Ali Omar El-Farouk Transcript
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
... Just to be patient, trust in the process. It's a lifelong journey. We get the sense of accomplishment when we finish that one piece of music, but it never ends. That's the beauty of it. There's always something to work on. For me, it'll take me 10 lifetimes to learn everything that I want to work on. So if you let music be a part of your life, you'll never get bored a day in your life.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. Ali Omar El-Farouk is an Egyptian and Canadian oud guitar player, composer and teacher. Ali plays his oud and three other instruments during this fascinating conversation in which we talked about learning from a place of joy, connecting across cultures through music, languages, architecture, Istanbul, Spain, Umm Kulthum, Nubian music, jazz, and lots more. The link for both the podcast and video version of this episode is in the description, which also brings you to the transcript. Hi, Ali. Thank you so much for joining me.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Thank you, Leah. It's a pleasure. I'm glad to be here. Thank you so much. I also say good morning. I guess it's still 8:00 AM in Ottawa right now.
Leah Roseman:
That's right, and it's 3:30 in Cairo.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
It's 3:00 still-
Leah Roseman:
Oh, 3:00 okay.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yeah. So eight hours difference, but I'm used to it. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
When I lived in Montreal, there was always a time difference when I had to talk to my family back here.
Leah Roseman:
I know you listened to Western-influenced music growing up, and you got an interest in the oud and Arabic music when you were older, but when did you actually go to Montreal to study jazz?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
2006.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Well, basically I'm originally an architect.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yeah, that's like my first bachelor that I obtained or completed was here in Cairo in architectural engineering. I worked for two years following that, and then I was actually supposed to go do my master's in Germany at the Bauhaus in Ducal. I had got accepted in it, but through a series of unexpected events, I ended up changing careers and initially, I wanted to go to the States. I tried to audition for a scholarship at Berklee College of Music, and there was also the Musicians Institute of Technology in California that I was interested in, but I ended up getting accepted - I tried everywhere and I was researching about universities in Montreal, and I applied to both Concordia and McGill Universities. Then I got accepted into Concordia University, so this is basically how my life in Canada began as an international student at Concordia.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
You started guitar as a teen?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yes. My first guitar was, my father brought me that guitar from an antique store here in Cairo, which ironically, it's actually an Archtop jazz guitar, a Hofner guitar. It's just sitting over there. It had an unfortunate accident, but I got it in 1996. I was 15 years at the time, but my first instrument actually was piano. When I was 10- years-old, my parents got me some classical piano lessons, but the teacher was a bit strict, so that didn't encourage me to continue at the time. Then guitar, I was curious, and at the time, there was a couple of my friends were taking guitar lessons with a teacher here in my neighborhood in Cairo and I tried it out. Then there was just this strong bond that got created basically, and the rest was history.
Leah Roseman:
I'm curious, you said the teacher was very strict and was it very straight ahead, "You have to do what I say a certain way. Everything has to be perfect before you move on," type thing?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yes. I was 10-years-old, so what did I know at the time what I wanted? I knew I wanted to play the pieces that I loved listening to, such as Für Elise and whatever, maybe Debussy's Clair de lune, whatever I knew at the time. But he was making me practice all these, to me at the time, were obscure pieces. I don't know if they were known, but I didn't know them. He was quite strict when I made mistakes, so it was a bit too much for me at the time.
Leah Roseman:
No, this topic comes up often with my guests. I think this is a pattern that repeats that a lot of people either teach differently than they learned or they reflect on the first instrument they left behind, so it fits into this pattern. I'm pretty interested in it.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yeah, I love the piano. We had a grand piano, which was in this room. This room is now in my office where I teach and practice and do rehearsals, but there was a grand piano that was here. I just loved sitting on it and just hearing sounds, just whatever melodies I was able to learn by myself or what I had to practice for my lessons. Even later with guitar, learning basic harmony at the time, chords and melodies, I learned them on guitar. But then I taught myself how to play them on piano from guitar, so there was always a back and forth between both instruments. But for the longest time, I was hesitant, which was my favorite instrument? Was it the guitar or the piano? Sometimes I think, "Oh, maybe that teacher ruined my career as a pianist." But I believe also everything happens for a reason, so I have basic piano skills and I can teach piano to beginner levels. But the guitar, I never stopped playing since then.
Leah Roseman:
When you compose, is it always at the guitar or sometimes at the piano?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
There's no rule really for me, and I haven't done as much composing as I want to, so it's definitely will be more on guitar than piano because we don't have that piano anymore. It belonged to my late grandmother at the time, and she gave it to my uncle, and I don't have one now. I have a keyboard, but eventually, I'd like to get an acoustic piano or maybe electric piano or an upright acoustic, so I don't have one. But if I'm just playing guitar and something comes up, then I would maybe record that and go back later to work on it.
But I've also composed music that I ended up playing on oud and the melodies, the first initial idea would come up while I'm playing the oud, but then when I would go back later to work on it and develop it into a complete piece of music. At the time, I knew that I wanted to have melody and harmony, because I had an upright bass player in my trio at the time. So I would have to try out how they work together on the piano, just to hear multiple voices moving together, so I would always sit at the piano and try out different ideas. It depends on the situation, but I guess it's a mix of all three instruments, I guess.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So you mentioned the oud, and I know you're happy to share some music with us today. Some people won't know what an oud is. For people listening who can't see the video, can you describe how it's different than a guitar?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Absolutely. It does bear some similarities, but the main difference being that it does not have frets, it's a stringed instrument, just like the guitar, and the same concept where if you're right-handed the right hand plucks and the left hand frets the neck to change pitch according to the note that you want to play. But unlike the guitar, the oud is fretless, just like with violin, cello, viola, upright bass, and other fretless instruments. In addition to the Western music scales and modes that people from the West are familiar with, there's also a whole world of modes that are famous in the Middle East and the Arab world, which some of them are semitonal just like Western scales and modes, but some of them have microtonal intervals. These intervals you cannot play on a standard fretted guitar, so it allows you to play these other types of scales and modes, basically.
Obviously the construction is different in the sense the guitar has back and sides where the oud has a bowl and the guitar has six single strings. The ouds are mainly six double courses. This one has seven courses because it has a bigger range, but most ouds you'll see will have six courses, and then the neck is smaller. So on your typical classical guitar, the neck joins the body at the 12th fret, so you have 12 semitones that you can play up until the neck joins the body. Whereas the oud, it's actually as if you're going up seven semitones, so it's a smaller neck. But I think each instrument presents its own set of challenges. Also, the technique is different as far as, the left hand, obviously you have things like the glissando, which maybe is easier to do on a fretless instrument, so it's very expressive in that sense. Also, oud players, they use a type of plectrum, which is elongated such as this one. They're made of different types of materials, but this is usually the sound. You can't get it without playing with this.
Leah Roseman:
Well, do you want to play something for us since you have your instrument out?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Sure. Since I have the oud, maybe I could start with that. There's a couple of things that I wanted to maybe play on the oud. One is a piece of music that I compose when I was in Spain earlier this year, but maybe I would start with just to ... If anyone who's not familiar with the oud or with this type of music, I'll do a type of improvisation, which is, it's called taqsīm in Arabic, which means divisions. It's called that because it deals with dividing the scale or the mode. So there's an order or logic to it, which is different from just any typical improvisation. So in taqsīm basically you're taking the listener on a journey or a voyage across the mode that you're improvising on. It starts with the lower register, and then it moves to the middle area of the mode, and then the climax is the higher register of the mode. Then you take them on a journey back home, if you will. All right. Hopefully, I gave some people a taste of this type of improvisation.
