CAIRO: Sand blew in from the desert, blocking the sun and darkening the skies.
The air was thick,hot and hard to breathe. But American drummer Raquy Danziger savored every moment of the day: She was rehearsing for a concert with Said El Artist, Egypt s most famous hand drummer.
At the rehearsal, Danziger traded solos for the first time with El Artist and it was a thrill. Later, the master drummer invited her to teach his troupe one of her own drum compositions.
“I could not believe what a sound it was with all those drummers playing so tightly, Danziger said. “My piece had never sounded so huge. I was blown away.
Even more exciting for Danziger was their actual concert, performed in an openair theater on the bank of the Nile last spring.
Until that night, the 35-year-old musician had spent years practicing, composing, teaching and performing in local New York clubs on the hourglass-shaped Egyptian hand drum known in English as a dumbek. But playing her unique riff on Middle Eastern drumming for an audience of hundreds of hooting, clapping Egyptians was an experience like no other.
Their concert was the culmination of a month-long collaboration between the American and Egyptian drummers that demonstrated the power of music to transcend national, cultural and gender divides and even language barriers.
Danziger was a true novelty in Egypt. Performing publicly on dumbek in the Middle East is done exclusively by men and there are only a handful of professional female dumbek players in the entire world. So her collaboration with El Artist on a Cairo stage was a unique event.
The two met a year earlier when Danziger first visited Cairo, the cradle of the music she had loved and studied for years. They spent an evening getting acquainted and drumming and she made an impression by playing him one of his own drum solos,which she had learned from an Egyptian friend back in New York. At the end of the night, El Artist invited her to return to Egypt and play a concert with him.
A year later, Danziger was back in Cairo with four of her students – three of them women.Almost immediately,Danziger headed over to see El Artist at his studio in the neighborhood known as El Haram, the Arabic name for the nearby pyramids at Giza.
El Artist s place takes up a small, wellmaintained building on a dusty residential street lined with food stalls, small shops and homes. Ouds inlaid with ivory hang on the walls of his office,as well as a picture framed in mother-of-pearl with the 99 names of Allah. There is also a large rehearsal space where a 20-piece ensemble can practice comfortably, a recording studio and, naturally, dumbeks stuffed in every corner.
In his 40s with thick salt-and-pepper hair, a mustache and a beaming smile, El Artist is a stylish dresser with a particularly sharp eye for flashy shoes. He is also deeply spiritual.
The devout Muslim has darkened calluses on his forehead from prostrating to pray five times a day. He began rehearsals by reciting the opening words of the Quran and interrupted practice whenever the chants of the muezzins echoed hauntingly from minarets across the city of 18 million, calling the faithful to prayer.
Though many drummers across the world imitate his compositions, El Artist did not seem to care.
“My music is between me and God, he said.
At the start of their collaboration, Danziger and El Artist spent hours listening to each other s material. Her Egyptian host spoke no English and Danziger spoke only rudimentary Arabic – she carried Arabic flash cards with her on every visit to the studio. Each time she stayed until morning playing music.
Within days, she found the venue for their joint concert – Cairo s El Sawy Cultural Center. She and her students would share the stage with El Artist and his 10-man troupe and special guest musicians. They had two weeks to prepare.
Danziger, classically trained on the viola and piano, also plays a few rare and exotic Middle Eastern string instruments and El Artist urged her to perform at least one piece on her Iranian kemanche, an ancient violin-like instrument rarely seen or heard in Egypt.
Danziger grew up the child of two classically trained musicians.After college, she worked briefly as a journalist.Then a trip to India in 1996 altered her life. She began learning Indian drumming during a stay in the northern town of Varanasi.
“I had an epiphany about drumming. I was really good at it and I loved it, she said.
She lived in Israel for nine years and was drawn to Middle Eastern music. One day, she picked up a dumbek and something clicked.
The Marquette, Mich.-born drummer plays a range of instruments in addition to the dumbek and Iranian kemanche, including riqq (Arabic tambourine), frame drums, two Persian hand drums – the daf and the zarb – and the mystical, longnecked Turkish yayla tambour, another bowed string instrument.
Three years ago, she formed her band Raquy and the Cavemen with her husband, Liron Peled, a heavy metal set drummer and guitarist.Their sound was experimental and unique – a blend of traditional Middle Eastern melodies and rhythms infused with rock guitar and bass lines and a heavy emphasis on hand drumming.The band has two self-produced CDs out.
On the night of the concert, the performers entered dramatically from the back of the theater in a procession, walking up the aisle with drums in hand, beating out a rhythm.The men were dressed in identical green jackets and black pants; Raquy and her three female students wore long, flowing white skirts and long-sleeved white shirts.
“My only concern was to make sure the dress was decent, said the cultural center founder Mohammed Abdel Monem El Sawy. Danziger, El Sawy said, was the first woman dumbek player ever to perform on his stage and the first he had ever even met.
About 300 audience members clapped enthusiastically along with the rhythms.
“I felt a connection with the audience, Danziger said. “They were really feeling the music.
The concert, she said, was “a dream come true. So how do you follow that? In March, Danziger and El Artist will begin a concert tour of Egypt, including stops in Cairo and Alexandria. AP
