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hard to believe that it’s almost died out. It seems so modern, fresh
and immediate. And you wonder at what personal cost the mem-
bers of this band have achieved their brilliance when you know that
back home, no one really gives a shit.
Back home is Egypt and there, not only does no one care, some
of this music is actively discouraged and its practitioners reviled. The
issue for the authorities is a misunderstanding and mistrust of Zar,
which they consider to be a form of voodoo.
Whilst like voodoo, Zar is of African origin (it’s still practised in
Ethiopia and Somalia) and it may involve a ritual slaughter –
though offerings to the spirits are just as likely to involve toffee
and peanuts – unlike voodoo, the music and dance are used to
help a person come to terms with whatever spirit is troubling
them. It’s essentially a healing ceremony. Each spirit has a particu-
lar song associated with it and once the irritating entity has been
identified, the relevant music is played to placate it, so that the
spirit and the person it’s inhabiting might live in harmony.
Zar ceremonies tend to be run by women for women (no
doubt part of the reason they’re so heavily proscribed) although
there are male Zar masters and musicians. One of the key instru-
ments in the proceedings is the rango (from which the group takes
its name), a large Sudanese xylophone with gourds for resonators
which can only be played by master musicians, typically using two
beaters in each hand.
In fact it can only now be played by Hassan El Nagger, aka Has-
san Bergamon who, incredibly, is the last surviving rango player,
the last man who has the oral tradition of the Zar rango repertoire
in his head. The band play songs from this tradition as well as
songs from wedding ceremonies (for which the instrument is still
sometimes used) and Egyptian songs with Sudanese roots.
“The problem,” says Zakaria Ibrahim, Rango’s musical and
artistic director, “is that the young generation aren’t interested in
their local music. They’re interested in the DJ sound system. It’s the
impact of globalisation,” he says, “they want to play guitar and
keyboards, there’s no market for traditional instruments. One rea-
son why Hassan’s rango is the only one left.”
W
e’re sitting having coffee at a caff in Gatwick’s
departures hall, where I catch up with the band.
They’re quiet and tired after their triumphant UK
debut tour. In their heads they’re already on the
plane home. Zainab Mansour, the wonderful
woman singer I’d spotted as being up for a chat, certainly is. She
radiates warmth, good humour and generosity, and although we
don’t speak the same language, we connect. She’s so kind, she
invites me to stay should I ever be in Cairo. Zainab is one of the
few musicians in the band able to earn a living from music, as a
Zar mistress and revered spirit healer, although her work is neces-
sarily mostly underground. It’s the same for Hassan Bergamon,
who also manages to make a living playing rango and tanbura.
It seems mad to me that this amazing and massively accessible
music has so little cachet in the country it comes from. Perhaps if
people at home see that it’s successful abroad then playing this
kind of music might be more appealing?
“It’s what we hope: my aim is to revive this music in the local
environment, and for the band to get more gigs in the local com-
munity,” says Zakaria. He runs the El Mastaba Centre in Cairo, an
NGO dedicated to researching and regenerating Egyptian folk
music, working tirelessly to save it from extinction, from drowning
in a sea of Arabian pop which dominates Egyptian musical life. It
was he who put the band together, finding Hassan in 1996 and
with him tracking down a rango in the home of one of the old
master musicians who’d died in 1975, the time when rango music
effectively passed away in Cairo.
Tutu and Hassan
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