Leah Roseman:
It was so beautiful. Thank you.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Oh, my pleasure.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, just a quick break from the episode. I'm an independent podcaster who does all the many jobs required to produce the series, and there are a lot of costs I bear as well. Please consider either buying me a virtual coffee as a tip or becoming a monthly supporter, starting at $3 Canadian, which is close to $2 U.S., or two euros, and getting access to unique perks. The link is in the description. Now, back to the episode.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
The next piece of music is one that I composed in the month of May of this year. I gave myself the entire month of May to go to the city of Sevilla and Andelucia in the south of Spain. It was my first time to ever visit Spain, and I went there for several different reasons. But one of my main purposes of spending the entire month of May in Sevilla was to go and study flamenco music at one of the best flamenco music schools in Spain called Artes Escénicas Rebollar, which was founded by Eduardo Rebollar, a great flamenco guitarist and musician and great human being. He founded it 10 years ago. I flew to Sevilla directly from Istanbul, where I spent most of the month of April in Istanbul. I went to get this lovely oud from a great oud maker in Istanbul called Cengiz Sarikus.
So I took the oud with me from Turkey to Spain, but since I arrived to Spain, since I had a very limited time there, and I was there on a main purpose to just immerse myself completely into flamenco music, I barely touched the oud during most of my time in Seville in the month of May. The school where I was studying was full-time classes, seven hours of classes per day, plus all the hours of practice, plus, plus, plus. I was exploring Spain and visiting different cities every weekend. So I was approaching the end of my time there, and that's when I realized maybe I should just take the oud to the school and show it to people there just to see what might happen, what might come out of it because otherwise, I was just one of many other guitar players there to study flamenco music.
So on the first day of my last week there on Monday, I just went into the school with my oud and my guitar and one of the music guitar teachers at the school called Pedro Ramirez, a great guitar player and human being, he had this project where he was recording compositions by other guitarists at the school. One thing led to another, I ended up recording some oud to improvise on the ending of one of the songs or the pieces by one of the other guitar players. So it was a great experience, all in all, I loved it. I recorded it at the studio there of the school. After we were done, Pedro told me, "If you want, I can also record your own composition here at the school studio." I told him, "But I'm leaving in a week. That's it. I'm leaving at the end of May."
I was going to go to Madrid where I stayed for 11 days and that was it, and then I came back to Cairo. So I told him, "I only have one week left." So he told me, "Well, you better hurry up," because I didn't have anything to record. I hadn't written any kind of music in four years since I released my album in Montreal in 2019. I'm there to study flamenco music, so I hadn't composed any music for flamenco or in the style of flamenco music, which is known to be played traditionally in one of many different forms. I hadn't composed anything and I had a week left. From that week, I took two days off to go and visit the city of Grenada, to visit Alhambra. So basically, I only had five days to come up with something to record at the school studio. That piece of music, I recorded it as a dialogue between the oud and the flamenco guitar.
I recorded it in one of my favorite music forms in flamenco music known as the tangos, and so that's it. The whole thing from start to finish was recorded in five days, and I called it Nostalgia Esperanzadora, which is Spanish for hopeful nostalgia. I'm not so good on picking names from my compositions, and I might choose to change the name in the future, but this is what I came up with for this piece of music. Ideally, I envisioned this piece to have oud, flamenco guitar, palmas, which is the clapping that gives the rhythm, as well as I would probably want to add electric bass and percussion such as Kahun. But for the sake of recording the song at the school studio, I recorded a demo just to present to Pedro to show him the vision of what I would like to do. Then I went to the school studio and I re-recorded the oud parts.
Pedro was supposed to re-record the guitar parts himself because he's a fantastic flamenco guitar player, still waiting to hear from him. But in the meantime, what I'm going to play right now is myself performing the song, playing along with the demo recording that I recorded when I was in Seville. So maybe one day I can perform it with a full band. That's my goal actually, for the future. I want to write music for a root of flamenco guitar and splash in different flamenco music forms. I consider this song or this piece of music as the first step towards going in that direction, hopefully, in the now too distant future. So here it is, Nostalgia Esperanzadora. I hope you guys enjoy it.
So something to maybe start warming up with, over the past few years, I've been doing my own guitar, solo guitar arrangements of well-known Egyptian songs. Some of them are more traditional, some more contemporary, but they've been just coming out over the years. This is the latest guitar I got. It's a nice flamenco guitar, and I feel like I tried these songs over electric, classical, but lately with this guitar, I feel like they sound the best because I had this concert last month here in Cairo, which was a collaboration with this wonderful flamenco group that came from Spain, from Sevilla. So I played some pieces with them, and I played some pieces solo. So this is one of the solo pieces that I played. This is basically a medley of three Egyptian songs that play one after another. So this is not flamenco music, this is Egyptian music, maybe with a flamenco flavor, I guess.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yep.
Leah Roseman:
Fantastic. Thanks so much.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Thank you for listening.
Leah Roseman:
When you play the oud, is vibrato traditional, or is that something that's got added more recently?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
It is traditional. It's part of your articulation or form of expression on the instrument. It also should be used a bit more intentionally or judiciously. It's not a technique that should be used all the time. Especially if I'm practicing a scale, or even if I'm teaching somebody a scale, I would ask them to play it without any vibrato at the beginning.
Because one of the biggest challenges about learning the oud, because you don't have frets, so your fingers are the frets. So, to get proper intonation, you need to really make sure every note is in tune without having to mask it behind a vibrato. Some people resort to vibrato kind of just as a ... I don't know how to put it, but as a way to try and sound good, but one should not depend on it. For example, if I'm just playing a major scale ... But then I can, if I'm doing something ...
But I should be able to play without it. Ultimately it ends up becoming kind of like a subconscious articulation tool as an oud player. So you'll hear this, or an oud player will probably do stuff like ... And then you have slow vibrato and faster ones, so ... Or ... So, I think it's one of many tools. There's the tremolo technique also ... But also it's one of those techniques that you don't want to overuse it, because then it loses its value or its effect, I guess.
Leah Roseman:
And the plectrum you use, what's the word you use for it? The rish ...
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
There's the word "risha", which is the Arabic word for "feather". Because in the more ancient times or older days, actually, they used an actual eagle's feather, and they would treat it in oil just for it to be more flexible. Those are very hard to come by now. So, the most commonly used or easier to find one is made of plastic, but the better material is either made of ox horn, and these are the ones I used for most of my life ... Most recently the oud maker who made me this, Cengiz Sarikus , a great oud maker in Istanbul, he made me one made out of tortoise shell. I couldn't believe it, yeah, and I just love the sound of it. It sounds great.
Because also, different oud players, they develop different techniques and they use rishas with different levels of flexibility. So some of them, they really reuse ones that are very flexible. I can't use those. I really need something a bit hard. Just, I'm used to having something to give me like a resistance, but also not too much. I like this one so much actually, because I was there for almost a month, and I was visiting all the best oud makers in Istanbul ... I asked him, the oud maker who made me this one, Cengiz Sarikus, I asked him if he could make me another one. He was too busy.
So I went to another one and I asked him if he could make me two more, and I asked him to make maybe one the same thickness as this one, and another one a bit thicker. But the other one that was thicker ended up being just too much. So just on the last day before I left, I went back to him and asked him to sand it off to make it a little bit more flexible.
So, it's trial and error for me, really. But right now, this degree of flexibility is what I like the most. So, mostly plastic, ox horn, or tortoise shell. And tortoise shell actually is also a material used to play other Middle Eastern instruments. There's the kanun, which you may have heard of. It's kind of like a seated instrument with 47 strings, and they put the plectrums on their fingers, I think usually the index, or maybe the middle one. They're also made out of tortoise shell, but they're a different size and they're made to kind of get attached to the finger.
