Cairo

In 1968, while he was also the leader of the Military Music Departments in Heliopolis, Salah Ragab formed the first jazz big band in Egypt, The Cairo Jazz Band. Some of the best musicians in Egypt of that time were members – Zaki Osman (trumpet), Saied Salama (tenor sax), Khamis El-Kholy (piano) and Ala Mostafa (piano).

Drummer and multi-instrumentalist Salah Ragab was a central figure in the history of jazz in Egypt. A sometime collaborator with Sun Ra, Ragab founded the Cairo Jazz Band in 1968, the same year that he became the head of the Egyptian Military Music Department. The Cairo Jazz Band was Egypt's first big band, mixing American jazz with North African music, combining jazz instrumentation and musical style with indigenous melodies and instruments, like the nay (bamboo flute) and the baza (ramadan drum). Such musical cross-fertilization was not unusual in itself; American musicians from Sun Ra to Yusef Lateef had long been fascinated by the music of Islam and North Africa, incorporating both the instruments and musical forms of the Fertile Crescent into their work. But Salah Ragab’s music presents a topsy-turvied perspective, a view from the other side of the musical equation of West meets Middle East.

For more than 20 years, Quadro Nuevo has been the butterfly collector of world music in a sense. As a groundbreaking and successful German world music ensemble, woodwind player Mulo Francel, bassist and percussionist Dietmar Lowka, accordionist Andreas Hinterseher and harpist Evelyn Huber track down authentic sounds and magnetic melodies all over the world, catch them and hang them into their own musical frame of reference – always respectfully inspired by foreign cultures, their people and myths.

Cairo Knife Fight is Nick Gaffaney, a man who has drummed his way around the place for many of New Zealand’s leading songwriters, and George Pajon Jr, a Grammy award winning songwriter and guitarist who has worked with some of the biggest names in the international music business including The Black Eyed Peas, Fergie, Carlos Santana, Macy Gray, John Legend, Sting, Nas and Damien Marley. Forming as a duo in 2009 Cairo Knife Fight try to redefine what two musicians can create live with Nick combining the responsibilities of playing drums, keyboard bass, creating live loops and lead vocals with George’s seemingly limitless guitar soundscapes and incendiary riffs. The bands long history of dedication to pushing the boundaries of music video content has also seen them achieve viral status with their 2014 single Rezlord being viewed 11.7 million times as of May 2017.

The original soundtrack recording for the 1993 film RUBY CAIRO (aka Deceptions), directed by Graeme Clifford and starring Andie MacDowell, Liam Neeson and Viggo Mortensen. This European reissue of the original film score by Oscar-winning Composer John Barry is very much in the same style of his scores for BODY HEAT, OUT OF AFRICA and SOMEWHERE IN TIME. The disc features a Flamenco verison of the title theme Performed by Ottmar Liebert and Luna Negar and the song THE SECRETS OF MY HEART performed by Kristina Nicchols written by John Barry, Cynthia Haagens and Graeme Clifford.