“An artist capable of blending improvisational methods pulled from classical Arabic music and contemporary free-jazz abstraction” — The Wire

Nadah El Shazly is an experimental Egyptian singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. Her work radically reinvents the popular music of her homeland from the early 20th century, incorporating electronics, free jazz, and noise while pushing all of the above to new sonic and harmonic frontiers. (El Shazly also has a background playing punk, traditional jazz, and electronica.)

She will be touring Canada and the U.S. starting in April, backed on select dates by Godspeed You! Black Emperor‘s Thierry Amar on double bass along with saxophonist / drummer / synth player Devin Brahja Waldman (Patti Smith, William Parker, and Thurston Moore, Brahja, etc.) El Shazly shares the bill on other dates with Danish post-punk outfit Iceage, whose 2018 album Beyondless was celebrated by outlets like Pitchfork, SPIN, and The Quietus.

I would love to connect with you on setting up coverage in anticipation of the tour.

At the bottom of this message, you’ll find a download for the music that El Shazly recorded as a guest vocalist with the “free Middle Eastern” septet Karkhana for Carte Blanche, an upcoming split LP with Sir Richard Bishop & W. David Oliphant. (As you’ll hear, Karkhana features some of the most forward-thinking musicians from Beirut, Cairo and Istanbul.)

Explore El Shazly’s critically-acclaimed debut album Ahwar, a similarly groundbreaking effort which The Wire hailed as “utterly unpredictable.” You can stream that whole album here and click on the video link below for a taste.

I’ve attached an essay Nadah wrote on the connections she hears between the “futuristic music of the Arab world from the 1890s to the 1920s” and the “time travel” sensation created by the work of Ornette Coleman. She writes: “I realized that there’s a huge difference between nostalgia and falling in love with something from the past, particularly when its relevance is carried-through over a hundred years later.”