|
House hunting
The DJ will be determining
your mood tonight
An East-West
adventure by Tarek Atia
 "So
who's going to DJ your wedding?"
Hani Wahba is asked that question
more than most people. He has, after all, DJed more weddings than most
people would care to remember -- somewhere around a thousand in the last
10 years or so. Put in perspective, that's a thousand zaffas, a
thousand first dances, a thousand laser shows, a thousand cake shows and
a thousand of all the other outlandish features of a modern Egyptian
five-star wedding.
Hani is one of the kings of
wedding DJdom. And because he is getting married soon, it's always the
first question anybody asks him these days...
"So who's going to DJ at
your wedding, Hani?"
They're not really expecting an
answer, just looking for a laugh, proffering a slice of irresistible
wit.
"Ya ragil!" Hani
says, in mock camaraderie. "Yo man!"
It's become quite a routine.
* * *
Meanwhile, Hani is trying to
adjust his life to the certain changes that will come with marriage.
"Going out to work at 10pm, coming home in the morning, sleeping
all day, that's no way to live with someone. I know I don't want to put
my family through that."
That's why he's trying to move
out of the party arena to a more managerial play, orchestrating teams of
DJs and lighting technicians for weddings and parties, only playing
himself when specifically requested. Trouble is, that happens a lot. One
week in early July saw Hani performing on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
and Saturday nights.
On the last day of that long
haul, the grand ballroom at the Conrad Hotel was heavy with pre-wedding
atmospherics -- low lights, scattered groups of guests sitting,
standing, heading in and out. It was 10pm and Hani had not arrived. No
big deal because the bride wasn't ready yet either. Parking was still
manageable outside the Nileside hotel and the decorators were putting
the final touches in place.
Hani's team is in charge of the
lighting as well tonight. They have dangled strings of lights from the
massive chandeliers, so they look like oriental lanterns, reflecting
nicely in the hall's gigantic mirrors. The DJ's table stands alone on
the stage, the sound system piping out a metaphysical Enigma-type theme,
pre-programmed by Hani's crew. Years of practice have taught him exactly
when to arrive. Fondly described by one of his assistants as "the
little guy, skirting around, eyes everywhere, his head alight",
sure enough, exactly 15 minutes later Hani is suddenly there, flipping
through CDs, doing sound checks, and then announcing that the zaffa
has just begun.
"Don't make me look
bald," he jokes with the Weekly's photographer.
His act has become an integral
part of the package, one of the elements comprising every carefully
planned wedding, along with the invitations, kosha, food,
flowers, singer, belly- dancer. These days, for budgetary reasons or
just because it makes life easier, the DJ is often the only form of
entertainment on offer. Hani has more or less become the main arbiter of
the evening's mood, and people are willing to pay good money to delegate
that particular responsibility. "Giving a good party" is the
DJ's job, and Hani takes that seriously -- he wants to give people a
good time, to ease their pain, free their minds. He wants to get them on
the dance floor and keep them there till dawn. He's also an artist,
describing with passion the "entrance" show for the bride and
groom.
The light engineer puffs some
preliminary smoke as Hani does his sound check. As he raises the volume
on some majestic march, it's very much like the "Dolby -- the
audience is listening" moment at the movie theater just before the
film starts. Shafts of light appear -- "filled with the haze from
the smoke, the overall lighting along with the music will make a
cadre," he says.
When the bride and groom do walk
in, the scene is cinematic, an audio- visual trip for both the lucky
couple and the audience.
"Music is so powerful,"
I say to Hani, half-jokingly.
"It's very powerful,"
he says, not missing a beat. "I can make people get up, sit down,
smile, shake them this way and that, raise their spirits, bring them
down, drive them crazy..."
Then he remembers something.
"Yesterday at 4am the groom's father suddenly screamed at me: 'Hey
stop that already!'" Hani looks flabbergasted as he tells the rest
of the anecdote: "I really didn't know what to tell him. The bride
and groom and all their friends were having a great time, dancing like
crazy... And he really couldn't believe it was 4am and still going
on..."
Then again, another party
taught him that dancing is not everything. It was a Sudanese wedding
where nobody -- literally no one -- got off their chairs all night long.
Hani tried everything -- "Arabic, reggae, rock, slow, even
Indian... but no one wanted to get up and dance because the bride and
groom weren't getting up. He was just sitting there, smoking a
cigarette, and she was just sitting there as well. They weren't getting
up -- period."
He thought he had failed ---
then, as people were leaving, right after they shook hands with the
bride and groom, most made a point of coming over and shaking his hand
too. "We had a great time," they were saying, "we really
loved the music."
For Hani, loving the music all
started at the Jesuit. "We were a class on a mission," he
says, "we were crazy about music." Getting the newest records
from abroad was "war between classmates". When parents went
out of town on business they'd always be forced into bringing back
dozens of records for their kids.
These were the days of the
Heliopolis musical maniacs. One of them, Wael, remembers stores like
Frequency and Jetline swamped with students from the Jesuit and the
English School, carefully probing the seemingly endless rows of foreign
records, choosing songs for mixes.
Hani started DJing in junior high
school, mixing at his own birthday and for others. Today, he holds an
engineering degree from AUC, but this is what he's been doing for 12
years. "His was the first name to be associated with DJing
weddings," says Wael, "because he has a certain style to his
music. His sound system is nice, so it's not noisy, and he gives
weddings a classy feel."
Egyptian weddings are by nature
spectacles -- and Hani is certainly a beneficiary. "As a
society," Hani says, "we like to have a good time. I don't
think there's anywhere else on earth where you see people -- everybody
-- up all night like here."