There's also the Turkish baglama, which has a smaller bowl but an elongated neck. That one is interesting because it's fretted, but it has quarter-tone intervalic frets. So it also uses a plectrum or a risha similar to this one, but a smaller one. But for me, I developed a technique with an oud risha, so when I play it, I play with the oud risha. There's also the name, "mizrab", which is another word for plectrum.
Leah Roseman:
It's such a long ... It looks sort of more like a nail file. It's quite long compared to a guitar pick. And then you use your nails when you play classical and flamenco. So, do you find it hard to adjust between the different techniques?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Each technique requires practice. Because I got into classical guitar for a couple of years before getting more into flamenco, and even that adjustment, it took practice. So, I guess there's kind of like a mode in my head that I make a switch. If I'm playing an oud, there's no way other than ... This is the main technique. Sometimes I use my thumb if I want to play a drone on the lower chords. I might just do something ... Or ...
But mainly it's played with a plectrum, with a risha. There's some instances where you can play some chords, but the oud is not really made to be a chordal instrument. But you can do something like ... And I've also experimented with playing some finger style on the oud, like ... So, to a certain degree you can kind of play with the same techniques that you'd use on guitar, but ultimately you need this. For guitar, classical, we all know the techniques, and flamenco also has its own thing. So yeah, I switch modes from one instrument to another.
Leah Roseman:
You had mentioned that when you were in Sevilla, you took a couple of days to go to Granada, and the Alhambra Palace, I imagine.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yes, yes. Every weekend it was a different city, but Granada was incredible.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, my very first trip to Europe, I played there actually with an orchestra, and I think it was one of the first things I'd seen of that beauty. It was really striking. You have a background in architecture. Can you talk about it a little bit?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Sure. How I began in architecture, I'm fortunate that my father is a renowned architect in the Arab world. He was mentored by a very famous Egyptian architect called Hassan Fathy, who was known for being a pioneer in vernacular architecture, and more environmentally-friendly architecture.
His designs rarely had any flat roof, so they mostly incorporated domes and vaults. Which, because Egypt is a hot country, so you try to reduce the hot temperature inside the building for as long as possible. So, when the sun is rotating throughout the whole day from east to west, the angle in which the sun is projected over the roof changes. So if you have a flat ceiling, then the sunlight and the temperature is divided over the entire roof throughout the whole day. But with a curved ceiling, like a vault or a dome, there's only one portion of the roof that has the sun directed on it, and also it creates air movements.
So my father, he continued in that direction, and he pioneered as a specialized architect in Islamic architecture. He's designed and built mosques in several countries in the Middle East, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain. So, I was just very exposed to this style of architecture. And even when we would visit ... For any tourists who would come to Cairo, it's really worth visiting what we call "Islamic Cairo", just because it's that part of the history of Egypt, where there's old Arabic houses that were built and designed with this approach and this philosophy in mind.
What I love about it is that the design of the house, or the mosque or whatever the building is, is very functional. So whoever's designing it, they think about each space, and how it functions, and how they're connected to each other, circulation. And in the end it's using pure geometrical forms. So even if you see a minaret of a mosque, it has a cylindrical cross-section that goes on top of an octagon, and then this goes on top of a square.
So for me, all these geometrical forms are very relaxing psychologically, but at the same time it's not symmetrical. If you look at any of the elevations of one of these houses or mosques on the outside, it's not made to look symmetrical. It's just whatever the function is. So, I was very exposed and enriched by this style of architecture growing up, even if I've left it for music.
But I still definitely appreciate it very much. And before going to Spain, I learned a lot about the history of the South of Spain, which is where flamenco music evolved from, Andalucia. I studied the history of this part of Spain where the Moors ruled for eight centuries, and I've seen pictures, but it was nothing like when I went there and visited these places.
So, Sevilla was my base for May, but for over three weekends I went to three different cities. The first one I went to Jerez, and the second one was Cordoba, and the third one was Granada. Each one of these cities I went to targeting one of these famous monuments, historical buildings, and visiting these buildings was just incredible, absolutely mind-blowing. I'm so glad that they were not destroyed. And even if the Spanish inquisition took over, but the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, it was a very incredible experience being in a building that's at the same time a mosque and a church. But just that style of architecture, for me, this is Islamic architecture at the height of its glory.
It's incredible. And Alhambra, I was there for five hours, and I would've stayed another two hours except they had to catch my bus back to Sevilla. But the landscaping there is just incredible. And this was supposed to be, the Moors at the time, they envisioned what paradise was, and that's how they tried to replicate "this is Heaven on Earth", manifested in the Alhambra.
And it's not just the buildings. Honestly, the whole city, whether it was Sevilla, Jerez, Cordoba, or Granada, each city had its own very unique charm. I loved just getting lost in the city, and I loved these very narrow alleyways that always were zigzagging at angles, and you don't know where it's going to lead next. There's just this very special and unique vibe that I just absolutely loved, and it's very different. I didn't go to the North of Spain, the northern. I was in Madrid, which is somewhere in the middle. And Madrid has its own vibe as well, which I absolutely loved. But the South is really, it's very special.
Leah Roseman:
Did you learn Spanish a little bit before you went? Or, how did that work out for you?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Si, un poquito. I spent ... There's all these online platforms such as Duolingo. I went with one called Babbel, and I was learning as much as I can in both Turkish and Spanish. But Spanish ended up being easier for me because I speak English and French, and they're Latin-based, just like Spanish is. The more I learned about Spanish, I found more similarities with French. My Spanish is still "muy pobre", quite poor.
But during that, I was in Spain for almost a month and a half in total. But during that time I started being able to speak some basic stuff. I understand maybe a bit more than I can speak, and it's fragments. But it's an easy language if you really work on it, which I want to, and I intend to work on it for the years to come. But being there definitely ... First of all, thank God for Google Translate. Sometimes you have no choice, because the person you're trying to converse with, they don't speak English. So you have to force yourself.
I talked a bit earlier about Pedro, the guitar player who kind of pushed me to write this composition. The ironic thing is, that's cool ... It has three guitar teachers, plus Eduardo, who's like the school director. But out of the three guitar teachers, he's the one who doesn't speak English. But ironically for me, he's the one that I felt I connected with the most. I love them all, but Pedro especially, he's such a generous person. He was just sharing everything he knows. And even though there's a bit of a communication barrier there, because he speaks almost no English, and I speak very bad Spanish, but I went to him for a private lesson other than these classes.
The same thing happened to me in Turkey. Turkish was even harder for me to communicate with than Spanish. But in spite of the linguistic barrier, I still felt like I connected very well with people there. I formed friendships with people. Even in Madrid, there's a fantastic musician called Sebastian Vita, he's mainly a trumpet player, but he's one of those multi-instrumentalist. I went to his jam sessions, and we became brothers, even though I have a hard time talking to him. But for me that's just incredible. Language is only a barrier, and we're not limited by it.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, and certainly you continue to use music as a connector across cultures.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
It's the international language. Definitely, yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Your bass player friend, Mike De Masi, so you brought him to Egypt early on before you even formed the trio with him?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yes. That happened in 2013 where I brought Mike and my good friend, Thomas Durant, a great jazz drummer as well. I brought them to Cairo. So, between 2006 and 2013, that idea came to me from a good friend of mine. He's originally from Alexandria, from Egypt, but he moved to Canada a long time ago before I was even born. His name is Freddy Rizk, and he's a wonderful jazz guitar player.
He had brought a band from Montreal to Egypt, and even at the time, he did a tour here in the Middle East between Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. So he gave me that idea, which was kind of like a dream of mine to want to unify my two worlds that are so far apart. So, the idea of bringing this band here, basically it was born out of a conversation that I had with Thomas and another friend of his, a fantastic bass player called Kyle Lorne , and they're completely fascinated with Pharaonic history and culture.
