Farouq El-Sharnoubi:
Sounds for all seasons, and then there's workContentment of sorts
At 52 Farouq El-Sharnoubi occupies a position of prominence among the generation of composers intent on adapting their classical Arabic orientation to the pop revolution of the last two decades. In this he resembles many of the older and more serious pop stars with whom he works: Ali El-Haggar, Mohamed El-Helw, Medhat Saleh. Growing up against a backdrop dominated by Um Kulthoum and Mohamed Abdel-Wahab -- both may have been innovators, adopting Western influences, but neither compromised the integrity of Arabic music or allowed their tunes to degenerate into jingles -- such figures emerged at the crossroads separating Abdel- Halim Hafez from Amr Diab, to mention two quintessential examples. The sedate, classically rooted sentimentality of the former was already giving way to the fast-paced, simple and supposedly international romanticism of the latter and people like El-Sharnoubi, who had achieved -- local or otherwise -- a limited fame based on by now outdated criteria of musical worth, felt at a loss to establish their names in an environment increasingly controlled by a distinctly different set of criteria. Their careers dramatised the struggle to be part of the prevailing pop scene while at the same time maintaining the credibility of their musical endeavour. Innovation and experimentation may have been restricted as a result, with the task at hand reduced to combining two existing modes of musical operation. But their talent and devotion to music still managed to seep through; and in certain circles at least they continue to enjoy the kind of respect that seems to have eluded composers like Hamid El- Sha'iri or Esam Karara.
"If you want my own view," El-Sharnoubi admits after much coaxing, "it's only through a direct link with reality, the reality of our musical heritage as well as social and historical identity, that we can achieve alamiya," that notorious goal, globalism. "I don't see why we can't be Egyptian and contemporary. If a good tune, as you and I understand it, was provided with even average production and publicity, I think it would definitely succeed. There'd turn out to be a market for it. The reason I'm sure of this is that there's a deep need, a hunger for the kind of music to which people listened not so long ago. At the height of Um Kulthoum's career the vast majority of people were in no position to afford musical tastes, let alone a refined sense of discrimination. Yet regularly they would gather around the radio to listen to the diva. And through intuition and common sense they could tell this was there to be listened to, not to play in the background while you did something else. Today the role of music in society has changed. It is not frustrating, no. It is simply saddening for a composer. I could, after all, compose all the serious music I want, play it and record it -- but what next. It would be more like a hobby than work. In order for it to be work it has to have institutional support. And institutionally we're in the age of background music. The fact is it's an ultimately subjective point of view, because as I say give good music a chance and you'll see whether or not it will prove successful -- it will, because there is a real need for it. Somehow you can no longer be contemporary if you are to sustain a sense of identity. It's almost a faux pas today to commend the achievement of Um Kulthoum or Abdel-Wahab. In order to be contemporary, you have to talk about the global significance of Amr Diab and credibility of Nancy Agram instead."
El-Sharnoubi's own credibility depends in part on the virtually unknown work he undertook in Alexandria in the 1970s.
"There was the period of political songs," an oppositional endeavour along the lines of the famous collaboration of Ahmed Fouad Negm and Sheikh Imam Eisa.
"This is work I still value, of course, but I don't think there is any space for it now. Produced in Alexandria, it was presented throughout Egypt and the response was very positive. But considering the way things are, it has to be relegated to the inventory of past achievements."
Of other, less perilous songs he insists: "Who would want to fund and produce songs that are not guaranteed commercial success? Not me. In order for something to achieve the required professional as opposed to artistic credibility, it cannot remain merely good or pleasant to listen to -- it has to develop into a professional entity. This work still exists in some form or another, but who will provide the studio, the orchestra, the publicity? And to what end?"
Yet it was one of these early tunes, a now well- known song entitled Ana Ter fil-Sama (Me -- a bird in the sky), that set off El-Sharnoubi's professional career, with Iman El-Bahr Darwish, a close friend of El-Sharnoubi's and the grandson of the great Alexandrian composer Sayed Darwish. As a secondary student in Alexandria and, later, during two quiet years following his graduation from the Technical Armed Forces Institute in Cairo, El- Sharnoubi found his calling singing his own compositions and providing local theatrical productions with music in youth centres, cultural palaces and a range of government-supported and private venues.
"Initially, through my friendship with Iman El- Bahr, and afterwards when I began to sing and compose for the theatre, by the end of my secondary education I was very clear about what I wanted to do with my life." Realising that staying in Alexandria would condemn him to relative obscurity El- Sharnoubi rushed back to Cairo.
"I began to practise music in the context of theatre -- with the Theatre Commission, the Cultural Palaces, Al-Tali'a. That eventually led to television drama."
Dramatic work also includes the occasional fling with the cinema, such as composing the score of Youssef Chahine's Al-Aakhar. "Finally the phase of song writing started. It started late, after many contributions to theatre and television," notably in collaboration with director Mohamed Fadel. "Although that was helpful at some level, since I already had a style and a way of working, it also presented problems -- because it was a matter of rethinking everything and, in some ways, going back to my early days in Alexandria. The interesting thing is that, like almost every phase of my career it was completely unintentional. Iman had listened to some of my tunes and he began to express an interest in launching them commercially. The first album we did together was Nefsi (I wish), and after that we collaborated repeatedly. In due course other singers began to notice my tunes; each meeting resulted in a series of collaborations, sometimes extending to television and theatre appearances of theirs. First there was Medhat Saleh, with Aasef alal-Ahlam (Sorry for my dreams). Then Mohamed El-Helw. And Ali El-Haggar."
