Text Yaseen

From the moment Nadah El Shazly released her first full-length album, Ahwar (2017), she was positioned as one of the most distinctive voices to emerge from Cairo’s underground music scene in the past decade – but “voice” in this case needs clarification. El Shazly is often introduced as a singer, but that framing quickly falls apart under scrutiny.

Between jazz-fusion collaborations, scoring arthouse films, and even an experimental noise project, Nadah is incredibly hard to pin down creatively. As a self-taught producer, vocalist, and electronic musician, her practice has always been resistant to neat categorisation.

Her radically free-spirited, self-produced debut presented a staggeringly rich exploration of jazz, classical Arabic music, ambient, and experimental electronics built around extended, improvisation-driven structures that often stretched well beyond five minutes.

The album, recorded with 18 musicians, including Maurice Louca and Sam Shalabi, displayed immediately her ability as a composer and arranger as she melded a sprawling ensemble of collaborators across multiple continents. It’s more accurate to describe Nadah as a producer, composer, and songwriter whose arsenal of sonic weapons just happens to include her voice.

Nearly seven years later, she’s returned with Laini Tani, a hyper-focused exploration of the sound she’s spent nearly a decade refining. Part experimental electronic, fever dream mawwal, and pop-infused love letter, Laini Tani is an album that similarly defies a simple genre assignment.

Here, the collaborative process was deeply intimate, with a tight core group of collaborators: Ismail Hosny (3phaz) on beats/co-production, Sarah Pagé on harp and additional electronics.

Written and recorded between Cairo and Montreal, Laini Tani departs from Ahwar’s longform structures in favor of shorter, more direct songwriting. From the debut single “Kaabi Aali“, it was immediately apparent how tightly constructed the songs are. Anchored in voice, melody, and detailed production, each track of the project champions clarity rather than density.

These are compositions built around intent, not improvisation. The songwriting is purposefully unobscured and direct, with some of her most accessible lyricism to date. Even so, Laini Tani is not a pivot toward pop, nor is it a simplification. This is a deep, layered project that sounds as powerful digitally as it does live, with Nadah’s current tour performance placing her in a definite must-see for this year.

Now based in Montreal, El Shazly’s appearances in the region are rare – and all the more special for it.

Ahead of the album’s release, I managed to catch up with Nadah at a tucked-away bakery in Maadi, Cairo. Here are some parts of our conversation:

From Laini Tani, I get the feeling that you’re at a sort of creative crossroads. There’s still a foot in that “experimental” world, but it seems like you could go ‘full pop’ with your sound after this. Is that something you want?

I’ve always thought of myself as a pop musician, even with ‘Ahwar’. I don’t understand why we have to call it “experimental”. The song is done. It’s not an experiment. It’s done. I know what this song is.

I think it’s just a question of how else music can be [and] what else music can sound like?

Does it need to have a chorus? Does it need to have this? Does it have to have that? And music itself is open, you know? You can express it the way you want.

So there is this capacity [here] that I think it’s very exciting for me. To make music that sounds very familiar, but can still be exciting in different ways.

You’ve been working on this project for about two years, right? It must be exciting now that it’s finally going out into the world?

Yeah, absolutely. [Laini Tani] has nine tracks that don’t all come from the same place. They’re not all similar, but they tell a story. I’m excited for people to see how they all fit together.

You’ve also been touring for the album extensively these past few months?

Being on the road for me – because of the way I structure the live show – always leaves room for improvisation. So being on the road is actually the most music writing that I do. It’s where I learn and open up the songs the most. Where I know and understand what my next move is in terms of how I want to write [or] how I want to structure a song.

A lot of songs and musical phrases have been written as a surprise during a live show. This is also the way I work with Sarah Pagé. We really feed off each other musically, and there’s room in the live show to write.

The line between if I’m performing or if I’m writing completely dissolves.

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PLACE & SOUND:

“Montreal has these long winters where you stay indoors for a long time. So it also makes it more possible to have this time with yourself, to write, like without all the distractions and all the noise that’s in Cairo.”

