IFAO

The speaker:

Séverine Gabry-Thienpont is an ethnomusicologist, research fellow at the CNRS (Idemec) and former scientific member of the IFAO. Part of her research focuses on the making of Egyptian music as an aesthetic, historical and religious fact, in the light of the processes of sound amplification to which it is subjected.

 

About the musician :

“Synthetic Traditions”, with this expression, Pan African Music magazine described Yunis’ music in their interview with him. An imagined spiritual ritual takes place in a tumultuous modern world, “Synth-led nightmare fuel” as BoomKat said about one of his tracks, or as the mastering engineer, Heba Kadry, said about his work: “There is something that is very nostalgic to me about his sound and yet extremely tight and a cut above what is expected from Shaa’bi music.”

Yunis (b. 1994) is an experimental musician interested in traditional/trance music and rituals. He is based in the Egyptian western Delta province of Kafr El-Dauwar where he co-founded Kafr El-Dauwar Records (KDR), an independent digital record label working to nurture, support and release his hometown’s contemporary and experimental music.

In his working method, Yunis values an approach of cross-pollination, syncretism, and experimentation. While genre-bending is at the root of his artistic method, he believes in the sacredness of the traditional musical forms he draws from. Moreover, a prominent issue throughout his work is the characterization of “cultural revival.” In speaking about his work - or various musical genres such as Shaa’bi, Zār, Mouled, and Takhmir - musicians, artists, critics, and writers often characterize the practice as “cultural revival.” However, Yunis sees that his work subverts this characterization, as he treats these traditional genres as living, evolving, artistic forms, as opposed to stagnant, historical, artifacts that need to be “revived.”

In addition to, Yunis, in his research, refuses to deal with said artistic heritage through imitating it and, instead he seeks to reach the basic pillars on which the artistic form in question is built on. Whether those pillars are a specific concept or a feeling we seek to create with different artistic tools, he seeks to understand these pillars, in order to disassemble and reconstruct them. In the end, the result is not only a unique music form but also a unique methodology and approach to “Shaa’bi” music.

Yunis brought his vision of contemporary wedding music to life in his debut solo album The Blue Djinn Dance (November 2019, KDR) after producing an earlier collaborative record with Ibrahim X, Ya Khal (September 2019, KDR) where he brought the Egyptian practice of wedding MC-ing to the studio for the first time in collaboration with Suliman; the label art director.

In his latest music release, Mulid El-Magnoun (KDR, February 2021), Yunis worked on distilling the popular Egyptian moulid practice and its various manifestations in Egyptian folklore, while closely examining the space between moulid in its Sufi form, with its rhythmic patterns and instrumentation, and as a genre with gritty aesthetics originating from folk weddings.

Most recently, Yunis was featured in the sold out L’Esprit de Nyege 2020 compilation by Nyege Tapes, alongside his festival performance as part of the Egyptian Leather Pavillion curated by Nadah El Shazly. Besides, Yunis traveled to Uganda for the first time on March 2021 to do an art residency at Nyege Nyege villa in Kampala, where he met the musicians, Chrisman, Dogo, and Jay Mitta.

Between 2021 and 2022, Yunis traveled with his music for the first time to Europe, where he performed several concerts in several different countries, including France, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. He played in many well-known music venues like Petit Bain in Paris, and Cave 12 in Geneva. He also participated in many festivals such as Le Guess Who? In Utrecht, and La Plage des Six Pompes Festival in LA Chaux-de-Fonds. In this travel, Yunis also showed his first gallery work, I will make a doll for you (2022), at Spazju Kreattiv in Malta, which was a participatory installation with the artist Laura Besancon.

“In an imagined spiritual ritual, we will twirl together in circles, in hopes of ascension.” Yunis said about his current project, Orouj, which is a cross-disciplinary performance he started on his three-month residency at The Cité internationale des arts in Paris, France. Nowadays, Yunis is preparing himself to travel again to Paris to do the creation residency with the dancers to finish the project in preparation for its first premiere before the end of the year.