And yet the DJ's work is also
mostly anonymous. His role in society is yet to be defined. There are no
institutions, associations, or unions for him to belong to.
Hani went to the Musicians'
Syndicate eight years ago and asked to join. They asked him if he played
an instrument, and when he told them what he did, they were sorry but he
couldn't become a member.
That seems ironic in the wake of
successful DJs the world over who release best-selling CDs just like
musicians. It's also interesting when you consider how intricate Hani's
performance really is.
Tonight's wedding is a little
different from most -- no kosha for the bride and groom but a
"guest of honor" table instead. It's a chic crowd, and the
hall is divided in two -- shabab on one side on silver fer forgé
tables, adults on the other side in a more formal set up. Hani looks
over the crowd. There's a girl in a pink taffeta dress. She's aching to
dance, moving her hips and shoulders, her curly hair bouncing -- which
means the party is nearly ready for the switch away from cheesy slow
songs to continuous dance. Hani tries to test the audience's
preferences. Are they responding more to Arabic or English? Do they want
him to play some hip hop, or hit deep into trance?
Hani knows trance is the future.
It's about the speed of the music. "Techno made by the West has
forced Arab music to speed up. If we don't groove faster we'll feel like
we're backwards. We're talking 110 --140 beats per minute now," he
says. Still, there are limits to how fast society is allowed to go in
this new, bold direction. "When people shake their heads a little
too fast the Eastern mentality labels it devil worship," he says,
remembering the devil worshipping brouhaha of a few years ago. Maybe it
was a not-so- subtle warning to kids to slow the beats/minute rate a
little bit.
Here at the Conrad Hani gradually
takes the crowd to dance land. First a jazzy tune to get the bride and
groom and a few core group friends up on the dance floor, moving slowly
in a circle. Next comes that cross-cultural Italiano- Americano
song, the beat getting slightly faster and funkier, then another popular
hit, Sway Me More, followed by a few jazzy Spanish tunes as more
people join in.
He sticks to the Spanish theme
for now to keep them in the mood. This part of the routine is crucial --
the way the crowd is introduced to what will become the overwhelming
atmosphere of the party -- pure dance.
Soon enough Hani knows it's time
to start hitting it. A heavier bass creeps in at the end of one of the
songs, and about 12 seconds later the crowd starts to freak out to the
song, Al-Deek biyeddan Koo Koo Koo Koo -- one of those housefied
classic Arabic tunes featuring the awesome technical mastery of trance
united with the ancient trills of a hara. The best part is that
they're participational songs -- the crowd gets to sing the chorus
"Koo Koo Koo Koo" every once in a while, which is very
uplifting. Even the cynical guy who was just looking everybody over is
now off his chair and dancing it up with the bride and groom.
At this point, it's time for this
genre's anthem -- the remix of Um Kulthum's Alf Leila Wa Laila,
with its tremendous souped up tabla, interspersed with beautiful nays
and sagat. This is East meets West, baby, and we're right at the
core of what this trend is all about.
Hani is mixing to the point where
you can't tell how many different songs are playing at once. Still, all
the signs are pointing to this party moving steadily towards an Arabic
music focus, though I think it looks like he's already won the audience
over either way.
I ask him where the wedding is
headed, music- wise, but he's not so sure. "I'm between two
fires," he says, "should I continue with the Arabic or
not?"
A decision is soon made, and
announced, appropriately enough, with the song Arabiyon Ana by
Yuri Mercadi.
Is this crowd Arabiyon
then? Yes, indeed, a new kind of Arabiyon, juiced up by techno.
More than anything, these types of tunes define the mood, the moment the
world is in -- mixed up, globalised. With his easy ability to merge
between different sounds the DJ is the perfect metaphor for this
shrinking globe.
That's a DJ's specialty --
keeping everyone's head shaking, as they look around, walk around,
straighten their tie, puff on a cigarette or cigar, analyze the crowd.
For the DJ it's a continuously curious game, a sort of psychological
theatre, with music as a form of release. Hani has become a master at
this slow, gradual interplay with the audience's emotions.
"One of the best feelings I
get," Hani says, "is when I already have a song on deck to
change the mood and someone comes up to me and says 'Will you play
this?' and it's the same song I have planned. I can't begin to describe
how ecstatic I am at that point because I know I'm reading the crowd
right. You know what I do? I make that person put on the headphones, so
they know that I'm on their same wavelength."
Maybe the act of mixing music is
in itself a personification of where the world is heading -- a
micro-macro merge of cultures, trash and trouble-free crescendos. Hani
is all about this culture mash. He's all about the meeting of
generations, all about East meets West. And like the good DJ that he is,
the mood he creates is all about merging people's comfort zones, playing
the tunes they grew up with, and the ones they love like crazy right
now.
* * *
Hani first met Nada while he was
DJing a party at her school a few years ago. Their wedding is planned
for sometime next year. Nada says she's gotten used to Hani's fame
sometimes getting in the way. Like when they're at a restaurant and
everybody wants to come over and chat with the DJ who made their wedding
so great.
And now, the moment we've all
been waiting for: "People think I'm joking," Nada says,
"when I tell them that Hani is actually going to be the DJ at our
wedding -- but really, I'm not."
Officially, his team is going to
do the wedding.
"But it's well known,"
Hani says, "that when there's equipment around, I can't keep my
hands off of it."
WHAT
DO YOU THINK?
MAKE YOUR
VOICE HEARD
Send a comment to cairolive.com
Disclaimer
and Terms of Use
© Copyright 1996-2005 cairolive.com. All Rights Reserved
|
