Le Cri du Caire

Description

Cairo, late 2013. In a city in turmoil where the curfew has just been lifted after a second coup d'état, where dreams and revolt are still boldly displayed on the walls, where slogans hostile to Islamists and the army resonate even in the downtown clubs, I find myself deeply touched by the voice of Abdullah Miniawy at Studio 100Copies, just steps from Tahrir Square. Singer, writer, poet, slam artist, and student from the oasis city of El-Fayoum, this spokesperson for Egyptian youth stirs the scene and social media with his hypnotic voice, his unique blend of electro, jazz, and Sufism, both punk, psychedelic, secular, and avant-garde. Three months later, the first stage shocks orchestrated with Abdullah by the festival La Voix est Libre in Cairo with the "Jimi Hendrix of the oud," Mehdi Haddab, and the first meeting with composer and saxophonist Peter Corser at the D-CAF (Downtown Contemporary Art Festival), created the day after the revolution by theater man Ahmed El-Attar. After three years of administrative battles, as censorship returns to the Egyptian artistic circles, Abdullah finally arrives in Paris where he records with Peter Corser a first version of Purple Feathers released on Soundcloud.
In 2017, captivated from the first seconds by these vocal and instrumental flights, Erik Truffaz accepts our invitation to rise on Peter's hypnotic loops and Abdullah's electric chants, soon joined by the embodied strings of cellist Karsten Hochapfel. Five years later, the Cry of Cairo continues to turn heads, in front of an audience often moved to tears. Both free and spiritual, sensitive and elusive, their music touches the vertigo of the soul, soaring towards what could well be one of the shortest paths between zero and infinity. After five years of touring in multiple high places of jazz and French creation (Avignon, La Voix est Libre, Les Suds, Institut du Monde Arabe, Jazz à Marciac, Paris Jazz Festival ...), the quartet led by Abdullah Minawy, and composed of Peter Corser, Karsten Hochapfel, and Erik Truffaz continues its journey and presents its first studio album.