Nadah El Shazly: Spearheading the Sound of Arabic Futurism

Since the release of her debut album Ahwar in 2017, Nadah El Shazly has stood as one of the most innovative and unclassifiable artists to emerge from Cairo’s underground. Her practice as a singer, composer, and producer moves fluidly between punk, noise, film composition, and electroacoustic reworkings of Arabic classical music.

“I have been writing songs on the keyboard since I was 11,” she tells Dazed MENA. “As I grew older, music always found a way back into my life. I learned music production, and started writing my ideas and putting out songs on SoundCloud. There was always a calling guiding me since I was young, and an obsession with music that could always steal me from everything else.”

That early obsession became the foundation for a body of work that blurs the line between composition and emotion. For El Shazly, Ahwar – recorded with musicians across continents – was a landmark in Cairo’s experimental scene. It established her not only as a vocalist, but also a producer and arranger with a rare command of structure and feeling.

Her creative world has always been expansive. When asked about her influences, El Shazly lists a constellation that stretches across eras and genres: “Violin arrangements, Sherine, and Baligh Hamdi but also the futuristic sounds of much older Arabic classical as well as great improvisers like Sami El Shawwa, Abdel Hay Helmi, punk rock, mahraganat, Mohamed Abdelsalam on keyboard, my long-term collaborator Sarah Pagé playing harp and electronics and, lastly, the icon Taheyya Kariokka.”

Each of these references speaks to her artistic philosophy, which balances heritage and innovation. “I hope to continue to write songs that resonate with people today,” she explains. “And draw inspiration from Arabic maqam and instrumentation, proving that Arabic culture is not just appreciated through a nostalgic lens, safeguarded in museums, but through a lens that is set in the present.”

From performing Ahwar at the Le Guess Who? festival to receiving international acclaim for her film scores (including Fyzal Boulifa’s The Damned Don’t Cry), her career has been marked by defining moments of recognition. But for this 35-year-old artist, music serves as both a form of resistance and renewal—her work reclaims Arabic sound as something living, fluid, and unafraid of the future. That philosophy extends beyond the studio and onto the stage. “At a time when music has been primarily dominated by streaming platforms, I also want to encourage people to attend live shows and bring the magic back to the stage,” she says. 

With her sophomore album Laini Tani (2025) released by her label One Little Independent, El Shazly has continued to push boundaries, taking Arabic music into thrillingly unfamiliar territory—sharper and more distilled. “I am currently touring, preparing a remix album of the songs, and slowly starting to work on my upcoming release,” she shares. What connects all of her work is a restless desire to expand the language of Arabic music. She builds from the past without being bound by it, imagining a sound that belongs entirely to the present.