The other day I was watching a segment of a 12-piece documentary on the life of Amr Diab, arguably one of the most successful Arab singers of the past 20 years. I am not particularly a huge fan of his, but respect him for his lasting power. The documentary left me slightly perturbed because although Diab’s achievement is noteworthy, his success was not based on pure, normative talent alone. He was also aided in no small measure by the dearth of competition that he faced in his career.
Let’s face it, the cultural landscape of Egypt has been gradually eroding over the last fifty years, and anyone with some initiative, a bit of luck and mediocre talent could rise above the rest and claim such ludicrous titles like the “King of Middle Eastern pop music”. I am not denying that Amr Diab is a trailblazer in his own right. He has a vibrant and loyal fan base in Egypt, the Arab world, and within immigrant communities overseas who fill theatres and pay lots of money to see him in concert. But he is hardly a global super star who has succeeded to break out of his local market and cross over internationally like Italy’s Eros Ramozzoti, Senegal’s Yousso N’Dour, South Africa’s Miriam Makeba or even closer to home, Algeria’s Cheb Mami and Khaled. Sure Diab’s music was adapted into Bulgarian, Albanian, Turkish, and Hindi by local artists in those countries, but if you ask the average music consumer in Bulgaria, Albania, Turkey or India, let alone the main music markets of the world such as the US or Europe, who Amr Diab is, they probably wouldn’t have a clue.
Why is there such an obvious lack of world-renowned Egyptian celebrities and cultural icons? It seems that the only Egyptians you hear about in the international media are the ones who have been up to a lot of really bad things, namely terrorists with untrimmed beards. How damaging that must be for the self esteem of the younger generations of Egyptians. There was a time not that long ago when Egypt was a bastion of culture, radiating outward to the rest of the world. We had a booming film industry, talented dancers, super star singers (far superior to Amr Diab), virtuoso musicians, inspired painters, courageous authors, and genuinely independent intellectuals and thinkers. They were celebrities, cultural heroes, and larger than life public figures who served as mentors and idols to generations of Egyptians. They captured our imaginations and inspired us to dream and achieve the impossible. Think of someone like Omar Al Sharif, who curiously remains the only Egyptian celebrity who transcended his indigenous roots to become an international household name.
These days, it seems that the most prolific public figures that are successful in communicating with and mentoring young Egyptians are dubious, self-declared televangelists who are capitalizing on the state of religious hysteria that has slowly engulfed and replaced what was once that country’s core cultural heritage. I don’t have a problem per se with spiritual leaders acting as mentors. But when religious leaders constitute the overwhelming majority of the social power brokers in our society, it creates an unhealthy imbalance. Healthy societies are those that have all kinds of intellectual impulses flowing through them: spiritual, political, and cultural alike. Societies that are obsessively religious are very monolithic in their outlook and do very little for the enhancement of the temporal world.
Despite all of that, you would be mistaken to assume that because there is a veritable shortage of international Egyptian celebrities, that there is a lack of extremely talented and highly successful people of Egyptian roots in the world who are making their mark in their own fields. If you know where to look, there are numerous successful Egyptians who are making us proud across the globe. They may not be as well known as Omar Al Sharif on an international level, but they are not any less talented and their celebrity and achievements are burgeoning by the day. And while some may argue that because these people work and live outside Egypt that they can’t technically be counted as Egyptian talent, I would argue back that each and every one of them is steeped in Egyptian traditions and proud of their roots and heritage, and definitely worthy of our adulation. Here are a few examples:
Ghada Amer, world-class artist
What do Yoko Ono and Elton John have in common? They are both collectors and fans of the outstanding Egyptian contemporary artist, Ghada Amer. Amer lives and works in New York City. She emigrated from Egypt at the age of 11 and was educated in Paris and Nice. Much of her work deals with issues of gender and sexuality, particularly the representation of female nudes in art history as ideal objects rather than human beings with a sexuality and eroticism of their own.
While she describes herself as a painter and has won international recognition for her abstract canvases embroidered with erotic motifs, Ghada Amer is a multimedia artist whose entire body of work is infused with the same ideological and aesthetic concerns. Her oeuvre includes examples of painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, and installation. Amer’s multiple geographic relocations are reflected in her work. Her painting is influenced by the idea of shifting meanings and the appropriation of the languages of abstraction and expressionism. Her prints, drawings, and sculptures question clichéd roles imposed on women; her garden projects connect embroidery and gardening as specifically “feminine” activities; and her recent installations address the current tumultuous political climate. Despite the differences between her Islamic upbringing and Western models of behavior, Amer’s work addresses universal problems, such as the oppression of women, which are prevalent in all cultures. The submission of women to the tyranny of domestic life, the celebration of female sexuality and pleasure, the incomprehensibility of love, the foolishness of war and violence, and an overall quest for formal beauty, constitute the territory that she explores and expresses in her art.