We were just talking about it, and then I asked them, "Guys, do you want to come to Egypt?" and they're like, "Of course, we'd love to." They'd never dreamt of it. Kyle couldn't make it because another tour he had to go on, and I had known about Mike at the time. He came to play at Concordia when I was there at the time. I got to know him through the Montreal jazz scene, because he's a musical genius who played with all my teachers, even though he's younger than me. And there's a music festival here that I thought might be a good opportunity for us to come and play at.
So what ended up happening through a very long and arduous process, basically I went to the Egyptian Consulate at the time. I introduced myself to the Egyptian Consulate at the time, Amin Meleika, and I presented the idea to him, and he was very kind enough to work with me over the months that followed. He made it as a collaboration between Egypt and Quebec. He put me in touch with a lady called Melanie Chartrand , and she was working with the middle ... They're called the Ministry of International Relations, and they were dealing with the Middle Eastern kind of branch.
So basically they gave me the funding to ... Which, honestly it covered just about most of our flight tickets. I had to pay a bit to cover a bit of it. And what happened was that I just didn't want to come and just play a typical jazz kind of concert. I wanted something that kind of also is related to Egyptian music.
So at the time, one of two oud players who influenced me greatly to learn the oud, his name was Hamza El Din, and he was a very unique artist who ... He was born and raised in the South of Egypt. There's a very old culture, which now is where the South of Egypt, the North of Sudan, it's called the Nubian culture. So he comes from Nubia, which is a very ancient culture that exists even since the time of the Pharaohs. They have their own language, which is learned orally. It doesn't even have an alphabet, which they only introduced that recently.
But Hamza El Din, he grew up in Egypt, but then he emigrated to the States, and he was teaching ethnomusicology in a university in California. He's recorded like several albums, and his music is a very interesting fusion. Because Nubian music, just like other African types of music, it mainly uses pentatonic scales. But he came to Cairo, and he had learned the oud and learned all those Arabic music maqams or modes that have these micro-tonal intervals.
So his music is basically a fusion between Nubian music and Arabic music, in a sense. So I did basically my own tribute to his music and the music of Nubia, where I took some of his songs that I loved playing on the oud, but I rearranged them in a way that allowed for more improvisation. So I would sort of add sections where there could be either a guitar or oud solo, or an upright bass solo, or even a drum solo.
So what ended up happening ... And also at the time, I got introduced to Hamza El Din's nephew. He's a wonderful singer here called, Karam Mourad, and he sings Nubian ... Because also Nubian music, they have their whole music repertoire of songs, which is also learned between them. So his nephew knows a lot of these songs, and he knows his uncle's songs as well. So what ended up happening, basically I brought Thomas and Mike from Montreal. We came together, and before coming I was in communication with Karam Mourad, Hamza El Din's nephew, just to discuss what songs we were going to play and the arrangements.
That also for me was one of the magic of music, where he doesn't speak English and they don't speak Arabic. We had one rehearsal where we played all these arrangements that I had already worked with them before, and we just had this one rehearsal, and we played this concert together. It was mainly me with them as a trio, and then we invited him to play the second half of the concert with us.
So it was a wonderful experience, where I played music that I loved and it was influenced by the time. And I got even some wonderful feedback from people who are of Nubian origins. Because the people of Nubian origins, even though it's mainly the south of Egypt, but a lot of them, they moved to Cairo. Some of them don't even speak Nubian anymore because they grew up here. But they appreciated the fact that I was playing their music. So, it was a wonderful experience.
Leah Roseman:
Beautiful. So, Nubian isn't related to Arabic as a language?
Leah Roseman:
And so Nubian isn't related to Arabic as a language?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
No, it's not. It's a completely different language. And even so the songs of Hamza El Din that I was learning, some of them he sings in Arabic and some of them he sings in Nubian. And when I was talking to Karam at the time, I asked him if I could learn Nubian, he told me, "The only way for you to do that, you would have to go and live in Nubia for seven, eight years." So I asked him to translate the lyrics for me. I mean I was just singing them just phonetically. I wrote them using Arabic alphabet, but just kind of transliterated from what the sounds are. But yeah, it's a completely different language.
Leah Roseman:
And in terms of Arabic music, Umm Kulthum, am I saying her name correctly?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Umm Kulthum.
Leah Roseman:
Umm Kulthum. So I was curious because when we'd spoken before, you mentioned what her repertoire was such an influence on you learning it, and I was so amazed to learn that she had had this radio broadcast for, what was it, 40 years or 30 years? Every day at the same time. I don't know. Was it every day or every week?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Oh, I don't know the frequency, but I know that everyone across the Middle East-
Leah Roseman:
Oh, monthly. Okay. I just looked at, yeah, check my notes. Monthly concerts on Radio Cairo for 40 years and that apparently all the traffic would stop because everyone would go home to listen to her.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yeah, I mean she had the longest career ever. She was blessed with that. But I mean she was also had incredible vocal range, but I mean she left behind it in an immense body of work. If you go on her Wikipedia page and just, there's one page for just all her works, it's impossible for anybody to learn all her music because it's five decades of music, of creation. She had an incredible voice. And a lot of singers, just like we have The Voice in the west, there's like the Middle Eastern version of The Voice or what we call Arab's Got Talent. And a lot of these female singers, they go and they sing some of her songs just to show how they're good as singers. So she's like the standard in Arabic music, just like Ella Fitzgerald is in jazz, just like a jazz singer would transcribe Ella's solo on a jazz standard.
Same thing for in Arabic music. She also developed her own successful formula because she also came from a very simple and traditional background. She grew up in sort of a rural area in Egypt. Eventually she moved to Egypt, to Cairo, sorry, because this is where their big music industry is always. But when she first moved to Cairo, she moved with her father, who was given the title of Sheikh not necessarily because he goes to a mosque, but they sing this kind of religious chants or verses. And the way they did it first was it's a cappella, he's singing and he had basically his children who were singing as a background to him. But he quickly found that she out shone all of her siblings and she had something special. And so the other composers, famous composers at the time, they noticed her talent and they strongly encouraged him to bring her to Cairo. And this is how her career in Cairo started. And even at the time he made her dress as a boy because they're traditional back then. And I mean this is what in the thirties, maybe?
So this is almost a hundred years ago, but eventually she started making her own thing. And over the course of her career, she developed this formula where her contribution to the song was her voice. But she would work with a poet who would write the lyrics and the composer who would write the music for it. So there's always this triangle, the voice, the lyrics, and the music. And then the composer who coincidentally enough, all the composers are oud players, none, not all of them are necessarily dedicated oud performers, but they always used the oud to compose the music. But then they would rearrange the music for her orchestra, which included a whole violin section, cello, upright bass, qanun. There was a oud player who was always in her ensemble, even if he wasn't the composer of all the songs, until he passed away and she couldn't get anyone after him.
But there was always this kind of instrumentation and of course the percussion. And then one of the famous composers, eventually he succeeded in adding the electric guitar. There was a famous guitar player who played the Fender Stratocaster and he made that work with all the other instruments, which is not very traditional, but he made it work. So that was her, and her orchestra, that was performing her greatest known works for her career, her whole career, until she passed away in the seventies. And one thing I also noticed before, because her music is not easy to digest, if you're not into Arabic music, or even if you come from the Arab world, it's not easy always to be an aficionado of her songs just to start with. Some songs are easier to listen to than others. For me, it's after I started playing the oud and studying those modes that I really got into her music and I started listening to all her songs on a more active level, because the modes, they keep changing from one section to another.
