Last year, this purely instrumental trio became a sensation at the prestigious WOMEX festival. The ensemble develops folk melodies from the Nile Delta in northern Egypt and consists of oud player Aly Eissa, violinist Ayman Asfour—both Egyptian—and Belgian-born, Norway-based Jonas Cambien on synthesizer. The synthesizer is not used for sound manipulation, but as a melodic instrument. It enriches the music with both oriental registers and psychedelic colors, drawing inspiration in part from Egyptian pop.
The concert set takes the form of one continuous, uninterrupted composition, built from dramatically escalating blocks. In the finale, the accumulated tension is released in an intense outburst, where sophisticated improvisations intertwine with energetic dance rhythms from the Egyptian countryside. The structure of these interlocking sequences is conceptually akin to that of the Australian group The Necks, though constructed from entirely different material. The trio’s debut album was released by the cult Seattle-based label Sublime Frequencies.
The Handover elegantly combine elements of classical Arabic music with the raw expressiveness of rural Egypt. Despite the absence of percussion, a rhythmic pulse is constantly present, with all three players responding to one another with near-telepathic precision whenever the tempo needs to slow down or accelerate. Psychedelic tones evoke the vintage registers of Farfisa organs, while repeating riffs recall historic recordings by the band Embryo and other krautrock groups. At the same time, one can hear echoes of North African trance rituals.
A casual listener might assume that the group’s music crosses the red lines drawn by Egyptian traditionalists and purists—but the opposite is true. What is today labeled “world music” had already been part of the Egyptian scene a century ago, when Cairo functioned as a progressive melting pot. In 1932, it hosted the Congress of Arab Music, an international symposium under the patronage of the Egyptian king. Initiated by the French musicologist Baron Rodolphe d’Erlanger, the congress was the first forum dedicated to Arab music from North Africa to the Middle East. European participants included Béla Bartók and Paul Hindemith. Ironically, the event took place amid concerns that Arab music was an endangered art form requiring support. Among the conference’s outcomes was a recommendation by an Egyptian delegate to integrate Western instruments into Arab ensembles, as they were considered “more expressive.”
The Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum (1898–1975), still the most revered figure in Arab music, built upon Egyptian roots while also drawing on Western harmonies, and included a section of European string instruments in her orchestra.
