Ali Hassan Kuban – From Nubia to Cairo (Piranha 2018)
From a self-taught musician exploring his Nubian people’s musical roots to a professional, successfully leading his various bands into new, vibrant, international pop territory – Ali Hassan Kuban became an international star when his music finally went global in the 1980s.
When precisely Ali Hassan Kuban’s legendary recordings, released internationally by Piranha in 1988, were made, nobody knows any more. What we do know, recordings had taken place at Delta Sound S.A. in Cairo – with the orchestra’s entire line-up circled around the only working microphone at hand. The tracks had been travelling in the Arab world on two audio-cassettes afterwards and accompanied his rise from a local superstar to a musical innovator of new, vibrant, international Pop.
Ancient Nubian melodies played on a background of pulsating Western beats and sounds that draw from American jazz and international pop – Ali Hassan Kuban served as one of the founding fathers of the musical breed which crushed the gates between the Global underground and Western pop: the old and the new! The weddings and the concert hall! The Orient and the Occident!
“From Nubia to Cairo” is the first milestone in urban Nubian Pop. The record is available in glorious audiophile format – remastered from analogue tapes with listening standards updated to contemporary levels. The first batch of Ali’s long-legendary Nubian originals, seductively praising in touching lyrics his native Nubia and Egypt, their people, in particular, their women, and life. Life in general.
NMR
