When the Aswan High Dam was built in the 1960s, the waters of Lake Nasser covered the villages of Nubia in southern Egypt and northern Sudan. Tens of thousands of Nubians were moved from their ancestral lands. One Nubian musician, Hamza El Din, spent his life keeping the songs of that lost homeland alive. With his oud and his gentle voice, he became Nubia’s best-known ambassador to the world.
Early life and the lost homeland
Hamza El Din was born in 1929 in Nubia, in southern Egypt. He studied engineering in Cairo before turning to music. He studied Arabic music and the oud in Cairo, and later studied in Italy. He began adapting Nubian songs for the oud. The flooding of Nubia gave his work a sense of mission. He collected and performed songs from villages that no longer existed.
He performed at the Newport Folk Festival in the 1960s, introducing American audiences to Nubian music.
Escalay, the Grateful Dead and Kronos
His album Escalay (The Water Wheel), released in 1971, became his most famous recording. Its title track evokes the creaking wheel that lifted water from the Nile. He became friends with the Grateful Dead and performed with them during their 1978 concerts at the Giza pyramids. The Kronos Quartet recorded an arrangement of Escalay, bringing his music to classical audiences.
He taught music in the United States and Japan, influencing many students. He died in California in 2006. He is remembered as a bridge between Nubian tradition and world music. For Nubians, his music preserved memories of villages, rivers and customs lost to the lake.
The tar, albums and Japan
Besides the oud, he played the tar, a Nubian frame drum, and his percussion-only pieces were as hypnotic as his oud music. He often performed alone, filling halls with just his voice and instrument. He recorded many albums over his career, for labels in America, Europe and Japan. He lived and taught in Japan for a period and was influenced by Japanese music.
Musicians from jazz, rock and classical worlds admired his work. The villages Hamza El Din sang about lie under Lake Nasser. His recordings are now one of the few places where their songs can still be heard.
