Ziryab & Muwashshah

if you eat asparagus, or if you start your meal with soup and end with dessert, or if you use toothpaste, you owe a lot to one of the greatest musicians in history. He was known as Ziryab, a colloquial Arabic term that translates as “blackbird.”He was a freed slave who made good, charming the royal court at Córdoba with his songs. He founded a music school whose fame survived more than 500 years after his death. Ibn Hayyan of Córdoba, one of Arab Spain’s greatest historians, says in his monumental Al-Muqtabas (The Citation) that Ziryab knew thousands of songs by heart and revolutionized the design of the musical instrument that became the lute. He spread a new musical style around the Mediterranean, influencing troubadours and minstrels and affecting the course of European music.

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some more to read from wiki:

Abu l-Hasan ‘Ali Ibn Nafi(c. 789–857), nicknamed Ziryab was a poet, musician, singer, cosmetologist,
fashion designer, trendsetter, strategist, astronomer, botanist and geographer.
He was active at the Umayyad court of Córdoba in Islamic Iberia.
He first achieved notoriety at the Abbasid court in Baghdad, Iraq, his birth place,
as a performer and student of the great musician and composer, Ishaq al-Mawsili.
According to many early historians, he was African or a racially mixed African-Arab;
in this period, the Muslims brought African slaves with them to the lands they had conquered,
and many of these slaves were known for their musical skills.
Ziryab was most likely born in Baghdad, and was trained in the art of music from a young age.
During that time, Baghdad was the center of music in the Muslim world.
According to many sources the accomplished and talented musician Ishaq al-Mawsili was Ziryab’s teacher.
The debate continues about how he arrived in al-Andalus, but it is clear he offended his patron
or some powerful figure with his musical talent.
Ziryab left Baghdad During the reign of Harun al-Rashid in the year 820.
He then traveled first to Damascus then to Ifriqiyya (Tunisia),
where he lived at the Aghlabid court of Ziyadat Allah (ruled 816-837).
Ziryab fell out with Ziyadat Allah but was invited to Al-Andalus by the Umayyad prince, Al-Hakam I.
He found on arrival in 822 that the prince had died,
but the prince's son, Abd ar-Rahman II, renewed his father's invitation.
Ziryab settled in Córdoba he was honored a monthly salary of 200 Gold Dinars,
he soon became even more celebrated as the court's aficionado of food, fashion, singing and music.
He introduced standards of excellence in all these fields as well as setting new norms for elegant and noble manners.


Ziryab was well known for his Olive skin color, thick Black hair, he was tall, slim.
His style was amazing, his voice defining he envisioned a bright future for all people.
Al-Maqqari further states in his Nafh al-Tib (Fragrant Breeze):
“There never was, either before or after him (Ziryab), a man of his profession
who was more generally beloved and admired”.

and finally Hamza el Din's  "Muwashshah" that is his tribute to Ziryab,"the African slave who escaped from the court of Bagdad to become one of Arabic music's most important composers"


Muwashshah


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Rango-bride of the zar

Everyone knows that Cairo has preserved ancient secrets and cultures for thousands of years,

 while Cairo's el-Mastaba Centre for Egyptian Popular Music has preserved 

three of the known remaining rango instruments.
A rango is a mysterious xylophone-like instrument with wooden keys and twisted gourds hanging

 beneath the keys for reverberation and amplification.
The rango has all but disappeared in this region of the world due to its affiliation with mysticism and the occult.
More specifically, it is a musical instrument used in the performance of the zar and Sudanese tanbura rituals, which are tranceinducing religious ceremonies intended to cure mental illnesses, exorcise jinn and resolve sundry other maladies of the soul.
These mystical healing rituals and musical performances, though mostly of Nubian, Saeedi and baladi extraction (in Upper Egypt, extending into Sudan), can today be enjoyed in Egypt's capital.
The performances are rich with rhythmic chanting, pounding percussion and feathered costuming, and, unlike the seemingly patternless scale of Arabian music, rango music is familiar to the Western ear " a musician would have to explain why that is.

Audience participation enhances the trance-inducing performances, with infectious dancing spreading, passim. The rango is believed to have been brought north from black African Sudan into Nubian Upper Egypt and then further north, following the dark-skinned diasporas of the slave routes, the instrument settling with Sudanese communities in Cairo and Ismailia.
And here, the instrument remained a part of the local communities' weddings, the hypnotic and entrancing music providing the soundtrack for the celebrations.
These celebrations and mystical ceremonies, though much part of contemporary rural Egyptian culture, are considered haram (forbidden) in the faith of Arabia, due to the pagan nature of this activity.
This taboo, associated with the forbidden rango instrument and the mysterious Sudanese voodoo music, is perhaps why the instrument faded from popular use, and ultimately disappeared in the 1970s.
Hassan Bergamon, who grew up in the Arayshiyyit el-Abid (Slave Stockades) in Ismailia, has helped save the rango from near extinction. He used to play as a boy " his mother was a fourth generation zar singer.
Bergamon is considered the last living player of the rango, and he learned from the old masters. 

But it was no easy task to revive this forbidden instrument from the brink of extinction.
Finding the last remaining instruments required as much patience as it did to convince the owners to part with the mystical instruments " the owners believing the rangos contain the souls and spirits of those relatives who once played the mystical instruments.
Hassan Bergamon still performs on an original rango a few times per month. 

Pete Willows

The Egyptian Gazette : 20 - 02 - 2010

and here's the proof

:)