How do you deal with that kind of isolation?

I think you just sit through it. There’s no overcoming it. I think you have to sit through this vulnerability. The whole album was written in Montreal. Away from my hometown, from my friends, from my family. I’ve been touring a lot, and there’s this intention, or this desire, that I want to communicate. I wanted to reach out to my friends to tell them how much I love them. I wanted to write about what I miss.

In a completely different environment, weather-wise, than back home.

Very, very different. So the way I bring in those memories and that environment is what made the songs.

Is there this feeling of always leaving and coming back? Absorbing feelings while you’re in Egypt and transmuting them when you’re in Montreal.

I think it’s everything that I grew up with. […] Cairo can be very overwhelming so when I’m coming back, it’s more on a personal level. I’m [mainly] spending time with my family.

Things are changing [in Cairo] very, very fast. It’s making me feel like I’m coming from a different time. I ask my friends about the old cassette shop next to the Baskin-Robbins on El-Batal Ahmed Abd El Aziz Street, and they tell me that neither the cassette shop nor Baskin-Robbins is still there

It’s like I have ‘grandmother syndrome’ (laughs).

Does losing touch scare you?

No, I think I can get back in really quickly. Egypt has this effect where you don’t really have a choice… like you’re gonna get into the river.

Do you feel like there was a balance you needed to find between expressing these feelings authentically, but also making them come through in a way that can still resonate with other people?

I don’t really think very consciously about [that], because what I can see happening is that the more I write, the closer I actually get to getting better at writing. With Ahwar I used to create a lot of metaphors and hide a lot of things inside the lyrics, like riddles.

With Laini Tani I gave way for things to also be said the way they need to be said, without having to hide them, you know?

On Ahwar I knew the musical place that I wanted to explore. The marshlands Ahwar of Iraq, and what kind of sounds can grow in that fertile place.

Laini Tani is not a place. It’s something more… I’m writing songs, which are very, very different, certainly…

Ahwar by Nadah El Shazly

It’s nice leaving those kinds of breadcrumbs for people to follow and figure out. That must be really fun, in the most playful sense.

Yeah absolutely. In releasing this project, it sort of remains a riddle even to myself. I’m also figuring it out as I’m writing – so I get to enjoy it as well.

CLOSE CIRCLES:

With this one, you kept a very close circle of collaborators compared to Ahwar. Sarah on Harp, and 3phaz as beats & co-producer. Was there anyone else I missed?

There was also Samuel Barbier-Ficat, who did post-production, Patrick Graham, who did some percussion work, and Jonah Fortune [playing upright bass]. But it’s mainly me, Sarah, and Ismail.

Sarah lives in Montreal as well, but Ismail is mainly in Cairo. What was that collaborative dynamic like?

Because of the immediacy of this idea that I wanted to communicate, I wanted to reach out.

I had these songs and feelings that, you know, need to come out. So I think it also made me go back to what’s essential for me. So that’s why the collaborators are also very tight. [Now,] if I want to make a song I want to have a beat, and I want Sarah Pagé on it. I think this is going to become the way that I write [from now on], maybe.

The harp is an instrument that has this huge register, from very low to very, very high. And it can be very vulnerable. […] The way Sarah plays is very intentional. The way she manipulates the harp, it can be like an electric guitar, you know? It can sound very harsh as well.

And the way this fits with Ismail as well – Ismail does these super fat, very heavy beats, but then they can also be very vulnerable, the way he uses the cymbals and sagat, for example. Feeha Dala3.

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There’s a focus to it as well. I feel like Ismail’s work really strikes this minimalist/maximalist balance where everything has a place and is very intentional, but also very big.

What happened was, I was in Cairo and I went to visit Ismail at his place. I asked him, “What are you working on?” so he started playing these beats, and every time he would play something, I could already hear my voice and the [musical] phrases and everything.

I tell him, “Yes, I want this one. I want this one.” They would just be like eight bar beats, and I would take the beats and the sessions and arrange them in Montreal. I’d give [Sarah Pagé] the key, and an idea of the song as an interpretive feeling, and we’d try a couple of takes and go from there.

