NEXT MUSIC STATION: Egypt
Next Music Station

Amro Salah – Eftekasat

‘People have a wrong idea about jazz. They think it’s just meaningless noise.’

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“I love jazz. I’m so obsessed with this kind of music that I wanted to see a good jazz cultural event in Egypt; similar to ones held abroad.

The idea came from the desire to see such an important cultural event in our country: Why don’t we have an event called the Cairo World Jazz Festival?

I started thinking about it along with a group of friends last year. We started preparing Cairo’s first jazz festival and invited a number of foreign bands. We also wanted to give a platform to Egyptian jazz bands.

By staging concerts, the event was to have not only a cultural goal, but also an educational dimension. It would present this music to the youth. It would also help enrich the cultural scene in Egypt and the entire region as well.

People have a wrong idea about jazz. They think it’s just meaningless noise. But actually it’s not like that.
Jazz is full of art. At any jazz festival there are various styles. There is Latin jazz, classic jazz, world jazz, jazz-funk. Jazz comes in different styles. It can include natural sounds. People don’t realise that this is all jazz.

The word “eftekasat” has no linguistic root. It’s Egyptian slang used by young people when they come up with a new idea or invention. There was no reason why we chose the word “eftekasat” as the band’s name. We wanted to come up with an interesting name. I thought about it and realised we were inventing music. 

Our music fuses that of different cultures from around the world. Our influences are from North Africa, the Balkans, Latin America, Turkey, Egypt, Greece. We fuse all this into an Egyptian style with a jazz effect.”

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