Final script: Adam Awad Musical Comedy in Egypt: A Dance between Song and Joke This audio documentary aims to give listeners an insight on the developing musical comedy scene in Egypt. It focuses on two main performers but there are references to other comedians and opinions about the scene. AUC s Adam Awad has the story. [First chorus of Bad Betengan High on Body Fat (from October 28 concert). Fade under narration after 15 seconds.] To people who don t understand the language, this sounds like a couple of guys covering Lady Gaga s Bad Romance in Arabic. At least that s what it sounded like to me when I first heard it. Give the lyrics a listen though and you ll realize it s actually a parody. The lyrics describe eating bad eggplant and being stuck in your bathroom because of it. It may be potty humour, but its humour nonetheless. So allow me to introduce you to this thing I like to call musical comedy, and most specifically musical comedy in Egypt. [Nat Sound of record scratch] Whoa whoa wait, how did it even start here? [Song cue (from beginning of recording, after 5 seconds fade behind narration): Al-Armaleh Taroob - George Sidhom, Samir Ghanem, El Deif Ahmed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaoe4ut2kra&feature=fvwrel ] You see, Egypt has seen its fair share of the genre throughout the past century. During the 1950 s, comedians such as Ismail Yassin and Mahmoud Shekoukou sang monologues about 1
Egyptian society and everyday topics. Other comedians followed suit but none made it as big as el Solaasy Adwaa el Masrahh. This stand-up comedy trio made waves throughout Egyptian entertainment and are still well admired to this day. They comprise of: George Sidhom, the short and stocky one; El-Deif Ahmed, the tall and scrawny one, and Samir Ghanem, the one in between with the oversized glasses. The sight of the three of them on stage together will remind western audiences of the famous Laurel and Hardy with their slapstick antics. [Fade music in and out] Musical comedy in Egypt changed after the fifties. Ahmed Safi el-din: and mostly in classic Egyptian movies you had a lot of songs during movies and some of them were were quite funny and that extended into Egyptian film until the seventies maybe and it kind of stopped at the eighties (0:15) [Song cue: Adam Awad Gypsy Jam Soundtrack (from beginning)] That was Ahmed Safi el-din, known to most people as Safi. His musical comedy duo High on Body Fat is well known around Cairo. They ve performed all around the country and region. The band always claims they got their name from the fact that they love food. I mean, who can blame them. Safi, who sings, writes material and plays guitar in the duo, had a very musical upbringing. SAFI: I ve been singing at school since I was in sixth grade, whatever age that is. Uhm, and I started learning guitar when I was in my senior year in high school. First year of university I formed a band called the Colorsound, formed a band called Zabaleen. Later on in that year I d written a couple of songs of musical parodies and I wanted collaboration with a friend of mine that I saw beforehand in stand-up comedy 2
auditions called Marwan. He s a bassist so we decided we d just perform this together. (0:40) [Slowly fade out song] Safi s musical expertise perfectly complements the other half of High on Body Fat, Marwan Imam. Together, they have written a discography s worth of parody songs such as: Tant Samia, a take on The Eagle s Hotel California, Ramadan-ian Rhapsody, a take on Queen s Bohemian Rhapsody, and Tweet Me Baby One More Time, a take on Britney Spears hit song. [Song cue: Second chorus of Tweet Me Baby One More Time High on Body Fat (from October 28th performnance) Fade under the narration after 15 seconds] The band started out by playing at open mics, events in which people could say or sing whatever they want in a microphone. Open mic performers were limited to only about seven minutes of performance though. They later went on to perform at night clubs and cultural venues in Cairo. SAFI: We started out by singing to teenage students and college students in general then we expanded to anyone who s willing to laugh... (0:06) While the band has had its fair share of shows within Egypt, they ve also had some notable ones outside the country. SAFI: We were invited once to perform in Germany in Frankfurt for... the museum of Frankfurt had Egyptian history week and they tried to invite people to perform anything, like any performance from Egypt. And we don t know if it s because of the language barrier or if it s because the Germans really aren t funny at all and have no sense of humour, but they did not get the material. (0:28) 3
