikh - 2/2
Transcript:
Part 2 of 2
To understand what he was doing differently, we need to talk to the man himself, Sheikh Sayed Darwish. After a week in Alexandria, we were able to reach Darwish who was busy heading the preparations for Sa'ad Zaghloul's return. He agreed to sit down with us on the sixteenth of September, one day after the celebrations. In the meantime, we sat down with his closest collaborators, Badee' Khairy and Naguib AlRehany.
Khairy and AlRehany are to Egyptian theatre what Darwish is to Egyptian music. At the turn of the century, the Egyptian theatre scene was a backwater of European plays and operas. Productions in Cairo and Alexandria were either remakes of famous Italian operettas or productions by failed British and French theatre companies in their native lands, that had much more success in the eyes of Egyptian high society that aspired to be European.
Khairy was one of the first Egyptian playwrights that wrote original scripts and presented them to the public. His plays all included musical numbers that were mostly composed by Darwish, whom he collaborated with on various political and societal songs outside of the theatres.
AlRehany was the mastermind behind that renaissance, heading the theatre company named after him where Khairy and Darwish were able to rise to stardom, producing and starring in the plays and operettas that shaped Egyptian theatre.
"I met Sayed in 1918.", Khairy says. "I had just joined AlRehany's theatre company and started to garner some fame, but we were missing something crucial. We were missing the music that represents the Egyptian street."
"Sayed had just come from Alexandria to join a rival theatre company. Someone told me about his music, so I attended the play he was composing and singing in. I immediately got drunk hearing him as if I just had a hundred glasses of fine Whiskey."
"Afterwards, I went backstage to introduce myself. The porter wasn't letting me into the actors' room. I started shouting for his name until he came out on the commotion. And, when I introduced myself, he just jumped over the porter and hugged me. He told me that he was a big fan and that he had composed a poem that I published in a newspaper that year. He didn't leave me until he had sung it to me, and it was genius."
"The song was about the unity between Egypt and Sudan that was being questioned at the time. He composed it in a five-note key, not like the usual seven-note keys that you hear in Western and even Eastern music. Later I figured out that the key he used was an Ancient Egyptian one. He took it from The Pharaoh's ears."
AlRehany interrupts, and picks up the story saying "Who can compete against a guy like that?" Khairy and AlRehany laugh uncontrollably, and the small crowd gathered around us laughed with them.
AlRehany continues, "He's a man different from any other. I knew Sheikh Sayed before I saw him, and I respected him long before we met."
"The first melody I heard from him was in the same play that Badee' mentioned. I was exceptionally mesmerised by it, and I saw in it a completely different form of music than the forms we were used to hearing at the time. I felt that he was transposing us from a world of sleepy, passive music to a world of strong and active one. After Badee' met him, I sent Sayed an invitation to my office to make him an offer."
"He came in, said Salamo 'Alikom, 'Alikom AlSalam, who are you? I'm ElSayed Darwish. You! No way. How can the composer of the beautiful and soft melody that I heard be so tall and strongly built like that? He laughed and told me, why not? Do you hire musicians in your troupe by weight? Let me go find you a sickly composer then. I ran after him, laughing, and didn't leave him until he signed a contract."
"Weeks later he had composed songs for our first play together. The play opened from here, and people's wallets opened from the other side. You couldn't walk anywhere in the streets without hearing the song that just debuted in the play, Elhelwa Deeh Amet Te'gen."
"But the real fascination here is that me, with this same voice that you hear now; this harsh deep voice of a man that only sang before as a joke. He wrote me a song that, when I performed it on stage, would captivate audiences to the point that they would break their fingers clapping. I think all the famous singers that came to the opening night felt threatened by my singing because of him." The small crowd gathered around us started laughing again.
When we first contacted the duo, we suggested meeting them at the hotel they were staying at in Alexandria to attend Zaghloul's return, or at the nearby Greek Club that was a hub for upper-class Egyptians and Greeks to enjoy the fresh Meditteranean fall. Instead, they set our meeting in a local cafe in Alexandria's Mansheya neighbourhood.
The Anfratto, ravine in Italian, is what the locals call that cafe and it's a name that describes it well. The cafe lies in an atrium covered by a captivating glass roof and encircled by three magnificent Italianate buildings. The only entrance to that cafe is through a twenty yard long, three feet wide passageway between the buildings. You enter the passageway from the bustling, noisy main street outside, and you exit it onto the quiet, calm atrium on the inside. A busboy greets you with a cup of water immediately on your table, harbouring you from the crazy Alexandria on the other side.
Once Khairy and AlRehany arrived in the cafe and joined us, a few people gathered around, shaking their hands and admiring their works. But, when word goes around the cafe that we're interviewing them about Sayed Darwish, the small crowd gathers around. Men leave their tables. A couple quit the game of backgammon they were playing, others stop talking about the stock market, and everyone gathers around. They turn our interview into a small show in front of the lucky cafe visitors, the perfect analogy of the folksy nature of them and Sayed Darwish.
"I think what made him famous though was the revolution." Khairy continues, referring to the civil unrest of 1919 following Zaghloul's first exile. "We're always conceiving songs with political and societal connotations. Sayed is like me. We have a great sense of responsibility for this country. We write songs talking about construction workers, songs about doormen, baggage handlers in train stations, horse carriage drivers, everyone. We would never be what we are without them. One of our first collaborations in that was Salma Ya Salama, a song about an Egyptian conscript returning from the European front in The Great War."
