CAIRO CALL-ING
Grime and garage meet mahraganat – Cairo’s newest street music – via UK producer Mumdance
Mumdance is something of a polymath when it comes to British bass music, dabbling in everything from grime to garage. But the London producer also known as Jack Adams expanded his horizons signi cantly when he went to Egypt earlier this year and spent a week recording with artists from the mahraganat scene – a movement that melds traditional Egyptian sounds with breakneck electronica. The result was the spectacular Cairo Calling: The Mahraganat Mixtape.
What took you to Egypt in the first place?
It was a British Council initiative – a cultural exchange, essentially. Mahraganat musicians came over to the UK to check out our music scene and then me, Pinch and Faze Miyake went to Cairo to do six days of studio work with them before a festival. It was a really unusual experience, not least because we were talking through a translator about pretty specific musical ideas and concepts! But that added a sense of randomness to proceedings, which I think was really useful to the music we made.
Can you explain mahraganat?
The music is frenetic and fast- paced – to me it sounds like Egyptian grime, actually. It’s very MC- led and drum heavy, and in fact the direct translation is “festival music”. The great thing is, even though non-Arabic speakers can’t understand what they’re talking about, from the tone of their voices and the way they’re arranging their language, their lyrical flow does make a kind of sense.
“It's frenetic and fastpaced – to me it sounds like Egyptian grime, actually. It’s very MC- led and drum heavy”
And mahraganat is becoming a big deal in the Arab world, isn’t it?
Well, we were walking around Cairo with Figo, Sadat, Dezel, Kanaka, Islam Chipsy and Alaa Fifty and they were absolutely mobbed. It was like being with The Beatles or something. They genuinely represent a generation: as well as making great music, they’re very inspirational people. They’re uncompromising with what they do, they’re not putting on accents or trying to be American, and they’re talking about things that are relevant to the people around them. And it’s paid off - they’re heroes really.
There’s a real sense of vibrancy and energy to the mixtape, too.
Exactly. You can feel how passionate they are about what they’re doing. The mixtape has got such a good reaction, so I’m hoping this music can be more international – I definitely feel like there’s room for it.
How did the specific tracks on the mixtape come about?
It genuinely was fifty- fifty collaboration – I’d get a lot of samples from Dezel and make a tune, a Mahraganat MC would put their vocals on it and we’d engineer it together. We also gave Dezel the parts for Wiley’s classic grime track Eskimo, and he reworked it into a Mahraganat version – and it sounds great.
How much did you feel you learnt from the Egyptian musicians?
A lot, actually. I like the speed at which they work – they don’t worry about small details, they concentrate on the vibe of the track. I’d get bogged down by how loud a snare drum is, and by the time I’d finished tweaking that, they would have made a whole tune. They opened up my tastes, more than anything. I’ve always listened to music from around the world, but it’s nice to have access to something really interesting happening right now. And maybe those sounds will make their way into my music in the future.