You’ve got to bring Sarah here for a show sometime. But I guess bringing a harp over here is a bit of a challenge. Customs are going to have a field day.

Hahaha you have to rent a harp, you don’t move a harp. You have to move the harpist. But yeah, she’s in Canada, but we’re gonna make it work, for sure.

ON/IN BOXES:

Do you feel like there’s sometimes a tendency for people to focus more on your presence as the vocalist rather than your hands-on approach to composition and production?

I thought so, but because of the work I’d done with soundtracks and stuff, I think people get it now. The other day, I was at a jewelry shop getting a present for a friend, and the guy working there asked me, “Are you Nadah El Shazly, the producer?”

And I was like “what?”, you know? A dude at a jewelry shop in Korba, and he said “Nadah El Shazly, the producer.” Not singer, or musician, he said specifically “producer”… I was really affected by that.

That must have been affirming, in a way?

It was very cute, very affirming. I think it was always important for me how you present yourself. I’m always making it clear, you know?

I just need to keep making music and keep putting it out there, and see what happens.

That’s a very healthy way of looking at it.

I think you can easily lose your mind in the middle of it. You can be too easily involved with their narrative that you forget your own and why you’re doing the things you’re doing.

What would give you the satisfaction… When would you feel accomplished? When do you feel good about what you’re doing? That is the tricky part.

The Damned Don't Cry [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack] by Nadah El Shazly

Was there a time when that sort of, let’s say, external validation had more weight than your own feelings about the work?

Don’t get me wrong, it still does. I want people to listen to the music. I want to perform concerts and know that the crowd knows the songs. I don’t want them to know another made-up version of myself.

Interesting phrasing, “another made up version of myself”, don’t you think?

I think music has always been a way for me to talk about very personal, very internal things that I can’t really explain. As long as they are out of me, I feel better. So it’s also something that’s very therapeutic, it’s for my own good.

Touring abroad so frequently, do you find yourself sometimes boxed in by, let’s say, eurocentric views and expectations of your work?

I think what I’ve learned from playing a lot of shows in parts of Europe since 2018 is that I’m not playing to media headlines. I’m playing to people, and people understand what’s going on quicker once they get to hear it. People will come up to me after the show and talk to me about how they felt about the performance. They hear it in a way that it was meant to be heard.

The emotion reaching them is much more direct than an article vaguely summarising or describing yourself.

It’s more interesting to follow the narrative of the ear and the performance, rather than the journalistic narrative.

BUILDING NEW INFRASTRUCTURES:

I feel like there’s this perception that the musical landscape here is so fully saturated, and that everything that can be said has already been said, but I don’t think that’s really the case. It’s wide open, and there’s so much that can be done within this space.

I think what’s difficult, and also what’s exciting, is that we need more spaces and labels here that are grassroots. More that are led by women. Because Egypt has these big stars and big industries, sometimes you feel as though there is no space for other things to happen, but I know there is. If we have more people in music management with labels, people who actually organize the infrastructure, things will be in a better place.

More venues, more labels, more people trying to make things that last more than just one big flashy night.

You can tell that people are looking for the next big superstar. But I think they forget the way songs are written, they have different purposes, and they can resonate with you in different ways.

Not everyone needs to be a multi-platinum pop star.

No… I mean, if everyone thought like that, then you would only be thinking about business and money rather than the process of making music itself.

Is there a pressure to keep things fast, brief, and to hold onto people’s attention when you get it?

I think people are hungry to listen to different things. I think they want to be touched by things when they hear it.

Were there any pieces of music gear that were essential in putting together Laini Tani?

There’s my synth, the Korg Monologue. I love it because I can microtune it, and it’s so easy to carry around. We’re starting to sound like each other. It’s been part of my workflow for some time, and we’re getting to more and more exciting places.

There’s definitely that, a microphone, paper…the essentials.

Is there anything you’d like to share about future projects, or is it still baking?

We’ll see where I go next. I can already hear it… I have an idea [of where I want to go], but it’s still baking (laughs).