Omar El Shariyi — Ana We Habieby
Oriental Music · 1976
Label: Wewantsounds · Genre: Jazz / Middle Eastern Jazz-Funk · From: Cairo, Middle East
Ammar El Sherei lost his sight in early childhood but went on to become one of Egypt's most inventive musicians — later consulting with Yamaha to develop keyboards that could handle the quarter-tone intervals essential to Arabic music. On Oriental Music, recorded in Cairo in 1976 for the Soutelphan label, he reinterprets six classics by the legendary composer Mohamed Abdel Wahab using Farfisa organs and the rare Steelphon S900 keyboard. The result is hypnotic: traditional North African melody dissolved into jazz voicings and funk rhythm, arriving at a sound that was decades ahead of the world's curiosity about it. Wewantsounds reissued it in 2020 and it quickly became a cult favourite among diggers worldwide.
Did you know: El Sherei was asked by Yamaha to help design electronic keyboards capable of producing quarter-tone scales — the microtonal intervals at the heart of Arabic music that Western instruments cannot natively produce.
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