And then I had this ensemble in Montreal at the time where we'd play her music, and so I would learn her songs. And her songs, they were like an entire suite, the whole song, people would say her concerts last for a long time, over an hour, but that's not really accurate because I always refer to the studio recording of the piece, which she did before playing it live and touring with it, and it always had an average length of 30 minutes, and it was composed of usually around three separate sections, but there's always the chorus that repeats at the end of each section. They go back to that. And so this was her formula. Each composer would write a new song for her, but it's talking about a 30-minute piece of music, and she just exploded over the whole Arab world. And she toured everywhere. She went to Morocco, she went to Tunisia, to Iraq. I think she went to Algeria, if I'm not mistaken. She even went to Paris. So you can't play Arabic music and not know her songs.
Leah Roseman:
So growing up you weren't really listening to Arabic music. And what I find interesting is it's when you were in Montreal that you really got deeply into it with that community there.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yeah, I did things vice versa, like opposite. This is kind of how my path went. I grew up in quite a western influenced society here in Cairo. So first instrument, piano, and then the guitar. I took some guitar lessons with the teacher here when I first started in '96, but for the 10 years that followed, between '96 and 2006, when I moved to Montreal, but in those 10 years I was mainly self-taught, and I was playing different venues here, but it was mainly playing rock music, anything from what was coming out at the time. A big portion, I was playing progressive rock, classic rock, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Camel, all this stuff.
And then when I got really curious about jazz music and I got into it, that's when I kind of had a shift. But I also don't come from a musical family, with the exception of my grandmother who played the classical piano, and even she played it at home more. I didn't come from family that listened to a lot of Arabic music. So I didn't have the biggest exposure to it growing up here. Then I moved to Montreal in 2006 to do my first bachelor, or music diploma in Concordia University.
And after I graduated from Concordia in 2009, I had a bit of an identity crisis. Who am I? And also, I mean, I loved the oud all my life and I was listening to these recordings by Hamza El Din, and also another huge influence for me was Anouar Brahem, who's a fantastic Tunisian oud player. So I love the oud in general, but I never got the chance to learn it until on one of my trips back to Cairo. I was just here for a few months between 2010 and 2011, it was supposed to be maybe a three month trip, but then we had the first wave of the Egyptian revolution that took place in January, 2011, and so it ended up being a six month trip.
But on that trip I bought my first oud and started taking some lessons with an oud player here, and then I went to Montreal and that's when I started seeking out other musicians because Montreal, the great thing about it is that it has all these different music scenes. There's jazz music scene, there's Arabic or Middle Eastern, flamenco, classical, so I started meeting musicians who come from different countries in the Arab world. And now I have friends who come from Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and then it's incredible. And I ended up, over the years that followed, I would always play at the Festival du monde Arabe de Montreal, which takes place every November in Montreal.
And also it's not just that, that whole world of music, that way of improvising in this music world, it kind of touched very deep for me. And eventually I also listened to... Coming into the oud, I came from a very untraditional beginning because it was like Hamza El Din and Anouar Brahem, their musics are not traditional at all, they're like fusions. Anouar Brahem, especially, because his music is a mixture of oud and other western instruments. He would record each album with different instruments, but he plays with piano, accordion, electric bass, clarinet, saxophone, so you'd hardly hear quarter turn intervals in his songs, but maybe because of it's all semi tonal, that's why I connected with it very easily.
But for me to really go deeper into the oud, I had to go back to the more traditional stuff. And that's when I discovered there's the Arab music retreat that takes place every summer in Massachusetts. It was founded by Simon Shaheen, who's an incredible American Palestinian musician. He's like a violin and oud virtuoso, and he established that retreat 20 years ago, and it's one week of intensive classes of Arabic music. You go and you specialize in one of the main instruments, and I went twice. So the first time I went was in 2014. And that gave me a big push. And then coming at it, I was already at a professional level as a musician and a guitar player, so I knew what I had to work on, and it was a journey of learning all these modes, the maqams. For me, it was such an enjoyable journey exploring them and always comparing them to the western music modes, which I have a good knowledge of. So there was always a parallel. And so I love these, all these parallels between both worlds.
Leah Roseman:
Just to circle back briefly, so when you went back to Cairo in 2010, I mean that must have been really terrifying. It was very violent, lots of...
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
I mean, at the time, yeah, there were 18 days of protests, but it was very... I mean, terrifying might not be my first word of choice because there's definitely a great uncertainty to what the future is going to hold because nobody knew how long these protests were going to last. I went once and I would've liked to have gone more. I went a bit more the second time, a couple of years later, and the second wave, but the first time it was just the way things happened. They happened very quickly. I remember I was teaching here, every time I come here for several months, I would teach guitar lessons, private lessons, and I remember one of my students told me there's peaceful protests that are going to happen. They're marching to downtown Cairo. And I had gotten a Facebook invite to an event that was scheduled on January 25th, 2011.
And the thing is, being born and growing up here all my life, I've always known about these protests that never really led to anything. I never even thought of going to vote because we had the same president from... I was born in March, 1981, where Anwar Sadat was president at the time. Six months later he was assassinated, and then Hosni Mubarak was the only president I've known for my entire life up until the revolution in 2011. So, no, I never really bothered to think about going to vote because we always knew it was just a charade. But that event, that Facebook event, when my student told me about it, and I went back, I opened it, and I found the number of people who had confirmed attending was over 500,000 people. And never in my life have I seen that number, anything close to that number on a Facebook event.
So I felt there's something there happening, but you don't know what's going to happen. And all of a sudden it kind of was like a snowball effect. Peaceful marches, and then one day led to another. So we had, over the course of 18 days, it was because Egypt had just really reached a point where things were really bad and people couldn't take it anymore. And so everybody joined in, until after 18 days, he finally stepped down. And I was supposed to go back to Montreal just around this time. But then I felt I wanted to stay with my family a bit longer just to make sure everyone's safe, and so I extended until March. But I'll tell you something Leah, during those 18 days, the corrupt government at the time, one of their tricks that they tried to distract people from going to protest, they retired the entire police force and they broke open all the prisons and let all the prisoners were all free, and they told people to stay home and guard their houses.
And I found all my neighbors on my street here, standing guard, and I found a lot of them holding guns and rifles, which is kind of a scary thing to think of. But honestly, I never felt safer because my neighborhood's always been safe, thank God, but people just came together and it's a long road, but those 18 days are a period that those of us who lived it, and I was very grateful that I was here at the time. It's a period that I'm never going to forget for the rest of my life. The second wave with Mohammed Morsi, when people protested also against him, he didn't last four days, whereas, Hosni Mubarak, this was 18 days before he stepped down. So yeah, you wouldn't expect to have two waves of protest two years apart, but that's what ended up happening.
Leah Roseman:
What did it feel like being in that huge crowd in terms of the authorities, like you weren't scared for your life?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
No, that's the funny thing, because the main center of the protest was, there's a very famous square here in Cairo called Tahrir Square. Ironically "Tahrir" means liberation, but it's been called that for a long time. But the people who were protesting, they were all going there in the thousands, and maybe millions, but they were checking the ID of everybody going in and they wanted to make sure that you... Because as an Egyptian citizen, your profession is written on it. So for me, I always have my profession written as an architectural engineer. So they were checking that nobody's from the police force, because at the time, the police force was the one to worry about.