"But we found our calling, and our fame, during the revolution. I remember when the demonstrations started, we were at the theatre rehearsing. I went to Sayed and told him that we should join the protests. He refused. He told me that if we go out there, we should be prepared to lead the whole demonstration, we should be contributing. So, we spent a few hours at the theatre. I wrote 'Om Ya Masry, and he composed and sang it. Do you know what type of music he chose for an anti-colonial Egyptian protest song? A Waltz. Thousands of Egyptians were marching in the streets singing a Waltz, and it was brilliant. We took a horse carriage to the city centre in Cairo and joined the protests there. That day the demonstration kept going through the streets of Cairo, and Sayed kept singing this song, among others, for hours. Until the carriage broke in half and he fell from it while still singing and holding a flag in his hand. He insisted on going back to Alexandria to join the demonstrations there as well. He also worked with all other patriotic poets and songwriters on multiple songs, all about Egypt, all supporting the revolution. That year alone, I think he produced more than seventy songs."
"You know, Sayed didn't just sing and compose, he also helped in many of the songs I've written.", Khairy continues. "Do you know what's Balah Zaghloul?". I told him I knew that Balah meant dates in Arabic; that my years serving in the British Army on the Palestine Campaign had taught me a lot of Arabic, especially the local food and delicacies. But that I didn't know what's the relationship between their political figure and dates.
Everyone listening in started laughing. I'd like to think that they didn't laugh at my pitiful accent in Arabic, and instead they laughed that I didn't know that Zaghloul wasn't just the last name of the Egyptian returning from exile in five days, but also a type of rich, red, half-ripe dates for which Egypt is well known.
"Two years ago when Sa'ad Zaghloul was exiled, again, a law was passed to criminalise any mentions of him in media, including songs. I sat down with Sayed trying to come up with a song that would pass through the censors filter. We started writing Ya Balah Zaghloul, singing metaphorically for a type of dates, saying that it has been long since they were in season, and how happy I would be when I see those dates again. Did you get it? You know what's the word for happy in Arabic, right?" He, of course, meant the word Sa'ad.
"Sayed also started writing a new song as a celebration for the return of Sa'ad Pasha Zaghloul.", AlRehany leans towards me whispering. "We should go now". He left me mesmerised while he thanked the gathering audience, taking a bow as if we were just on his stage.
AlRehany and Khairy take me by my arm swiftly through the narrow passageway back to the other Alexandria. They stopped a horse carriage and told the driver to take us to Teatro Mohamed Aly Pasha. "They should be starting their rehearsals now. If you're lucky, we'll get him to play the new song."
Less than ten minutes later, we arrive at the theatre in Rue Fouad, the main street of the city since Alexander The Great built it more than two millennia ago.
We enter the theatre from the street outside through a white marble archway, only to be greeted on the other side with a courtyard. In the centre of that courtyard, lies a statue of Noubar Pasha, the first Prime Minister of Egypt, overlooking the entrants. We pass the statue to enter the main French-style building. Once inside, the red velvet seats, curtains, and booth walls along with golden arches everywhere make you wonder if you've travelled great lengths just to land inside the Odéon Theatre of Paris. Only to be awakened by the middle eastern music played there.
A group of ten musicians and four singers are practising some song, Ana ElMasry (I, The Egyptian) if my memory serves me correctly. Sayed Darwish was standing in the middle, leaning over a pianist's shoulder while singing like no other Maestro ever did.
AlRehany calls him over. He introduces me to Darwish as "The British journalist that's going to interview him in a few days". Darwish shakes my hand vigorously. In an extremely slow Arabic, probably so that I can understand, he says "I'm sorry I had to postpone our interview till after the celebrations, as you can see I'm swamped with the preparations during the next few days". He hugs the other two, asks us to take a seat, and jumps back over the stage.
Khairy tells him to play the new song he wrote for the occasion. Darwish shouts from atop the stage "You know Badee'. You're the only songwriter I know that likes to hear other people's songs more than his own", they all laugh hysterically.
Darwish signals to the band, and they start.
Bilady, Bilady, Bilady. Laky Hobby Wa Fouady.
My homeland, my homeland, my homeland.
You have my love and my heart. Egypt! O most beautiful of all countries, You are my hope and my ambition, And above all people, Your Nile has countless graces!
My homeland, my homeland, my homeland. You have my love and my heart.
By that time, Darwish's eyes were tearing up, and when I looked over to my left, and both Khairy and AlRehany were also in tears. They say their goodbyes, not wanting to disturb the band's practice, and we leave the theatre. Neither of us seeing Sayed Darwish ever again.
A day later, Darwish returns from rehearsals to his home where his heart just stops. A rumour circulates that it was because of an overdose of cocaine. The leading rumour between Egyptians, however, says that a family friend, who was secretly an agent of The King, invited Darwish to dinner and poisoned him. In all cases, we didn't get a chance to interview Sheikh Sayed Darwish who, at thirty-one years of age, died.
At thirty-one years of age, Darwish had contributed to Egyptian and Arabic music more than any other in the past four hundred years.
He passed away two days before Sa'ad Zaghloul returned and heard Bilady Bilady.
End of Part 2 of 2
Music:
All the following music was originally composed / sung by Sayed Darwish.