Around the beginning of 2012, the band left the country again, this time to perform on the popular TV show Arab s Got Talent. Their appearance on live TV gained them a much larger fan base, with new fan-made Facebook pages opening up every day. However during the semifinals, their performance didn t go as anticipated. [Fade music in and out] SAFI: My guitar stopped working for some reason, and my mic. And that didn t go well with the judges, didn t go well with the fans who were voting. At first it was kind of a punch to the stomach, so to speak, to the band and to me personally because I saw comments that people wrote on the video and how they weren t fans and they thought that this was absolutely ridiculous. But little by little the comments started improving and they started to realize that there were technical difficulties in the mic. They actually started thinking hey that s not bad! (0:30) The overall event was very beneficial for the band though, according to Safi. SAFI: The experience was great; I got to meet a whole group of talented people from around the Middle East. It s still cool when, every once in a while, when I walk down the streets of Cairo and people point to me saying Haaa! Body Fat! Body Fat! Tant Samia! Body Fat! (0:12) High on Body Fat aren t the only musical comedy act on the scene though. [Cue cheering from 3:02 in this video of Mohammed Shaheen performing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtg_tbxkmnq after 4 seconds fade-out] 4
That was an audience reaction to Mohammed Shaheen, dubbed the king of one-liners. He s a stand-up comedian who, as you probably gathered, reads out one-line jokes. However what sets him apart from many other stand-up comedians is the fact that he uses his guitar as a musical bed on which he lays out his jokes. This gives his comedy a sense of rhythm which is very musical in its nature. Shaheen s history as a comedian is very deep rooted though. [Song cue: Saved by the Barista Adam Awad (from beginning)] SHAHEEN: Growing up, like, for me comedy is the only thing I understood in life to be honest, there s so little in life I really understand *chuckle* in the sense that it makes sense to me. Like I know what s going on around me all the time but it doesn t really make sense. But with comedy I always got it, I understand it. I understand how it works, it just makes sense. (0:30) Shaheen had problems making friends with similar interests in college so watching stand-up comedy became his outlet. With very little education in the art of comedy, Shaheen began his path in finding himself as a comedian. SHAHEEN: And the only thing I read about stand-up was that anything that comes to mind, write it down at the moment it comes to mind. That s what I did, I got a small notebook and wrote down everything that came to mind, every single thought I had. (0:15) [Song cue: Filler Ukulele Adam Awad (from beginning)] In his mid-twenties, after about six years of writing his thoughts down, he decided to sign up to audition for a large-scale comedy show in Cairo. Big-name comedians such as the Iranian- 5
American Maz Jobrani, and Egyptian-American Ahmed Ahmed were there when he auditioned. While they highly praised his stand-up routine, they felt he needed to work a bit more on his stage persona. A year later, he tried calling a comedy organizer to get tickets to a popular standup event in Egypt. However he got more than he bargained for. SHAHEEN: They told me that we saw you at the audition aren t you the guy who did the one liners at the audition I said yeah so they said why come do the show with us. I said I ve never tried performing gheir [except for] once, they said just go for it. And I did and instead of going to the show I performed in front of 500 people. (0:20) [Song cue: Intro Adam Awad (from beginning)] A few shows later and Shaheen decided that one-liners aren t so easy to pull off in Cairo due to the nature of his clever jokes. It didn t help that his jokes are in English, not the first language of most Egyptians. After going on a long hiatus, he decided to try again at an open mic event; the same one High on Body Fat were performing in. This time, though, he added a new spice to his routine. He began playing guitar chords while performing his one-liners. SHAHEEN: So I thought that could be a good addition to what I do because people connect more with music (0:06) Don t just take his word for it though, hear it for yourself. [Cue three jokes from Shaheen s Nile.FM performance (starting at Growing up I always wanted to save lives Fade out after the three jokes.] Shaheen s exposure increased massively after the open mic show. He performed shows around Cairo including at a comedy festival at the American University in Cairo. A BBC journalist even 6