So it was a peaceful protest, but it was very well organized. So also, I think I was lucky also because I went, it was February 1st. The very next day, the corrupt forces, let's say, they sent people riding on horses and camels to attack the protestors. People died there and people got injured and some people, they lost their eyes and stuff. But I was grateful. I was just lucky that I went through one of those peaceful days. Not one of those violent days. So yeah, it just happened the way it is.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Wow. So back to Montreal. So when you started to get to know the Arab community there, people speak different dialects. Was there ever trouble, any serious trouble with communication, or just tiny little things where you couldn't understand each other?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
It depends on the country. So for anyone who doesn't speak Arabic, I'll just explain that every country in the Arab world developed their dialect from what is known as the "Classical Arabic language", which is the richest source. It's somewhere between 50 to 60,000 words. And each country developed their own dialect from that. The classical Arabic, it's known as Fusha, and Fusha, or classical Arabic, this is the Arabic that you would use to write a formal letter, or anyone on the news, or if you're reading the papers, or any novel, usually it's written in classical Arabic. I was fortunate enough to have gotten a good education and have a good command of classical Arabic, or Fusha. So that makes it easier for me to understand dialects of other countries. That being said, some of them are easier for me than others. The thing is, also, Egypt is considered the Hollywood of the Middle East. So everyone from the Arab world grew up watching Egyptian films. And Egyptian dialect also is known to be one of the easiest.
So us Egyptians, we pride ourselves of having the most famous dialect, but the thing is, what I didn't realize until I moved to Montreal is that I found myself at a disadvantage because everybody else understood my dialect, but not vice versa. So for me, some of the easier dialects would be Lebanese, Iraqi, because Iraqi is closer to Fusha, also Lebanese, I'm a bit more familiar with. Syrian, a big part of it is similar to Lebanese, but there's some part of it, which is a bit more difficult for me to understand. Tunisian to a certain extent, but Algerian and Moroccan? Forget about it, because it has also with French colonization, there's a strong influence there. And also there's the Berber dialects.
So these two are maybe the most difficult for me. But they're nice enough to also change their dialect, to make it closer to Fusha, or even to Egyptian dialect when they speak to me, my Moroccan Algerian friends, and I appreciate the efforts that they make. They also ask me to talk to them in different dialect because they love the sound of it so much and sometimes I would have to talk to them in French.
So it's very interesting, but I love it. I love just the idea of being able to talk to somebody who comes from a different country. We speak the same language with small differences. Even just like in any country, when you go from one city to another, there are differences in dialects. Even in Egypt, from the north of Egypt to the south of Egypt, there are differences. Even from Cairo to Alexandria, which is only like three hours apart, Alexandrian dialect has its own special thing, and someone from Cairo, you would notice that this person is from Alexandria because of how they say certain things. But I love that.
Leah Roseman:
I'm curious, when you're in Turkey, of course the language is completely different, but there must be similarities in the culture. And did you feel at home there, or did it feel like in the sense of being familiar or just that you loved it?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yes, absolutely. Very much so. The thing also I should mention, technically I'm half Turkish from my mother's side of the family, just by roots, but I mean not culturally because the first time I went to Istanbul or Turkey in my life was just in last April. But we've always had this connection. My mother, even though she's Egyptian born and she doesn't speak Turkish, but she has a Turkish name, it's mainly her maternal grandparents that are of Turkish Ottoman roots. But for me, the fascinating thing, it's so similar, it's very... The thing too, so Egyptian dialect, it actually contains a lot of Turkish words. In Turkish language, it used to use Arabic alphabet up until Ataturk changed it to Latin. But the language itself contains mixture of Arabic words, French words, and other words. But it's definitely, I still need to work on it. But as far as culturally, I mean come on, oud, qanun, these are the instruments of all the Arab world. And even some of the best Arabic calligraphers because Arabic calligraphy is an art form and some of the best Arabic calligraphers are in Turkey.
I actually have an Arabic calligrapher friend of mine in Montreal who I asked to design this writing, which I sent to the Turkish maker. I don't know if you can see that. And he kind of added an ornamentation around it. So if I was in Turkey, I would maybe, if I knew in a calligrapher there, I would've asked him to make it for me. But culturally, it's so similar for sure, even the mosques, the call to prayer. That's the interesting thing for me growing up here, unfortunately a lot of the people who chant the call to prayer in a mosque here, unfortunately they're tone deaf, so they sound absolutely horrible, out of tune.
And all my life I thought, "Why does it not sound good when I come?" And I listen to a gospel in a church and sounds lovely. It's not that doesn't sound good, it's like this person, unfortunately, doesn't have a musically trained ear. But if you go on YouTube and you search for a call to prayer, there's some great singers from Egypt who are just not everywhere. In Turkey, the people who call make the call to prayer, it's called the Adhan, they sound great.
So the interesting thing for me too is that each call to prayer is sung in one of the main known Arabic modes. Even I saw somebody talking about how each, because there's five per day, and each one uses a different mode for different kind of mood, but overall, I mean Turkey is a Muslim culture nation, just like Egypt is. But even if, yes, language was a bit of a barrier, but there's people I met there who thought that I've been visiting there many times because I was so much at home. Even if language was a barrier, I had no problem whatsoever getting around, just having my mobile phone with Google Maps, the Istanbul card, the transport card, that I used to take the trains or the buses everywhere.
And some people also told me they have some prejudices. "Oh, Turkish people are not always nice." I did not in my 25 days there have one bad interaction with anyone. I also make the effort, I learned a few basic words. The most basic phrase I would use is, "Do you speak English please?" Which I would say to them in Turkish, "İngilizce biliyor musunuz". And if they say yes, then that makes life easier, if not, then fine, I'll just use Google Translate. But for me, I think it's all about trying to shorten the gap. I come to them. Unfortunately people, they go there, they expect them to talk English. Well, they're not necessarily going to bother. You're the guest, you have to make the effort. But if they see you making the effort, they're going to reciprocate and also try to help. And I've had several interactions with people who they speak no English, but with Google Translate, it worked. I had a guy fix the zipper on my suitcase, the handle broke. The entire interaction took 10 minutes through Google Translate. No problem.
Leah Roseman:
That's great. Yeah.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
I was curious about percussion because... Well actually let's talk about your album for a minute.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Sure.
Leah Roseman:
Ela Mataa? So I really love it. I think people should go to Bandcamp and check it out.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Oh, thank you. Thank you for listening to it.
Leah Roseman:
And the percussion player Joseph Khoury. I know there's a story when you're making this recording.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yes. Joseph is a wonderful percussionist who plays mainly a Middle Eastern percussion instruments such as the darbuka, the rekt, the frame drum. He also plays the Latin instruments as well, such as the congas and the bongos. He's originally Lebanese. Even he went to Istanbul and took some master classes in darbuka. And so he's a wonderful percussionist and I introduced him to Mike. The first time they met was at my place where we formed this trio that we ended up working together for the years that followed. And then we recorded my album together. And so the recording session, that of my album, actually it took place over two days in the first week of January in 2018 at Piccolo Studio at the east end of Montreal. It's a wonderful studio.
That's where Celine Dion began her career, as far as I know. The two brothers who run work in the place, there's Pierre Messier, who was the sound engineer on my album, and his brother Dominique, who plays drums with Celine Dion, as far as I know. And so we recorded, if I think it was January 5th and 6th, just two days in a row, and I took the approach of recording live. There was no multi-tracking, that's kind of what felt like the best decision to approach recording this music. Because this is how he played it, and I wanted to bring that life feel to the recording. So as it happens, most of the songs on my album are recorded with the frame drum.
Joseph has his own frame drum, which he bought from one of the Gulf countries here, when he was on tour earlier. And the best percussion instruments are known to have natural animal skins. Usually frame drums are made with goat skin and darbukas are made with fish skin. So his has a goat skin. So these, they produce the most organic sounds. So this is the best quality you can usually get out of them. The disadvantage is that they are susceptible to changes in temperature and humidity. So if the humidity is very low, if it's very dry, then the skin becomes very tense, and vice versa, if it's very humid, it becomes very loose. So sometimes if it's too humid, he would have to heat the skin by maybe with a lighter, or placing even a light bulb behind it. And if it's too loose, you maybe have to apply just a drop of water on it to kind of moisten it a little bit.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
My issue with Joseph's frame drum is that it was always too tight for my liking. It didn't produce enough bass sound because like these percussion instruments, with the exception of the rekt, which has so many different sonic textures, but there's two main sounds. There's several ones, but the two main ones is called the doum, which basically gives you the more bassy sound and tek, which is the more traveler sound. So his doum, the bass sound, it was not bassy enough for me. And I asked another friend of mine who's a wonderful percussionist, who was very active in the Montreal scene, his name is Patrick Graham. And Patrick has several percussion instruments, including a wonderful frame drum that is made by the Cooperman Percussion Company in Vermont in the States.
