Composed and exhibited in Cairo 1944, the piece predates Pierre Schaeffer’s coining of the term Musique Concrete in 1948. Using a wire recorder, El-Dabh took sounds from the street, specifically a public Zaar exorcism/healing ceremony. Then re-recording it onto magnetic tape he manipulated the sounds through reverb, voltage control, editing speed, echo etc. into a 25-minute composition essentially the first of its kind. However still to this day El-Dabh is not widely recognised as the pioneer of tape music and Musique Concrete (using recorded sounds as compositional material) that he was.
Halim Abdul Messieh El-Dabh (1921 – 2017) was an agriculture student at the time. He borrowed a wire recorder from Middle East Radio’s offices and to access and record the ceremony, he disguised himself as a woman in full niqab.
“It was all women and it was all chanting. I wanted to find the inner sound, that vibration that’s always necessary for transcendence. I eliminated the fundamental tones of the harmony by changing the voltage – it changes the quality of the music, it seeks another quality in the voice, the hidden material, the inner part of the voice. That’s what the whole idea of electronic music is. You have a recording and you go inside the recording to find the hidden meaning.”
These clashing overtones offer a haunting and hypnotic, post modern depiction of a political, spiritual, intimate, anti-colonial and changing Egypt.
This piece interests me as in the ever digital age we live in, to think of sound as a raw acoustic object rather than invisible digital effects is important. It is almost unfathomable the level of experimentation and sonic achievements that were present so long ago; it inspires me and puts things into perspective greatly. I would also love to involve more analogue/tape recording etc. into my practice as well learning more about decolonising the ear.