Performing on the
oud (the Arabian short-necked lute) and the tar (the ancient single-skinned
frame drum of the Upper Nile), along with his gentle voice and original
compositions, Hamza combines the subtleties of Arabic music with
the indigenous themes of his native Nubia. He has single-handedly
forged a new music, essentially a Nubian/Arabic fusion, in line with
both traditions and informed by Western conservatory training. His
music has captured the interest and imagination of listeners worldwide.
First discovered
by Western audiences through his performance at the Newport Folk
Festival and Vanguard recordings in 1964, his 1971 Nonesuch recording
Escalay: The
Water Wheel is legendary among musicians and connoisseurs, and
was re-released by Nonesuch in 1998.
Hamza’s
music has been heard in movie soundtracks and his compositions have
been performed by many leading ballet companies. His 1996 album, Available
Sound: Darius (Lotus Records, Salzburg, Austria) was nominated
for the European equivalent of the Grammy. He has appeared
regularly with the Kronos Quartet, which included Escalay: The
Water Wheel on its chart-topping Pieces of Africa album
(Elektra/Nonesuch, 1992).
He was born in
a Nubian village, Aswan, Egypt. Hamza studied at King Fouad
University (now the University of Cairo), then enrolled in the Popular
University and at Ibrahim Shafiq’s Institute of Music (Shafiq
was renowned as a master of Arabian music and of the Muwashshah form). Later,
he studied Western music and classical guitar at the Academy of Santa
Cecilia in Rome. Next, he emigrated to the U.S., where he worked
as a recording and concert artist and taught as an ethnomusicologist
at several universities. Aided by a grant from the Japan Foundation,
he went to Tokyo in the 1980s to make a comparative study of the
Arabian oud and the Japanese biwa.
Today, Hamza resides
in the San Francisco Bay Area and continues composing, teaching,
recording and performing. His worldwide concert schedule includes
such major festivals as Edinburgh, Salzburg, Vienna, Paris, Berlin,
Montreux, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Monterey and Festival Cervantino
(Guanajuato, Mexico).
REVIEWS
"A master of the oud, the five-string Middle Eastern precursor to the lute,
El Din is one of the world’s great musical pioneers, a surpassingly subtle
composer and player who has collaborated with artists as different as Thelonius
Monk, the Grateful Dead and the Kronos Quartet.”
- Andrew
Gilbert, San Jose Mercury News
“Hamza el
Din, who has made his life’s work reinterpreting the songs
of his native region of Nubia on the oud, performed intense music
with extreme quietude….”
- Ben
Ratliff, The New York Times, Reviews
“(Hamza)
began to evolve new musical forms by drawing the moods and colors
of Nubian music into the vast technical and aesthetic structure of
Arabic classical music. The result is not a loose amalgamation
of two variant forms of music but an entirely new mode of expression. What
is especially significant is his full command of the technical possibilities
of the Oud combined with new musical patterns and ideas, growing
out of the vocal music and drumming of traditional Nubia.”
- Elizabeth
Fernea, liner notes to Escalay, Nonesuch 1998