And they make them with different diameters. His is a 20 inch diameter frame drum. They're made with a special type of synthetic skin, which sounds absolutely beautiful. But the advantage of those frame drums is that they're tunable. So you have all these tuning keys that are usually tuned with a hexagonal allen key.
And so Patrick was nice enough to lend us his frame drum, which ended up saving my album actually, because what happened during those sessions was, the studio being a high tech studio, they have heated flooring. And they have this huge space where most musicians record in, so they placed me and Mike in these partitions that they kind of formed around each one of us to minimize bleeding. But Joseph, they placed him in a separate room with a revolving door, which looks like one of these garage doors, but it has an open window, that way he would completely be separate from us. And he has these carpets. So after the first day of recording, he didn't bother putting his instruments back in their cases, he just left them on the carpets and went home. And then we go back the next day to find that his frame drum that he bought from the Middle East, the skin had tore all around the rim of the frame drum because of how dry it was.
It was so tense that the skin being pulled already on the rim of the frame drum, it just completely tore. And I ended up getting him a replacement goat skin when I came back here to Cairo in my following trip. But thankfully to Patrick's frame drum, that's the main percussion instrument that was used to record most of the songs on my album. And I liked it so much that I ended up getting my own frame drum. This the exact same one when I was in Montreal in the summer of last year, 2021, I got the same one and I brought it back with me here. I have it right there, I don't know if I should bring it. If you think it might be a good-
Leah Roseman:
That would be awesome.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yeah? Okay.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I thought it'd be quite interesting for my listeners because I'm talking with quite a few percussionists and drummers from different backgrounds this season.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Okay. Nice.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yeah. I'm not a professional percussionist, but I can say that I can play a beat. And this is, by far, my favorite percussion instrument. So this is the exact, well I mean, the exact same model as the frame drum that was used on my album. So it has all these keys that are all around the rim that are allowing you to tune it. So if I want to just play a regular beat, I'm just going to just give us a bit of a introduction to the sounds. This is the doom sound, which I love it. I love just the projection, the deep end of it and the overtones. And then there's the... So something like...
So for me it kind of takes me to a meditation or a trance. But Joseph obviously being, that's his forte, he played it wonderfully on several songs. The title track of my album, Ela Mataa, he played a wonderful solo on that instrument. So thankfully that saved my album.
Leah Roseman:
Well I'd love the album and that title track. And I've definitely... I was just listening to that percussion solo this morning actually.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Oh, thank you. Appreciate that. I'm sure Joseph would be very happy to hear that if he tunes in.
Leah Roseman:
So a lot of those frame drums have snares, correct? Not this one, but...
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Some of them do, yes. It's known also in the more maghreb Northern African part, countries like Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. And so Cooperman have designed some of them with the springs in the middle. I don't know if you can turn them on and off, and they produce, it's a special sound, but it didn't work for what I wanted. But I've played some of those and it's kind of part of the traditional music that is played there. I'm not sure if the springs are in Egypt, because also in Egypt, the frame drum, as a general instrument, it has different names in different parts of the Middle East. So maybe in Morocco or Tunisia or maybe even the Gulf, it's called the bendir, which has a bigger depth.
But the frame drum also is an essential instrument in Nubian music. And it's known in art music as the tar. So the Nubian tar also is made out of goat skin, but it doesn't have the springs. But Hamza El Din that I was talking about earlier, even in one of his later albums, he did this track where he's recording multi-tracking, kind of superimposing several beats over one another with a frame drum. And then the more traditional, or maybe the more popular name in more Arabic, traditional Arabic music is called the Duff, or Deff, as you call it. So you have these different names for it.
Leah Roseman:
I find it interesting in terms of jazz history, because I was researching the origins of the drum set and then the snare drum, which came from Europe, well, where did that come from? So I know I'm not a music historian, musicologist, but from what I understand that the Middle Eastern frame drum then went to medieval Europe and I think it was called the tambour, and then evolved into the snare, the military snare drum, which became part of the drum set.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Amazing.
Leah Roseman:
Which just part of the evolution of jazz. So I find all these worlds meetings super interesting.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yeah, jazz also has a lot of its roots coming from Africa initially, right?
Leah Roseman:
Oh no, the roots of the... Yes, of course. But I mean in terms of the percussion instrument part of it, and Asia with the... And Turkey with the cymbals and all that. So that's... I got into that with Mike Essoudry on his episode, which will be released before yours.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Okay. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And then I'm thinking about the oud which evolved into the lute in Europe and all of that. So it's all so connected.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Absolutely.
Leah Roseman:
And when you went to Montreal and you were exposed to this very rich jazz scene, it must have been really amazing for you. Can you speak to that experience?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Sure, yeah. I was getting really into jazz music before even moving there, and this is kind of why I moved there. I was listening to whatever I was exposed to here in Cairo before going there. Obviously it's not the same as when you go to a... a city like Montreal has very important contribution historically, in the evolution of jazz music even. And studying the music, I did two music degrees. First one is at Concordia University and the second one was at McGill University. So over the course of my life at Montreal, I spent six years studying jazz music full time and I took several courses of history of jazz. And that's what really made me understand how jazz music as an art form evolved over the past 100 years or more.
But then actually living it, in the actual jazz scene of Montreal was also completely a mind blowing experience in the sense that Montreal has a very strong jazz scene. Even before moving to Montreal, I had visited Montreal three times in the early two thousands, and I had been to the Montreal Jazz Fest several times, but since I moved there in 2006, I all of a sudden found myself with the privilege of being able to go to attend the concerts of all these heroes of mine that I grew up listening to, but never got a chance to see in concert. And some of them I would even go backstage to meet. So I attended concerts by everyone, even Dave, like Dave Brubeck, I remember I got to see him in concert. He was 91 at the time so that was incredible.
So I have a wall of concert tickets. Most of them are yellow from... Because they're from Place des Arts. But it was definitely very enriching, to say the least. And when I went to some of those shows at the jazz bars like Upstairs or Dies Onse or House of Jazz, just being up close and personal, there's something very special about that as well. And then the main thing also is that I got to meet and get to know all these incredible local Montreal musicians who were actually my music teachers, both at Concordia and McGill, whether they're guitarists, saxophonists, bass players, drummers, pianists, all jazz instruments that you can think of. So going to see them in concert also was very special because the great musicians and seeing them play this music at such a high level was very inspiring for me to want to get better at it. So it was definitely something that contributed a lot, I guess, to my evolution as a musician.
Leah Roseman:
So I know you do a lot of teaching, especially online now. Is it split between jazz and oud and... What are you teaching mostly these days?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
It's anything that my student comes with. That's one of the things that I love about teaching, you never know what a new student wants to do. And each day, each lesson is completely customized and tailored around that student. But definitely I continue even... yeah. So I was teaching mainly in person up until the beginning of the pandemic two years ago, that's when I started teaching online. First I was posting progress of some of my in-person students online and then suddenly I had friends of mine in Montreal contacting me to take online lessons on Zoom. So I began with that for a while. And then I got contacted by this wonderful Chicago based online music school called Arpeggiato, which is music for all instruments that go pluck. And they're a great school. Their director, Brandon Acker is a wonderful classical guitarist and they added me as their oud player. But because I also am a guitar player, so I teach both.
