Back in 1999, I had the unique and unforgettable experience of performing with the Cairo Conservatory Jazz Band. If you're imagining a bebop quintet in fedoras swinging through “Autumn Leaves” — forget it. Egyptian jazz in the ’90s was something entirely different. It didn’t feel like American jazz. It didn’t move like American jazz. But it was jazz in its own right — complex, soulful, searching, and rooted deeply in the music and spirit of Egypt.
On that stage, I remember feeling like I had one foot in the conservatory and the other in a bazaar. The band played in maqamat (Arabic modes), often Hijaz or Nahawand — scales that Western ears associate with mystery or melancholy, but to Egyptian musicians, they’re just home. And instead of the usual 4/4 swing or straight-ahead funk grooves, the rhythm section would lock into traditional Arabic iqa’at (rhythmic cycles) like masmudi or maqsum, sometimes in odd meters like 10/8 or 7/4. The percussionists weren’t just keeping time; they were dancing around it with riq, darbuka, frame drums, and sometimes even finger cymbals.
A tune might open with a slow-burning drone on the bass, the kind of sustained root you’d hear in Arabic folk or Sufi music. Over that, the horns would enter in close harmonies — sometimes using quarter tones — voicing a melody that was part chant, part blues, and entirely Egyptian. Then a soloist would take off, but instead of improvising over chord changes like in American jazz, they’d explore modal color and ornamentation. It wasn’t about substitutions or bebop lines — it was about storytelling through nuance.
If you’ve ever heard Salah Ragab & the Cairo Jazz Band, you’ll know what I mean. Tracks like “Cleopatra” (recorded in the ’70s but still influential by the ’90s) blend big band voicings with Arabic melodic phrasing, using groove-heavy drums and horns that feel like they could crack the sky. Or more recently, Fathy Salama, one of Egypt’s modern jazz icons, has carried that tradition into today’s scene with collaborations like “Nahawand”, which fuses jazz piano with Sufi chanting and Arabic percussion in a way that’s both ancient and futuristic.
The biggest surprise for me that night in Cairo wasn’t the music’s complexity — it was its emotional clarity. Egyptian jazz musicians were telling stories about their world: the city, the heat, the call to prayer echoing off the minarets, the weight of history that lives in the bones of Cairo itself. It wasn’t “fusion” as in watered-down. It was fusion in the true sense — the melting and melding of entire traditions. American jazz brought the idea of improvisation and swing; Egyptian music brought the microtones, the rhythmic flexibility, and the modal depth.
After the show, a couple of conservatory students came up to talk. One of them had a Miles Davis shirt and a kanun under his arm. Another had been working on a maqam-based reharmonization of a Charles Mingus tune. It reminded me: jazz was never meant to stay still. It lives and breathes wherever musicians pick it up and make it speak their own language.
What we played that night wasn’t meant for the Lincoln Center. It wasn’t slick or polished. It was raw, alive, ancient, and modern — all at once.
And it reminded me why I love music in the first place.