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Music for the stars
 (cairolive.com, August 20, 2001)
The weather was beautiful high up above Cairo at the Citadel on Sunday night. With cool breezes blowing from several directions at once, the great fortress built by Salah Al-Din Al-Ayoubi was providing the perfect shelter from the summer heat.
The majestic mosque of Mohamed Ali was a stunning backdrop, as thousands of people enjoyed the sounds of the Port Said Tamboura troupe, and a women's oriental takht group, before moving on to yet another antiquity-turned-stage for the next show. In this case, on Sunday night, it was an upper Egyptian troupe featuring a whirling dervish performing the Tannoura, wowing the crowd with his spinning skirts. The highlight of the concert, however, was a singer named Fathy El-Hawari, who performed part of his traditional mawwal of lament in English: "Ya leil ya ein," El-Hawari crooned. "I sing to you, y'abba, y'abba... my tears are falling, my heart is broken..."
A similar routine had been going on for the past ten nights, with five concerts per evening featuring a wide variety of musical troupes and many different genres and styles. The Citadel Music Festival has become a widely anticipated annual affair, getting better each year, with more stages, and better-planned performances. This year, the 45-minute sets are just long enough to satisfy the audience without inducing boredom. Buses seemed to be running efficiently from the Citadel's entrance to the venues inside. Tents selling handicrafts and books were set up along the way, and vendors were discretely selling soft drinks and snacks. Young men with walkie talkies were efficiently directing traffic and making sure people didn't go where they weren't supposed to.
Since it's free, Al-Wafd calls the Citadel Music Festival "the poor people's festival", but the Citadel concerts have wide tourism-promotion potential as well. The concerts represent an excellent use of Egypt's abundant resources -- they just need to be better marketed and advertised, and clearly placed on hotel and tour company's calendars.
Tonight, the last night of the festival, will feature concerts by a Nubian troupe, more oriental takht, jazz, and, as a grand finale at 11pm, the Cairo Festival Orchestra featuring the inimitable Omar Khayrat on the piano playing his own compositions.
Photos by Tarek Atia
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