So they brought me students, oud students and guitar students. So I have one wonderful Moroccan oud student who lives in Paris that I teach, and we talk about all these music modes. And Morocco also has its own thing, which is incredible. There's even a complex micro-tonal system that goes even smaller in intervals than quarter tones, there's like eighth tones. And I got a bit of introduction into that when I was in Istanbul, but it's very much part of traditional Moroccan music as well. And then I have another student in the States who was working with on jazz standards. So I keep changing hats from one student to another. And then I have another student who wants to work on a classical piece. But I love that, I love working. For me it's always learning experience also as a teacher.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I was thinking how the internet can be such a force for good in the revolution we were talking about. And also in terms of musical connections, there's a guy you met, Joseph, that's Egyptian Australian, I can't pronounce his last name.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Joseph Tawadros.
Leah Roseman:
Yes, that you knew for years through Facebook and then finally got to play with him.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yes, yes. I got introduced to him by a friend of mine here back in 2010. Like that trip when I came here to bring my first oud I was just looking, where can I get a good oud? 'Cause it's not easy to find a good, especially here in Egypt. So I was asking Joseph, because he's a fantastic oud player who's done incredible accomplishments. And ironically, he is the one who introduced me to the maker that made this oud for me. So the maker, his name is Cengiz Sarikus, he works with his son, Vasel. So Vasel, the son, he made what is now Joseph's signature oud series. So they work together. And so yes, Joseph, being Egyptian Australian, he was born in Egypt but his family took him to Australia when he was two years old. So he grew up there completely Australian, but he would always come back to Egypt.
And he's still an Egyptian, he's Egyptian Australian. He has both cultures in him. But whenever one of us came to Egypt, the other was away in his other country. So if he's here, I'm in Canada. If I'm here, he's in Australia. But we stayed friends online for 12 years up until two weeks ago. I'm here in Cairo for most of the year now and he just messaged me out of the blue, are you in Egypt? Yes. Are you coming soon? I'm here. Okay. So we got to meet up a couple of times. First time we went on a sail boat with a group of friends and played music together. And then the second time he played a solo concert at, there's the famous Arabic oud house here in Cairo. I went and attended a lovely performance by him. And now he lives in London, so it's easier for him and he is going to come back more often.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, that's beautiful.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So there's so much more we could talk about, but I'm mindful of your time and I'm wondering if to close out this conversation, you'd be willing to play some jazz for us.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Sure, yes. It'll be a chance to play my electric guitar. This guitar I brought secondhand from somebody in Montreal and it's been... Oh, it's been my guitar of choice for many years because it's a semi hollow guitar and so it kind of it quite versatile to play different styles of music on it. I had worked on a cruise ship for almost six months, 10 years ago, and that guitar allowed me to play different styles. So let's see, I'll play maybe one of my favorite jazz tunes that I like playing a lot on guitar. So this is Naima by John Coltrane.
Leah Roseman:
We're just... Ali, thank you. You're such a lyrical player. I really love your playing.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Thank you, you're too kind. Yeah, thank you.
Leah Roseman:
I'm wondering, just to close out, as a teacher, what kind of advice do you give your students about practicing music?
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
That's a good question. The biggest challenge is always pushing ourselves to sit down and practice and making the time for it. Everybody wants to learn the song, but it requires time and discipline and continuance. You learn whatever piece of music you're working on, it's not always learned over one practice session, it's building blocks. So I just try to encourage them to approach it from a place of love. First of all, I ask them, what do you want to play? Because I'd like to work with them on playing what they want to play because that's, I find, what's going to motivate them to sit down and practice. And trying to really incorporate that into their daily lifestyle because for me, this is my life. So it's always a challenge also for me to always find the time, find enough time. I never practice as much as I want to, but I know that this is what has to be done, but maybe not everyone is always aware of that. So I talk to them about how to incorporate it into as a routine part of their daily life.
And obviously depending on whether we're talking about oud or guitar or what kind of music or... It's obviously important to develop proper practice techniques and routine because also it's not about how long you practice but how efficiently you do it. And then you have to take breaks. So for me, the way it works for me now is that I would practice for maybe a 30 minute session and then I'd take a break just to rest my mind and stretch my body and then I go back again. That's more efficient. And also doing it regularly, try to do it a bit every day even, let's say, if you don't have all the time that you want, but it's more efficient to do a little bit every day rather than not touching your instrument for several days and then just trying to squeeze in a three hour session.
But sometimes some people, some weeks they have more time, some weeks they have less time. So I always pick up from where we left. The biggest challenge is always pushing ourselves to sit down and practice and making the time for it. Everybody wants to learn the song, but it requires time and discipline and continuance. You learn whatever piece of music you're working on, it's not always learned over one practice session, it's building blocks. So I just try to encourage them to approach it from a place of love. First of all, I ask them, what do you want to play? Because I'd like to work with them on playing what they want to play because that's, I find, what's going to motivate them to sit down and practice. And trying to really incorporate that into their daily lifestyle because for me, this is my life. So it's always a challenge also for me to always find the time, find enough time.
I never practice as much as I want to, but I know that this is what has to be done, but maybe not everyone is always aware of that. So I talk to them about how to incorporate it into as a routine part of their daily life. And obviously depending on whether we're talking about oud or guitar or what kind of music or... It's obviously important to develop proper practice techniques and routine because also it's not about how long you practice but how efficiently you do it. And then you have to take breaks.
So for me, the way it works for me now is that I would practice for maybe a 30 minute session and then I'll take a break just to rest my mind and stretch my body and then I go back again, that's more efficient. And also doing it regularly, try to do it a bit every day even, let's say, if you don't have all the time that you want, but it's more efficient to do a little bit every day rather than not touching your instrument for several days and then just trying to squeeze in a three hour session.
But sometimes some people, some weeks they have more time, some weeks they have less time. So I always pick up from where left off the previous time. But I try to encourage them because the biggest joy for me as a teacher is seeing the progress that they make, and I bring that to their attention because they wouldn't always necessarily see that. I'll tell them, "Hey, just a few lessons ago you couldn't do that yet." So just be patient, trust in the process, it's a lifelong journey. We get the sense of accomplishment when we finish that one piece of music, but it never ends. That's the beauty of it. There's always something to work on. For me, it'll take me 10 lifetimes to learn everything that I work on, everything that I want to work on. So if you let music be a part of your life, you'll never get bored a day in your life. And never forget that we do this for ourselves because it's something that we love doing.
Don't pressure yourself for no reason. The progress needs a certain amount of time or needs a certain... If it's a phase that you have to go through and you will get there eventually. So you just have to trust in the process and be patient and just kind of approach it like an act of meditation, and you'll get there eventually.
Leah Roseman:
Beautifully expressed, I love that. Well, thank you so much for your generosity with your music and your perspectives today. It was super interesting.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. It's a lot of fun. Actually, before this morning I wanted to say, I was starting my day listening to the one you did with Derek...
Leah Roseman:
Gripper.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
Gripper from South Africa. Wonderful guitar player and I really enjoyed listening to that. So I look forward to listening to the other ones as well. So thank you for making me be a part of that.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, okay. Thanks, Ali.
Ali Omar El-Farouk:
My pleasure.
Leah Roseman:
I hope this series inspires you and brings you a feeling of joy and connection with my creative guests. You may be interested in my previous conversations with Hooshyar Khayam and Shariyar Jamshidi. I also feature a lot of jazz musicians, so please check out my episode catalog at leahroseman.com. You can find a link to leave me a tip to support this work in the description. Have a great week.