El-Sharnoubi's last project was a play with the latter and his last tune (which won the gold medal at the last round of the Radio and Television Festival), a song by him. "This naturally gathered a larger audience and I was grateful to be working with such voices." Settled in Cairo, eventually a married man with two children who "like to sing", El-Sharnoubi finally turned into his most cherished image of himself -- that of a respected professional musician with a widely recognised and appropriately lucrative career.
"The funny thing is that I was seldom party to it myself. It was always somebody else who noticed my talent and pushed me in the direction of pursuing it," he recounts. "I grew up in Anfoushi, and it was my elder brother Sayed, who was a poet and writer, who first noticed me humming. Sensing a musical ear he began to make me sing for his friends, who confirmed his initial suspicion. And that made me feel as if I had a gift, so I began to pay attention to it."
El-Sharnoubi was only five and about to start going to school. "My father [a calligrapher] died when I was very young. And I was attached to my mother, yes, of course. She was the one who provided me with my earliest sources. Women of that period had this habit of singing while they went about the housework -- folklore songs that didn't belong to any particular part of Egypt. It's a sort of intuitive, unacknowledged heritage that I quickly assimilated. All the day's rituals were accompanied by songs. When I began to move around the neighbourhood my sources were duly varied as I discovered that the same was true of every profession -- the fishermen, the boat makers, the fruit vendors all had their songs. I never really liked the songs that I heard on the radio. I was far more drawn to music that was associated with movement, with work. And I think," El-Sharnoubi digresses, "my work reflects this early penchant for reality, or rather music that runs parallel to and in some ways mimics the reality of everyday life. At school," he goes on, "there began to be activities -- not necessarily musical as such. But during the daily fellow students stood in line, the day started. And I remember trying to infuse my recitation with as much musicality and vocal beauty as possible. I was very good at school, and I liked the arts more than the sciences, subjects that involved some degree of creativity. But during the summer, the only time when I was allowed to, I quickly began to devote my time to singing. I sought out material -- words, anything really, and began to make up tunes for them, without realising as yet that there was a name for what I was doing -- composition. Again someone heard me by accident and told me that I was composing; and only then did I feel the need to learn an instrument."
It was the advice of composers like Kamal El- Tawil and Mohamed El-Mougui that finally settled his mind on composition. "In the end I may be an okay singer," he explains, "but if there is something remarkable about me it's my compositions. That doesn't stop me from singing on occasion, usually in relatively private contexts and always my own tunes."
El-Sharnoubi's first public appearance, he recalls, was at the birthday party of one of his brother's friends -- singing some of the profession-specific songs of Sayed Darwish, ghuna al-tawa'if. At the age of 14 he went through the exacting process of saving up LE3 to buy a oud and quickly taught himself to play it. For many years El-Sharnoubi sought out the sources of the music to which he had always been drawn. He began to frequent the house of El- Bahr Darwish, the composer's son and Iman's father, listening to rare recordings, some of which have yet to be heard publicly, discussing music, and accumulating material.
"I began to appear at parties, and as I sang my own tunes they began to spread. So I was called upon to compose, which saved me the trouble of finding texts to set to music. That's how I first came to be associated with drama."
When he graduated from secondary school, El- Sharnoubi expressed his desire to go to Cairo to study music; his elder brothers refused, not because they were opposed to music but because they objected to him being by himself in Cairo -- and the expense it would require.
"Finally they said they'd let me do it on condition that they stopped providing for me." El-Sharnoubi joined a military institute as a compromise, just to be in Cairo -- it cost nothing -- but on enrolling he was shocked to discover that, as a military student, he was not allowed to practise art of any kind, anywhere. He persevered -- he had no choice, and as the days passed he continued to teach himself music, practising the oud, listening and reading.
"I was the rogue, repeatedly punished. I would get a day off and not come back for a week. I would arrive with my oud and it would be confiscated. I never paid attention to my studies. In the end the powers that be, realising there was no way on earth to stop me, began to utilise my abilities at institute parties and such. I graduated, tendered my resignation and set out again, without a clue as to what I would do with myself. But I had acquired enough musical knowledge and skill to feel confident."
For the last few months, in his large flat off Faisal Road, El-Sharnoubi has been "in a state of meditation", doing little, thinking ahead -- a state to which he says he frequently returns, and the state he was in following his resignation from the institute in Alexandria.
"Sometimes I can afford to do nothing for a while, though it's not always a choice. Contentment," he adds, "is a very elusive concept. But you do what you can. I think back to the artists with whom I collaborated in Alexandria -- Iman El- Serafi, Hussein Manis, Mustafa Rizq -- and it surprises me that none of them is well-known today. You asked about people who helped me with my career. None of us helped each other but we were a group. After I came back to Cairo it was my work with Mohamed Fadel, who discovered and encouraged me, that was probably the greatest help. And the fact that I was lucky enough to compose the first Arabic concert to be staged at the new Opera House, to celebrate the centenary of Dar Al-Hilal. The one thing I continue to aspire to is stability in every aspect of life, but I know only too well that there is no such thing as stability in the musical world. I am grateful to be working today, but I never know what's going to happen tomorrow. And it's the same with artistic contentment: you always feel you can do better and more. The work I'd like to do, ideally -- there is no real market for it. And though there is more freedom in drama than in songs it's still somebody else's property, it belongs with another person. So it's hard to talk about contentment and achievement. As for Alexandria, well, I go back, of course. But not so often now. The city may look much better than it once did, it may be more beautiful, but for some reason it has lost its flavour and being there doesn't feel the same..."
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 7 - 13 August 2003 (Issue No. 650)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/650/profile.htm