The Passion

Breaking into European markets, many musicians will tell you, is all about fusing new sounds. But house and inshad? Celebrity munshid Mahmoud al-Touhamy, who is about to release exactly such a new sound with his upcoming album, tells us how he has made a career of reinventing the art of Sufi chanting.

By Menan Khater

Unlike other music genres, mainstream or underground, that aim to entertain, Sufi inshad, or chanting, has one goal: spirituality. Mingling poetry that speaks to the soul and delving into a world of meaning in an effort to explore the love of God, inshad is not what you’d call pedestrian listening. But then the villagers of al-Hawatka are hardly pedestrian listeners. The village in Manfalout, Assiut, is home to a predominantly conservative Sufi population and the birthplace of Sheikh Yassin al-Touhamy, aka “Upper Egypt’s Nightingale.” The ‘sheikh’ is arguably the cornerstone of inshad not only in Egypt but the Middle East, and with a career spanning over four decades, has been crowned the uncontested king of religious chanting in the region. Uncontested, that is, until his son, Mahmoud, began claiming his share of the limelight. Mahmoud al-Touhamy inherited his father’s gift for chanting, but it was his astute choice to study music and market himself aggressively that has helped his career skyrocket. Not only is he a much-sought act at Sufi or religious venues, but he’s also started to draw in more mainstream audiences and now performs at weddings and concerts as well. In fact he’s so exclusive, out of all the munshid(chanters) in town, he is the only one allowed to perform concerts at Egyptian moulid at Al-Hussein. Today, with over 15 albums in Egypt and Europe already under his belt plus a slew of international performances adding to his success, the rising star is single-handedly changing the face of his chosen genre. Al-Touhamy tells Egypt Today how he’s doing it. Edited excerpts. When was your first professional performance? My father encouraged me to participate in live concerts with him when I was in primary school. Back then I used to call for prayer at school and enter competitions in reciting Holy Quran. But I only started taking it to a professional level in high school. When I was 16, when I went onstage by myself and performed at festivals in Upper Egypt and at Islamic weddings. I also began to perform at private concerts and enter contests on a more advanced level. What did your family, neighbors and friends think of your early performances? People in my village like to listen to these songs, of course, because the genre itself lines up with their culture and because they know my father well; it encouraged them to listen. Those were two main reasons why the overall setting and atmosphere were very helpful in launching my career. They also liked the fact that there was going to be an extension of my father’s works. But what was really challenging was when everyone first listened to me and started comparing between me and my father. Being the son of Sheikh Yassin al-Touhamy has been a double-edged sword for me. I was just a new kid on the block. But my father has made a huge imprint on my career. At first he was skeptical that fame might distract me from my educational path, so I was determined to keep up my good grades. And when I started taking my own steps, he had some strict rules, to study the arts of music and Sufism; He insisted that I never follow someone and lead instead. At the same time he also gave me space to gain experience by trial and error, which he believed is the best teacher. How did you prepare yourself to become a munshid? My studies in Arabic language at Al-Azhar University prepared me a lot for inshad by training me to look for poems with deep meanings, while my study of psychology gave me insights about people’s inner thoughts, sentiments and so on. On a personal level I managed to educate myself by listening to all kinds of music from Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, Yanni, jazz, everything, even though my goal was to specialize in the art of maqamat [maqamat are exclusive to Arab music but are similar to scales in musicology]. Still, being open to different tastes of music taught me that there are no rules for music and pushed me to go further and add new tastes to inshad. Where did you study music? I took several courses at the Conservatoire and the Higher Musical Institute where I got the opportunity to meet, work and train under veteran musicians such as Ammar al-Sherei and Hassan Abou Elseoud. They influenced and encouraged me a lot, especially when al-Sherei told me that I was the best munshid to execute melodies for Sufi poems in Fussha, given my combined background in Western music and Arabic studies. I attempted to add a new taste to the old school of inshad by setting Arabic poems to the music of Western instruments. When did you go abroad? Who encouraged you? What encouraged me was a letter I received in 2003 from Turkey inviting me to represent Egypt in the religious inshad individual contest in the under-20 age category. At that time I was studying for my master’s at the school of education. I tried to get permission to attend, but my faculty dean discouraged me, saying it might distract me from my studies. But I insisted on going and it was a remarkable experience for my career. You have more than one band. How does that work? I have two bands: one that performs here in Egypt and another that joins me for concerts abroad. I know most Egyptian inshad bands and am familiar with each one’s qualities and competencies so it was easy to select players from my network. I don’t really care if they have academic knowledge, but rather if they have a talent for playing music without notes, in a basic way, influenced by what they listen to. This is very important to me. Sometimes the surrounding culture defiles the raw instinct, so when I go abroad I take the novice musicians. Sticking to our identity is what makes us unique and outstanding. It’s why people of different cultures come to attend our performances. So we wear Islamic or Sufi dress and use Oriental instruments. People find this odd and unique because they don’t see it often. And the music itself takes them away from their daily materialistic life to a new world of spirituality. Do you also write the poems? There are some poems that I insist on editing, to make the words easier and simpler for all people to understand. What are your favorite poems and who are your favorite munshids? Imam Al Baseery’s “Al Burda” is one of my favorite poems. It’s really famous and I added something different to it, a new melody with guitar and flute, and also a new composition; it was awarded the best melody for “Al Burda” in Indonesia in 2005. My favorite munshids are Sheikhs Ali Mahmoud, Al- Naqshabandi, Toubar, Zakaria Ahmad, Sounbaty ... and most definitely my father and my role model, Sheikh Yassin. How do you see the future of inshad in Egypt? I’m trying to spread the genre of inshad and spirituality in Egypt, but I’m battling the heterogeneous culture rising up in the music talent shows, movies, and supported by mainstream media which makes the process counterproductive and very hard for us as munshidin. Last month I launched the first Egyptian syndicate for inshad to bring together a new generation of professional Egyptian munshideen and focus on educating and training all its members. It was my father’s lifelong dream which was met by many obstacles, but I have now finally made it come true. The syndicate will open the doors for munshids from both genders and from all religious affiliations to widen the scale of the genre all over Egypt. et