Amer’s work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions at such venues as Deitch Projects, New York; the 2000 Whitney Biennial, New York; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; the 2000 Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; SITE Sante Fe, NM; the 1999 Venice Biennale; the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale; Gagosian Gallery, London, Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills and Gagosian Gallery, New York. She is the first Arab artist to have a one-person exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. A detail of her work, Knotty but Nice was used on the cover of the September 2006 cover of ARTnews magazine, as part of a focus on erotic art. In 2003 Amer’s work was included in Looking Both Ways: Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora, at The Museum for African Art in Queens. In early 2008 a retrospective of her work was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, at the museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. In November 2008, Amer exhibited in Prospect New Orleans, the largest biennial of international contemporary art ever organized in the United States.
Red Diagonales, 2000. Acrylic, embroidery, and gel medium on canvas. © Ghada Amer, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Private collection
Joseph Tawadros, oud virtuoso
Joseph Tawadros is an ARIA-nominated musician and composer who along with Ashok Roy (India), Epizo Bangoura (Guinea), Satsuki Odamura (Japan) and Javier Fredes (Chile) is considered one of Australia’s most respected world music virtuosos. Born in Cairo, Joseph hails from the finest stock of Egyptian musicians and has inherited his talent from his maternal grandfather, Mansi Habib an active composer and an oud and violin virtuoso, and his uncle Yacoub Mansi Habib, a pioneering Egyptian trumpeter.
His instrument is the oud, a fretless, Arabian ancestor of the lute, played with a plectrum which offers a fatter, warmer sound than a classical guitar. He began studying as a child under Ustaz Mohamed Youssef, a renowned oud player and jazz pianist who encouraged Joseph to explore the musical parameters of the oud and the traditional Egyptian improvisational style of taqasim. Joseph holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of NSW, majoring in performance and composition, and is a recipient of the prestigious Freedman Fellowship award for Classical music.
Joseph has performed at all the major Australia music venues, including the WOMAD festival in Adelaide as a solo artist, and a as part of an “All-Star” improvisational session in front of an audience of 30,000. He has also performed in Italy at the Villa Cellimontana jazz festival in Rome, and was a guest of the prestigious Institute Du Monde Arabe in Paris where he performed with his brother James, a percussionist and a musical star in his own right in Australia. In 2006 Joseph completed a highly successful national tour with his brother James and the Australian Chamber Orchestra where seven of Joseph’s compositions were performed under the stewardship of the charismatic artistic director and lead violinist Richard Tognetti.
At only 26 years old, Joseph has already released four albums, three of which have been nominated for or an Australian Recording Industry Award (ARIA) as “Best World Music Album”: Storyteller (solo – 2004), Rouhani – (with Bobby Singh – 2004), Visions (with James Tawadros – 2006), Epiphany (with James Tawadros – 2007), and Angel (2008). You can catch the Egyptian Australian Oud Master’s next performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, September 30, 2009 where he will be accompanied by the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
Jehane Noujaim, controversial filmmaker
Jehane Noujaim began as a photographer and filmmaker in Cairo, Egypt, where she grew up. She moved to Boston in 1990, where she attended Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude in Visual Arts and Philosophy in 1996. Earlier that year, Noujaim was awarded the Gardiner fellowship under which she directed Mokattam, an Arabic film about an Egyptian garbage collecting village. She then joined the MTV News and Documentary division as a producer for the documentary series, Unfiltered. Noujaim left her producing job at MTV to produce and direct Startup.com in association with Pennebaker Hedgedus Films. The feature length, highly acclaimed documentary has won numerous distinguished awards including the DGA and IDA Awards for best documentary.
She has since worked in both the Middle East and the US as a director and cinematographer on various documentaries including Born Rich (Jamie Johnson), Only the Strong Survive (Miramax Films), and Down from the Mountain (Cohen Brothers). In 2004, she directed the feature length, highly acclaimed film Control Room, a documentary about US Central Command and its relations with Al Jazeera and other news organizations that covered the 2003 invasion of Iraq. After winning the TED Prize in 2006, Jehane used her wish to organize Pangea day, a live videoconference that took place in New York City, Rio de Janeiro, London, Dharamsala, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Kigali on May 10, 2008. The show was internationally broadcasted over 4-hours through internet, television and mobile phones. It featured films, speakers, and music.
Tags: amr diab, demise of egyptian culture, egyptian celebrities, famous egyptians, ghada amer, jehane noujaim, joseph tawadros