approached him asking for an interview! With time though, Shaheen realized that he had to evolve his jokes to be more relatable to Egyptian culture. That s why it came as a nice surprise when he decided to travel and perform in New York in November of 2011. [Song cue: Monologue Adam Awad (from beginning)] SHAHEEN: But when I went to New York I did the things that I thought were really funny and they worked amazingly and the things that I worked on in Egypt, I did there and they thought ehh not that good and that made me realize that I was thinking properly like the way I was thinking the way I was writing was the right track but I couldn t apply it here in Egypt that much. (0:25) So there we have it, Shaheen and High on Body Fat. Surely that accounts for most of the musical comedy scene in Egypt, right? [Nat sound: generic game show buzzer. Stop music abruptly.] Wrong. Not at all. BORAIE: I think it s crazy. I remember it went from um, I remember that at one point I thought every stand-up comedian was going to do musical comedy because I went to this one open mic and it was like one after another after another after another and I was like oh so do I need to start doing this? (0:15) That was a well-known stand-up comedian and podcast host, Rami Boraie. His podcasts focus on underground artists and musicians in Egypt. Combine that with his experience as a stand-up comedian and this guy knows what he s talking about when it comes to musical comedy. His ideas about the scene in Egypt are very well thought-out. 7
[Cue song: Zizo Kambutar - Lama 2a2oum a7eb aftar 1:04 for 10 seconds then fade under narration] What you were listening to right there is a type of music most commonly heard on mopeds, pickup trucks and microbuses in Cairo s streets. It s a type of music known as sha by, or, people s music. With lyrics ranging from smoking shisha to getting married, to political messages and love songs, sha by music covers most bases. This particular song is by a duo known as Zizo Kambutar and is a light hearted tune about eating breakfast. Rami Boraie goes as far as to say that this in itself is a form of musical comedy. BORAIE: Some people listen to it as a joke and some people genuinely like it, but if you listen to the lyrics sometimes, they ve got serious political messages in there. I was at a sha aby concert the other day and the guy singing is like 30 years! 30 years! We ve been through shit for 30 years! and everyone s dancing and goofing off and then I turned to my wife and asked hey, is he talking about Mubarak? and she was like oh yeah and in the middle of this like autotune thumping beat like joke dancing thing this guy was talking about serious stuff so to a certain degree to some people even that s musical comedy. Like it s just musical comedy can really go across board. (0:45) Having heard his ideas about sha by music; I moved on and asked him how he felt musical comedy stood out from other types of comedy. BORAIE: With musical comedy you can hit them on so many different levels that even if they don t like your lyrics they don t like your voice they don t like whatever, they ll find something to like oh well the music was really good, his voice was really 8
nice, the lyrics were very well written, oh well that was really clever. I don t like what they said but it was clever but with stand-up comedy all I have is the words that are coming out of my mouth. (0:20) [Song cue: Gypsy Jazz Soundtrack Adam Awad (from beginning)] And Boraie knows all about the words coming out of comedian s mouths. He s performed standup in New York venues which have seen the likes of Jerry Seinfeld. If you don t know who Jerry Seinfeld is then I suggest you look up his hit-show Seinfeld. BORAIE: I think with musical comedy it s just you really get, it s not even the best of both worlds, it s like the best of nine worlds. You get vocals, you get stage presence, you get wording, you get lyrics. It covers so many that there s always something to like with musical comedy. (0:23) [Fade out song] With the turbulent political climate in Egypt, I wanted to find out how censorship could potentially affect the growth of the scene. [Song cue: Filler Ukulele Adam Awad (from beginning)] BORAIE: I mean you can tell me what I can and cannot talk about on stage but you can t tell me what I can and cannot talk about while I m home. You can t tell me what I can and cannot do private little function. You can t tell me what I can and cannot do while I m recording myself and sending it to my friends. So you can put all the labels or all the censorship you want but I mean, people are passionate in this country and they ll always be passionate especially with what s going on right now. (0:26) 9
We have some of the best musicians in this country, we have some of the best lyricists in this country and we have some of the best singers in this country. Put those three together and it s a no-fail situation (0:09) [Fade out song] A no-fail situation indeed. With such rich and diverse talent in Egypt, it s no surprise that musical comedians have performed internationally. Likewise, it s no surprise that musical comedians are so well appreciated in Egypt itself. [Fade in and out first chorus of Tant Samia High on Body Fat (from October 28 concert).] Credits: Special thanks to: Ahmed Safi El Din, Mohammed Shaheen, and Rami Boraie for their interviews. Music: AlArmalah Taroub by George Sidhom, Samir Ghanem and El Deif Ahmed Lama A2oum a7eb aftar Zizo Kambutar Live performances by Mohammed Shaheen were used with permission and taken from his YouTube channel. And finally the songs: 10
Bad Betengan, Tweet me baby one more time and Tant Samia by High on Body Fat. Any other music is my own work. Natural sounds from freesound.org. 11