Above all else, you cannot miss the fact that Youssif Courtelis loves Egypt. The country seems his muse and rationale. It shows in the first album he made here last year – “Fi Baladak, Dedicated to everyone who loves Egypt, as the cover plainly explains over a stagy self-portrait – and in constant reminders over a drink Downtown.
After all, why else would a Greek musician classically trained in a Sydney conservatory turn a tourist visit here seven years ago into an extended residency in support of an aspiring career in Arabic music?
“It’s a kind of noisy city, Courtelis said at a table in El-Horreya, the old airy cafeteria in Midan Falaki where all the waiters know him. “How do you like it?
The conversation over his music and what it’s like trying to ride what he called “mixing Arabic rhythms and Western melodies to success in Cairo stopped a few times with questions like these. Projecting expat sincerity with none of the usual grizzle or grumpiness over his placement here, Courtelis explained himself simply, that he came to Egypt to study Arabic with a bachelor’s degree in music and stayed on out of an instant attachment.
“Music could not have been the only thing to make me stay, he said. “I had to love the place too. And I did even if it was quite hard at first – referring to the music scene in Cairo – “because it’s all built on contacts and when I arrived I really didn’t have any.
With an album already made in Greece, he finally recorded “Fi Baladak last year with Outline, an exception to the rule of what he described as Cairo’s cash-strapped record labels.
“There are very few record companies here that can produce a lot of your work or that can help with a lot of promotion. But Outline hung posters of him around the city advertising the album last year, and he is set to release a second album this summer.
“There will be ten songs, he said as he passed a pile of press releases across the table explaining his newest video, for the song “El-Lali. At his count, five videos have been shown on satellite television here.
A self-fashioned “Greco-Australian singer and composer who does his own arrangements and now sings in Arabic, Courtelis described his music as that mix of Arabic rhythm and Western melodies. “Although sometimes there are Arabic melodies, he says, whether he is playing guitar, piano or the oud. He still sings in Greek too, and his love for Enrique Iglesias is evident in music videos with hair blowing in the wind and stock romance on a beach that could be Greece or Egypt.
Having performed in Al-Azhar Park, at hotels in Cairo, and outside the city as far as away as Hurghada, Courtelis said his summer shows were still up in the air, likely determined after his new album.
In El-Horreya, a waiter set down Courtelis’s tea and scooped up a cassette version of “Fi Baladak that was on the table, flashed a grin and, waving the tape, proclaimed him “better than Amr Diab. What did Courtelis think of the top end of popular music in Egypt?
“There are the songs you like and ones you don’t. I still prefer the old kind of melodies.
